I have a question: What do you want to happen in regard to the abortion LAWS? I assume you want to see a country and world in which abortion doesn’t happen at all, but how do you propose to work toward that ideal?
I believe the government and its laws should not intrude upon a woman’s body until the fetus is viable (the last trimester). That does not mean I think abortion is good or desirable. But I do not want the government telling women who are two, three or four months pregnant that they must, under penalty of prison, carry a pregnancy to term.
For example, if a 45-year old learns she is carrying a fetus with chromosal deformities, it is no business of the state or federal government if she decides to terminate the pregnancy.
The government should stay out of this issue unless there is another viable life at stake.
It’s the abortionist who would be imprisoned, not the woman. The idea that women would be imprisoned is a leftist fairy tale.
Also, viability is determined by technology and even social factors, not an inherent biological status. Is a newborn viable? After all, he/she can’t take care of him/herself. Within the womb, viability today is earlier in pregnancy than it once was. Babies haven’t changed, but technology has.
Viability is the point at which the baby can survive outside the womb, not the point at which the baby comes to life. The baby is alive and a unique individual from conception. There once was a concept called “quickening”, which meant enlivenment by a spirit. It was believed that the unborn baby wasn’t alive until a ghost entered into him/her. This occurred when the mother felt the baby’s first kick. The quickening idea was just superstition from an earlier era where people were ignorant of pre-natal life, DNA, and so forth, but this superstition survives to this day when people act as if viability is the point at which the unborn come to life. It’s really nothing of the sort. Life cannot spring from its absence. A new human life is created when live genetic material from two pre-existing humans merge at conception.
Actually, the government does have business in this, just as they have an interest in protecting life outside the womb. As far as your example of the 45 year old woman, if we start destroying life because of chromosome abnormalities, we go down a slippery slope, which we have already started on. Today it’s chromosome abnormalities, tomorrow it’s babies with crooked feet that a woman wanting an excuse to kill her baby could say was because of defective genetics. And what if these abnormalities aren’t discovered until after the baby is born? Does she have a right to kill the child then? And how does she do it? Suffocation, starvation, lethal injection? What would be acceptable to you? I usually don’t give much creedence to arguing points with those who refer to the babies as fetuses, because it speaks volumes about what side of the fence you’re on, but I made an exception in this case.
Interesting how, among abortion rights supporters, there are often those who rationalize abortion by making statements like those above. By asserting that a woman's choice to abort is ultimately a matter "between her and her God" or something like that. And thereby avoid confronting the meaning of the very thing they support, e.g., the arbitrary maiming to death of a human being in the womb. It's a good cop-out. As if the fetus is an entity on the order of a tapeworm that just suddenly, almost *magically*, transforms into a person upon completely leaving the mother's body (but not before "tak[ing] his first breath," of course) and not one nanosecond before. It's a little bit ironic, then, that pro-lifers are the ones who are attacked for religious mysticism and irrationality.
And, furthermore, your beliefs (and mine) about the beginning of human life are at core theological. Thus state and federal governments should keep their clumsy paws off this personal, ultimately religious issue.
Here are some atheists who beg to differ.
I denounce abortion, generally speaking, in moral terms.
Why? Is it because you recognize that abortion entails putting an innocent unborn child to death, and you recognize that arbitrarily killing an innocent human being is morally reprehensible? If so, then your position lacks integrity. A position of "It is morally reprehensible to arbitrarily put an unborn child to death, but a woman's choice to do so is a personal, ultimately religious issue" lacks integrity.
I’m not a pro-abortionist...
Kind of funny how those who call themselves "pro-choice" like to distance themselves from the very thing they support by asserting that they are pro-choice and not--oh, absolutely not!--pro-abortion. Please. You are pro-abortion. The dictionary definition of "pro-" is "supporting" or "in favor of." When you support the right to choose abortion, you give your blessing to a cause that exists specifically to accommodate abortion, you support abortion; that is, you are pro-abortion. It doesn't matter that you don't support *forced* abortion (although coerced abortion in "pro-choice" guise happens much more often than you would like to think or admit [classic example]); by supporting the right to choose abortion, you satisfy the minimum requirements for qualifying as pro-abortion.
There are people who support the legalization of marijuana and call themselves pro-marijuana--but it's understood that they are calling for the right to choose to smoke marijuana, not for forcing everyone to be a pothead. There are those who advocate gay rights and call themselves pro-GLBT (gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered)--but it's understood that they are calling for the right to choose to be openly GLBT without having to suffer legal discrimination, not for forcing everyone to be GLBT. It seems that only abortion rights supporters refuse to identify themselves with the very thing they support, refuse to name what it is exactly that distinguishes them from pro-lifers. You may call yourself "pro-choice-and-not-pro-abortion" all you like, but it's the "pro-choice" perspective that provides for the legally sanctioned killing of 1.3 million unborn human beings at any and all stages of pregnancy annually in the U.S. alone.
When somebody declares that they are "pro-choice," you know right away that it's abortion they are talking about. I am in favor of school choice for parents. I am in favor of the choice to marry someone of the same sex. I am in favor of the choice to own a gun. I am in favor of the choice to prostitute oneself. I am in favor of the choice to smoke a joint. But because I am against abortion, I am instantly labeled as "anti-choice." Anti-abortion = anti-choice, because pro-choice = pro-abortion. "Choice," tragically, has become a euphemism for one thing and one thing only: abortion.