First of all, I am male and so I know that for this topic, a lot of people, mostly women, are going to discount or disregard my view purely based on the fact of my gender. So I am going to approach this discussion differently. I do not aim to offend anyone so please, resist the urge to come to this topic with an emotional chip on your shoulder. Let us reason this out and submit to superior reason or logic.
"Human life begins at conception/fertilization."
The question of when life begins is not even necessarily a philosophical or a theological one. Rather it can be easily answered with elementary biology (i.e science). There is really no dispute scientifically as to the fact that human biological life begins at the moment of conception - and if left undisturbed would develop into an adult.
It seems the bitter debate therefore, is NOT really on whether human life begins at conception (because it does), but on when after conception can we assign person-hood. This is where it gets murky and begins to invite all sorts of philosophical debates. Some would say the living embryo only becomes a person as soon as a heartbeat is detected, some would say as soon as a brain has formed, others would say only when the fetus is developed enough to be able to survive outside the womb. But I hope you can see that so far, the question of when the life actually began remains pretty much universally agreed upon because it is not opinion but empirical fact.
Given this widely accepted fact, can someone respectfully and rationally explain to me why abortion is not murder (the taking of human life) even if the laws of a land permits it? I am open to be persuaded by reason or facts that I might not have given deeper or finer thought. Let's keep it civil and more importantly informative.
Any takers?
It is interesting that from the get-go, you had to identify your gender and issue a disclaimer. It is as though you anticipate that the females would want to promptly silence you because of that. I don't know why many women believe men cannot have emotional attachments to the unborn children they helped conceive, and the mere fact that they do not bear the "physical burden" of carrying children in their non-existent wombs is enough to render their opinions irrelevant when it comes to the discussion of abortion. But a mother's desire to keep or be rid of a child is just that...an emotional attachment or detachment from the offspring. I do believe that abortion is murder, on theological, philosophical, and scientific grounds.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of person-hood has become subjective for pro-abortionists, for the reason that it serves as a means of achieving cognitive dissonance to be able to live with the inconsistency of their views (the baby is a person and has value only when the mother wants "it"). In order to bolster their point, some have insisted that fetuses are just clumps of cells(but we as adults are also just clumps of cells, with our constitution changing completely over periods of time), and with an assumption that person-hood only becomes a reality when the baby has exited the womb. I recently engaged some pro-abortionist protesters on a Canadian college campus on the issue(protesting at campaigns of the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform), and they seemed to all agree to this as "common knowledge" when I talked to them. However, they were unable to clearly define what person-hood meant for them. Sometimes, they implied that person-hood was synonymous with sentience, to which I queried if animals could be murdered seeing that they were also sentient beings, and the conversation quickly changed to issues of mothers having to live with children borne out of rape incidents.
In all, it became clear that the only justification they could come up with for abortion was that of "convenience for the mother". Almost all of them believed having unwanted children could hinder their social and economic progress, and based on that, it becomes an issue of a "right" for them to be able to choose. Little thought or consideration was ever given to the basic individual right of the unborn child to live, nor for the prospective father if he wished to continue being one, and neither was there consideration for the option of adoption should the would-be mother feel the financial or social strain of living her life. That idea, they said, would cause her "emotional distress" knowing that her offspring continues to live in the custody of other parents elsewhere with whom she would never be able to reconnect as she advances with age and social prestige. In other words, if she doesn't want to have the child, no one should be able to have that child either, and that means, the cessation of "its" existence is the only option for her to be able to live with herself and be a fully functional human being having made that decision. That is why I consider pro-abortionist groups the greatest anomaly when it comes to defending and promoting civil rights, believing that to uplift the rights of women to choose, the rights of others must be trodden upon. This is the reason I consider abortion morally reprehensible and in fact, criminal.
Bravo Ryu:
ReplyDeleteYou have spoken very well and with every measure of civilized restraint and dignity. That is the sort of tone that helps move this kind of discussion along productively and I am happy that you have done so. Needless to say, I am completely in agreement.
Now, lest anyone reading this comes away with the feeling that this is just another classic case of men trying to impose their wishes on women, or trying to restrict the personal freedoms of women, it is useful to remember that there are equally millions of women all over the world who are similarly persuaded and perhaps even more stringently anti-abortionist than most men are. In any case, if you want to present the opposing view, do so with every bit of civility, and I promise that you will be accorded the same careful civility in the responses you will get.
Abortion stats are actually horrifying, and it is time for men and women of goodwill to speak up for the rights of the unborn.