Response to "Anonymous"

We had a comment from the other side that I wanted to respond to in a new post to give both her thoughts and my responses more visibility. Her comments are in quote marks and my responses are bolded...

"Interesting - only 2 comments. Perhaps the blog author is not publishing any comment that disagrees with his view."

Absolutely not. This blog just hasn't received very much attention yet - nor has the Personhood website as far as I know. These are both very new websites, so I'm hoping for more interaction, from both sides, in the future. I definitely welcome you to our blog and hope this won't be the last time you comment.

"The opposing view to anti-abortion is not pro-abortion. It is pro-choice, meaning if you don't want to have an abortion, you don't have to."

On the other hand, "anti-abortionists" prefer to be called "pro-life." My problem with the term "pro-choice" is I think it's easily misunderstood. Let me be clear: The issue that divides us is not that you are pro-choice and I am anti-choice. Truth is, I am vigorously "pro-choice" when it comes to women choosing a number of moral goods. I support a woman’s right to choose her own health care provider, to choose her own school, to choose her own husband, to choose her own job, to choose her own religion, and to choose her own career, to name a few. These are among the many choices that I fully support for the women of our country. But some choices are wrong, like killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way and cannot defend themselves. No, we shouldn’t be allowed to choose that.

So, again, the issue that separates you and I is not that you are pro-choice and I am anti-choice. The issue the divides us is just one question: What is the unborn?

Put simply, if the unborn is a human person, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the distinct human person, with his or her own inherent moral worth, as nothing more than a disposable instrument. Conversely, if the unborn are not human persons, killing them through elective abortion requires no more justification than having your tooth pulled.

"Why do you get to decide when life begins? What if my religious belief states that life begins when the organism is viable outside the womb, or at birth, or as the Catholics beleive at the quickening?"

I don't decide when life begins, and neither do religions. While it is true that many religions disagree on when a valuable person has begun, I don't that is important. A lack of consensus does not mean that there is a lack of truth. (for example, the consensus used to be that the Earth was flat.) I think when life biologically begins is a scientific question, and should be left to the scientists to declare – not religions. By the way, the scientific community has spoken on that issue. Pick up any embryology textbook and you will find they all say the same thing: life beings at fertilization. (or conception.) Even Dr. Alan Guttmacher, the former president of Planned Parenthood wrote in his book on fetal development that life begins at conception, and was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would not know this. “This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn’t part of the common knowledge.” (Source: Life in the Making, Viking Press, 1933.)

"Should I be able to make choices for you? What if I were the decider and said all people who cannot emotionally or financally support a child must terminate the pregancy? Is that any more intrusive or ridiculous than deciding the opposite for me?"

Yes, that would be more intrusive. If my science and philosophy is correct, that the unborn are living human persons, then it is less intrusive to decide that these persons have the right to life stated in the 14th amendment. Your example of forcing poor mom’s to kill their unborn babies would be devastatingly more intrusive.

“If life begins at conception, why don't we have funerals when people miscarry?”

First, the topic of miscarriage brings up an interesting question: When a woman has a miscarriage, does she not deliver a dead fetus? If so, then what was it before it was dead? Can you have a dead something that wasn’t previously alive before it died?

Secondly, it's true, a mother may not mourn a miscarriage the way she mourns a lost child. It also may be true that Jews do not feel the same sense of loss over six million abortions as they feel over the death of the same number of their kinsmen. But this by itself tells us nothing about the innate worth of either.

I’ve heard other “pro-choicers” argue that the fact that miscarriages happen prove that abortion is permissible, because after all, abortions happen naturally sometimes. (I know you didn’t specifically say this, I just wanted to bring it up while we’re talking about miscarriage.) The answer to this is that just because some things happen naturally does not necessarily mean they should be done on purpose. For example, the infant mortality rate is very high in some third-world countries, but that wouldn’t justify infanticide. Another example is that just because earthquakes devastate cities wouldn’t justify anyone in purposefully destroying a city.

Just some food for thought. Thanks for your comments and I hope to continue this discussion with you!