Posted on 12/05/2007 4:45:50 PM PST by wagglebee
Today, there seems to be a lot of debate about what it means when someone says they are pro-life. This is especially true for politicians. For clarity's sake, let's define the term. The pro-life position is that a new human life is created at the moment of fertilization and is, thus, entitled to the same legal protections as any other human being.
Given that definition, some abortion positions are pretty cut and dried. For example, someone who supports a universal human life amendment to the Constitution is pro-life, while someone who supports the Roe vs. Wade decision is not.
Then there is the person who says that they are personally opposed to abortion and would never participate in one, but pro-choice when it comes to legality. As amazing as it may seem, I have actually heard pro-lifers describe people who say this as pro-life.
In reality, this is the most insidious and despicable of all positions on abortion. After all, there is no reason to oppose abortion other than the belief that it takes the life of a living human being. So what the "personally opposed" crowd is saying is: "I agree that abortion is the intentional killing of a baby, but if other people want to do it I support their legal right to do so and it's not my place to interfere." That is not a pro-life position. It's like someone in 1860 saying, "I am personally opposed to slavery and I would never own one, but if someone else wants to own a few that's their business."
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The pro-abortionists NEVER want to accept this reality.
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If the author doesn't understand this is a false claim, then it's no wonder he misses the big picture.
What do you mean by that?
Or the law of gravity, let them try it with that.
Actually there are libs who acknowledge that it is killing a child but they boil it down to a “quality of life” issue and all of the unpleasantness of being born into a single mother household, or never knowing your birth parents, or two incompatible people being together for the sake of the kid, or a married couple getting divorced because of the byproduct of an affair, or being burdened with a child who MAY have some birth defects (better safe than sorry), etc.
Every child a WANTED child. They are all children, some are unwanted and should never be given the opportunity to rest in someone’s loving arms I guess.
I saw a book years ago that “settled” many of society’s “tough” issues, including abortion. The first rule of the author’s piece was to say, “we’ll set aside whether it is a person/baby/alive...” and so he(?) came down on the side of abortion.
I heard Whoopi Goldberg telling Ron Paul that abortion is no easy decision, yet Whoopi herself claims to have had 6 OR 7 abortions and that by this point she has lost count. Some “troubling” decision. And what is troublesome about it if it isn’t a person? If it is equal to the placenta, why the fuss? There isn’t the stigma with using a condom (the seed didn’t do the job). So it is more than just being the “potential” for being human that bothers them.
They know what it is but choose to ignore the reality. LA LA LA LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. LA LA LA LA...
Oh?
Who says?
What if God decides not to infuse a soul until the 92-cell blastocyst stage? Are you going to tell Him that He's not pro-life, Mr. Crutcher?
Did the Creator whisper in your ear that it's not at the implantation stage?
Sheesh...this is ridiculous. A person might very well believe that life is imbued at conception...or perhaps that it resides in the ovum prior to implantation... Maybe the ovum is a new human life that is just activated by the fertilization...after all, monozygotic twins are a single cell at first. If a single cell can be two lives, why can't a single ovum be a life?
Maybe it "makes sense" that conception would be a nice, convenient time for God to insert a soul...but it's pure arrogance to claim that anyone who doesn't know that for sure is somehow not pro-life.
We can cancel out the double negative and say that All opposers of abortion believe it does take a human life.
Technically you are correct that this is flawed logic: You could conceivably have an autocratically-governed nation facing a depopulation crisis wherein the government decided to outlaw all abortions. Something like Russia comes to mind.
Despite the technical correctness, I don't see how such a scenario is even remotely relevant to the situation in America, wherein abortion-on-demand has become a cornerstone on which we've built a sexually promiscuous culture which is undermining the family - and will ultimately bring us down.
Probably an imperfect analogy, but I'm just trying to illustrate that the author will fail to convince anyone who isn't already in the choir if he doesn't understand the true beliefs of those who aren't already pro-life.
You don’t have to believe in souls to be pro-life. You don’t even have to believe in God to be pro-life. There are pro-life athiests.
Pro-life: What does it really mean?
I respect and know the value of my own life, and wish every opportunity for anyone else, to have the chance to enjoy living a life, as it is very rare in our universe.
Abortion is murder. If a person is pro-choice, then their “choice” is to condone murder. If a woman chooses to have an abortion, then she is murdering her own child. There is no nuance. There is no ambiguity. A person is a person whether they breathe air or not, whether they can talk or not, whether they can open their eyes or not, or whether they can walk or not. Murder is murder.
Pro-choice=Pro-murder.
Putting aside the question of when life actually begins and when one is imbued with a soul, the fact remains that in the past thirty-five years there have been 50 MILLION abortions performed and very nearly all of them would have resulted in viable, live births of PEOPLE who would have gone on to live normal lives.
Very true, because I have yet to encounter someone who does not believe in the existence of life.
I'm glad to see that some logic has remained on FR. :-) But my point addresses the premise "there is no reason to oppose abortion other than the belief that it takes the life of a living human being" directly. Also, the author makes the jump from "a living human being" to "a baby."
Despite the technical correctness, I don't see how such a scenario is even remotely relevant to the situation in America, wherein abortion-on-demand has become a cornerstone on which we've built a sexually promiscuous culture which is undermining the family - and will ultimately bring us down.
I beliefve that many Americans do not believe that abortion takes the life of a "human being" or "a baby"...in fact, I know that many do not.
It's delusional to think that people with that mindset can be changed by ignoring the beliefs that they actually hold...and I believe that abortion must be defeated by changing hearts and minds, not just overriding public opinion via politics.
Agreed.
I simply used the theistic approach for illustration. Of course, one could simply substitute "reality" for God. That is, Mr. Crutcher can make all the claims he wants, but do we really know when "life" begins, in reality? Sure, we can go "by definition"...but then that just postpones the question of "what are we protecting...?"
And the atheistic approach also has its own sticking points... for example, do we have an obligation to save a person in danger of dying? Since so many conceptions don't result in implantation, if conception means life, does that obligate us to rescue these poor souls before their mother's body cruelly flushes them out?
This might sound crazy, but it's the natural extension of saying that life begins at conception and there's moral obligation to save a life in danger.
That is what we are up against, even though I have zero reason to doubt the logical soundness of the pro-life position (life as a substance with an nondegreed essential nature guiding development, the usual Aristotelian arguments). Emotion/pop-culture vs. logic. And that is often what we see when attempting to reason with pro-choice people.
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