IN WHICH DROSE INTERJECTS HIMSELF INTO THE ABORTION DISCUSSION, ALL THE
WHILE MUTTERING "UH, OH."
Greetings, MoQers!
I've been waiting for the abortion issue to come up, none too eagerly I
can tell you.
I'm going to dive right in. Hopefully not into the frying pan.
Abortion is a social level activity.
Like other great social level controversies, such as slavery, it is
largely an issue that is not amenable to intellectual solution.
Also like slavery, the issue is not one that can be resolved so long as
there are two morally opposed camps, each that defines the moral status
of the slave (or fetus) differently, at least on the social level.
Was the slave, usually of a different race or ethnic background or
economic class, really human, deserving of the considerations and
protections afforded other humans or was he nonhuman?
The same question must be asked to determine the humanity of the fetus.
To discover the morality of abortion, one must first establish the
humanity of the fetus.
As we were all, everyone of us, at one point in our development fetuses,
it is only logical that fetuses are human and should be afforded the
same considerations and protections of that status. If capital
punishment is immoral because of the wasting of sentient thought, how
much more immoral is aborting a fetus?
One of the interesting illogicisms that arise from the whole moral
morass of abortion is the legal concept of fetuscide. How is it morally
different to kill a fetus by negligence (as in a car wreck) or by
assaulting a pregnant woman (itself a crime) that results in death of a
fetus than it is for a doctor to deliberately kill an unborn fetus?
If that same doctor, who had already performed 8 abortions at work that
day, were to stop at a bar on his way home, have a couple too many
drinks and cause an accident resulting in death of a fetus, he would be
charged with fetuscide and likely go to jail.
Hmm.
Thanks for the ear,
drose
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