Doug1943
Platinum Member
- Jan 3, 2016
- 1,243
- 616
- 928
Morality comes from our sympathy/empathy with others. The less the 'other' is like us, the less 'moral' we act towards them.
With abortion, we are talking about a spectrum, with no clear dividing points.
So, a real hard-core anti-abortion person believes that once a sperm touches an egg, or perhaps a few minutes thereafter, that's a full-fledged human being.
A real hard-core pro-abortionist would say that a woman has the right to kill her baby, even if it's one hour away from coming out of the womb.
Most people are in between. The more that sperm-in-an-egg starts to resemble a person, the more reluctant we get to kill it. (Leaving aside Nazi types who would cooly kill any human they thought 'unworthy of life'.)
So most of us pick a time -- 16 weeks? -- and draw a line there. But of course it's arbitrary. And, if the baby is severely deformed, if the baby will clearly not live long outside the womb, we are less uneasy about killing it.
But ... it's like the death penalty. It may be necessary, or at least 'just' in some circumstances, but it undermines something we would like to make paramount in society: the sacredness of human life.
Americans are lucky to have a partial answer to this dilemma (as well as to the question of the death penalty): let the people in each state choose. If you don't like their choice, try to change their minds, and if that looks hopeless, move.
The more we separate into wholly 'Red' states and wholly 'Blue' states, the less conflict we will have over these issues.
With abortion, we are talking about a spectrum, with no clear dividing points.
So, a real hard-core anti-abortion person believes that once a sperm touches an egg, or perhaps a few minutes thereafter, that's a full-fledged human being.
A real hard-core pro-abortionist would say that a woman has the right to kill her baby, even if it's one hour away from coming out of the womb.
Most people are in between. The more that sperm-in-an-egg starts to resemble a person, the more reluctant we get to kill it. (Leaving aside Nazi types who would cooly kill any human they thought 'unworthy of life'.)
So most of us pick a time -- 16 weeks? -- and draw a line there. But of course it's arbitrary. And, if the baby is severely deformed, if the baby will clearly not live long outside the womb, we are less uneasy about killing it.
But ... it's like the death penalty. It may be necessary, or at least 'just' in some circumstances, but it undermines something we would like to make paramount in society: the sacredness of human life.
Americans are lucky to have a partial answer to this dilemma (as well as to the question of the death penalty): let the people in each state choose. If you don't like their choice, try to change their minds, and if that looks hopeless, move.
The more we separate into wholly 'Red' states and wholly 'Blue' states, the less conflict we will have over these issues.