Pro-life vs Pro-Choice - revisiting the moral debate.

in #abortion4 years ago


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Most people who are pro-choice are "pro-choice, with caveats." For example, most pro-choice people I'm aware of are quite fine with abortions being illegal in the final trimester, except for the health of the mother. In most countries, pro-choice parties and candidates are actually more stringent, usually allowing elective abortions only before the 20th week.

I'm a bit curious, then, as to why the pro-life movement seems so very absolutist. The very admittance of the pro-choice movement to restrict abortion in any capacity shows that, for all the political rhetoric, there is an understanding that the stage of fetal development has to factor in to a woman's right to an abortion. You might say that this is because pro-lifers view every abortion as murder, and are thus unwilling to accept any half-measures, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. There's an odd level of the deontological, if/then logic present among pro-life groups that you just don't see among the pro-choice.

To reiterate: the vast majority of the pro-choice movement, despite having similar deontological rhetoric, doesn't support completely unrestricted abortion regardless of the stage of fetal development. Pro-lifers, however, can't consider themselves pro-life unless they support the total illegality of all abortion, for any reason, even in some cases rape or incest.

This is (a small) part of why I don't think the traditional pro-life view is very tenable. Its commitment to this kind of logic has very little persuasive power in the real world, and any inroads against abortion access that have been made by the pro-life has been invariably met with massive resistance (understandably so). Consider instead a pro-life ethic that, at the very least, was willing to echo the pro-choice movement's embrace of the practical, a tacit acknowledgement that there really are multiple factors at play even if we presuppose the total personhood of the human from conception. Preventing unwanted pregnancies to begin with, supporting improved adoption laws, increasing social safety nets, making birth control cheap and easy, while not abandoning the moral arguments against elective abortions (which I still find to be compelling), would find a natural home alongside aspects of the pro-choice movement that hope for abortions to be "safe, legal, and rare."

tl;dr, I really hope that Justin Amash clarifies his stance on things like abortion and immigration, even if he really doesn't have much power to do anything about the former.


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Abortions aren't rare. I don't think it's a common viewpoint of pro-choice community to want them to be rare either. Maybe it is something that is said just to say it, a sound bite or whatever.

If it was there wouldn't be 40 million abortions worldwide a year at this rate. 14 million so far in 2020 in 4 months.

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https://www.worldometers.info/

People who don't want kids shouldn't be fucking without condoms.

It would be awesome if in ten years the number of abortions per year was reduced by a meaningful amount through earlier birth control or education or reversing religious mind control or abstinence until higher levels of maturity

Some of the current methods of abortion sound barbaric and some of the historical motivation for abortions was more about surpressing races the proponents didn't like rather than for the good of the mother.

The idea that we humans could be killing the next inventor of life changing medicine or technology that allows humans be able to colonize the sun (joking but you get my point) makes me sad. And obviously the lack of choice for the unborn.

Am I understanding your argument to be that because pro-choicers seem to agree in part with pro-lifers, pro-lifers should reciprocate?

Actually, even though I consider myself to be a pro-lifer, a lot of pro-lifers have sniped at me for identifying myself as one. I don't like abortion, and I have never liked abortion. People need to stop using abortion as a form of birth control. However, at the same time, I am realistic to the fact that overturning Roe vs. Wade would be a major disaster here in the United States of America, because then embryonic stem cell research would stand the chance of being outlawed; and we need embryonic stem cell research to cure major diseases and make major medical breakthroughs. I cannot speak for what goes on in other nations, but I am sure that there are individuals like me in other nations who also feel that the advancement of medical science should go undisturbed.

we need embryonic stem cell research to cure major diseases and make major medical breakthroughs.

I'm pretty sure that umbilical stem cells have basically taken over as the primary source for stem cell research.

I'm glad that you mentioned about it. I will research it to find out how it works. Thanks. :-)