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Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
"Inconvenience"? You expect me to have a serious conversation with you when you characterize pregnancy and birth in that way? It's your side that says it's a magical process in which a fetus gets a soul when sperm meets egg. But if you think the process of pregnancy and birth is merely an inconvenience to the woman who happens to provide the uterus, you're in for a surprise. I've half a mind to go to Walnut Creek and impregnate your wife.
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It is certainly more than an inconvenience, but 9 months of pregnancy (even when the pregnancy sex is so-so, nme) is also not, in most cases, quite on the level of a life and death undertaking. Probably comparable in invasiveness in a man's life to being drafted for military service.
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If you think there is any coherent non-religious conservative theory against abortion, you're nuts. It's all spiritual.
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Not sure I'd go this far. Would you say there is no non-religious theory (I'll ignore the conservative part for now) for opposition to the death penalty? You can have ethics without religion.
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Characterizing it as "murder" also slants the issue. But we can't help it --- it's the core of the question. ... There is little doubt that an embryo and a fetus are human. What else could they be?
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a. Agreed on murder.
b. Describe what makes us human and I'll tell you whether they are human. Is it DNA? Or the ability to engage in some combination of humanoid appearance, rational thought, use of opposable thumb, and thirty five other major and several thousand minor characteristics? Because, just off-hand, certain great apes would bear more of a similarity to a new-born child than will an embryo. I simply am not at this point convinced that an embryo is indeed human. An eight month old fetus, on the other hand, I have no doubts about. I don't have answers everywhere in between. And someone telling me from on high that the Church has determined that life begins at conception doesn't answer all my questions.
All of this leads me to the position that it is a question of balancing inconsistent rights (which Roe got right) and desires (which Roe may have overstated), but I'm not at all comfortable with where the balance has landed.
