Abortion - What's YOUR stand?

[Foxfyre]

Whether the issue is that of 'rights' or of 'moral imperative', there is no easy answer to the issue of abortion.

Ask any five people at random when life begins and you're likely to get answers from 'the moment the body creates the egg or sperm' to 'the moment of conception' to 'the moment the fertilized egg attaches to the wall of the womb and begins to devide' to 'the first detectable brain waves or heart beat' to 'the moment that the fetus becomes viable in the womb' to 'the moment after birth'.

Does the newborn infant have rights? Why does s/he have rights that s/he did not have 1 minute earlier before s/he emerged from the birth canal? Okay, so maybe s/he should have some rights before emerging from the birth canal but what rights? How many? And how long before emerging from the birth canal do any such rights exist? In a caeserean birth two to four weeks before the natural delivery, is that not a baby--a human being--until it grows to full term outside the womb? How far do you go back to determine when a life begins? Any mother who has given birth, especially to more than one child, knows that her developing infant has life, probably a name, certainly a temperament or personality that sometimes is discerned before the actual birth. No woman who becomes pregnant wanting that child ever thinks of it as expecting a zygote or embryo or fetus. She is expecting a baby, and looks forward to that person entering the world.

And this is all factored into the mix of both rights and moral judgment. And it can't be neatly defined on either side as absolute since our values and belief systems are all tangled up in it.

But it should all be fair game for debate.

 

[jillian]

But it should all be fair game for debate.

It's not the debate that's the problem. Discussing it as an ethics/religion issue is certainly interesting.

But it does prove why it shouldn't be a political issue.

 

[Foxfyre]

It's not the debate that's the problem. Discussing it as an ethics/religion issue is certainly interesting.

But it does prove why it shouldn't be a political issue.

I did not approach it from a religious perspective at all in this discussion; however it would be absurd to think that religion is not one of several components that shape our collective beliefs, values, and sense of morality. But whatever guides our personal sense of right and wrong, when it comes to monitoring what doctors are and are not allowed to do and/or what rights a person has or should have, it does become a political issue and therefore does belong in the national debate about what laws we would consider acceptable to regulate it. Part of that debate is should it be a federal, state, or local decision? Whether or not we are dealing with human rights would determine that in most cases.

I personally take strong exception to those who claim moral superiority based on religious beliefs and would presume to dictate their morality to all others as well as those who dismiss any consideration of an unborn life in favor of whatever the mother wants as a civil right. There has to be room for both points of view in the national debate.