/me breaths in and breaths out
Ok fellas. See if you can keep up.
The "mainstream argument" about abortion today as I see it is as follows:
Proponents of abortion say that abortion is not muder, thus it is completely fine.
Anti-abortionists say that abortion is muder as the fetus is just as human as you and me, and so abortion is horrible in any situation.
Here is my take on that argument:
It's a fool's argument. It's a trap. I will not have a position on it. Why is that?
This argument comes down to the question of "What is person hood?" This question has never been and probably will never be answered. It is a quasi scientific, quasi metaphysical question with an answer to which will never be found in either topic. We will never draw a definitive line between what is a person and what is not.
Another reason why this is a fool's argument is because it is only one aspect of a very complicated issue. The ends of this argument attempts to do one thing, and one thing only; to equate abortion with murder, thus abortion is as unethical as murder.
I do not think that this is the only way we can find abortion to be ethical or not.
I will present my own argument:
When debating whether abortion is ethical or not, we need not argue about when life begins; but the process by which life comes about; and how abortion interferes with said process.
That is to say, abortion ceases the fetus' process to become. Murder ceases the human's being.
Allow me to define my terms.
A sperm in itself is in the process of being a sperm. Over its existence it will continue to be a sperm, unchanged, not becoming something else. This is overlooked when proponents of abortion talk rhetoric such as "Are you gonna say masturbation is as bad as abortion?" A sperm will not become a human being. A sperm will not gain person hood if left to its natural processes. When you kill sperm, you are killing sperm, because in itself, it is only being.
A fertilized egg, or fetus in itself is in the process of becoming a person. If left to its natural processes, it will become a baby, and then a person. A fetus is in the process of becoming. When you perform abortion on a fetus, you are ending the process to become whatever the fetus is becoming, namely a human. When you commit abortion, you are then infringing on the right to become. I will touch upon becoming later again, and how important the right to become is as well.
A human in itself is in the process of being a human, a person. When you muder a person, you kill that person. The person is not becoming something in that a fetus is becoming a person. When you kill a person, then you are infringing on the right to life.
Ok, so those rights I mentioned:
In America, and through our common western ethics, particularly the
Nicomachean Ethics presented by Aristotle, our right to life is held in extreme regard. That right to life is derived from the right to become. One cannot live without becoming into a living being, as a fetus is.
We can now reasonably infer that the right to become is, or atleast almost as, important as the right to life.
Now, why is abortion legal? Our legality of abortion shows us, who have done such an analysis of our natural human rights, see that our right to become has been infringed on. What is the right on the other side of the argument? Sometimes, it is the mother's right to life. In cases like that, I think the cease of the right to become is justifiable. In other cases like that of rape, it is the trauma of the mother that should come into account. In cases like that, I suggest that a case by case study should be done. We cannot make such a broad law about that. In cases of simple "I'm too young to have a baby" and "It was an accident" situations, we see that the fetus' right to become is infringed upon by the right of convenience. We see that we put the apparent, near sighted, immediate good of convenience in front of a right as simple, as important, as universal, and as human as the right to become. We cannot afford to think this way, and I will challenge anyone to tell me otherwise.
Originally Posted by
MegaCash
Contradiction, perhaps? :3
Mind bolding where I implied "get it because you can"? Unless you mean "keep the baby because you can" and not referring to the abortion. Who ever said the most fulfilling things in life are supposed to always be fun? Yea, there are enough people in this world but I'm pretty sure the some of the most bitter of the people in this world could find some sort of joy in watching their spawn grow up and progress through his/her's life
That isn't what he said. Paraphrasing, he said that people can say "I don't want to have the baby, so I will get an abortion because I can."
I don't quite understand your stance here. Are you supporting or opposing abortion? Your first post implies that you support it, but your recent implies that you oppose it.
I'm sorry, but you can't oppose abortion by telling the would-be parents that it will be fulfilling in the long run.
Originally Posted by
Blood4eva
+ why go thru all that pain and then hand it over when u can just get rid of it before then
Because that thing you are giving birth to is going to grow up to be a person like you, while the fetus you abort won't.
Last edited by Ray; Mar 15, 2012 at 04:46 PM.