MagusYanam wrote:Yeah, see, this is exactly why I don't like discussing abortion much. The discussion in the wider society has gotten so polarised that someone with views like mine is daemonised from one side as a baby-killer and from the other as a tyrannical misogynist who sees women as 'incubators', or as an 'absolutist'.
Amen, brother.
MagusYanam wrote:To start with, kayky, the government interferes in all our lives to some extent regarding what our responsibilities are with regard our own bodies (for example, wearing seat belts, not driving drunk and not smoking in certain places), and I generally don't take issue with any of those. The analogy in this case is limited because I don't think another person's life is at stake in abortion beside's the mother's - rather something else of moral weight is (as per virtue ethics).
Because I don't think abortion is murder, I don't think the government
can or
should ban it, but they should do everything else in their power to discourage it, as in the
95-10 plan and the PWSA.
Let me throw in another example. I offer this because, while I do not consider abortion, at least in the first trimester, to be murder, I do consider it to be violence. As such, I tend to think of it as not a good thing, but sometimes necessary or at least as something we should allow in some circumstances.
What I think is often missing in the discussion is an idea of "respect for the natural world." For example, if one views nature as of value for its own sake, and not what it "can do for me," then we tend to view the cutting down of trees or forests, the killing of animals, etc., as negative. We view it more negatively if we perceive that the action is done casually, or for spurious reasons, or without respect for the thing being destroyed, or without acknowledgment of the instrinsic value of the thing being destroyed.
Citizens obviously have a wide diversity of views on this, but our laws at least sometimes take such notions into account in, for example, laws requiring the humane treatment of animals, the preservation of natural habitats, the establishment of parks and wildlife refuges, etc.
Now, I would certainly not say that all those who are pro-choice or perform or have abortions are without such feelings of respect for the natural world as represented by a fetus, but I do sometimes feel like there is a lack of such respect on the part of some in the pro-choice community. When someone likens a fetus to a "kidnapper of a woman's body" for example or states there opinion that abortion is nothing more than "safe and effective birth control."
Such feelings and opinions on my part are, of course, rather subjective and probably not helpful in crafting appropriate regulations or policy on abortion. BUt I do think they are in play with respect to how many people feel about abortion, as reflected for example in some of the poll results in the link provided by Magus on the 95-10 initiative.
It is certainly much easier to look at a very specific example and decide for ourselves whether we think an abortion in this circumstance is "justified" or not than to create any kind of blanket rule that we would be comfortable implementing across the board.
" . . . the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart . . . ." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
What about a soldier who has a limb or 2 shot off? Is he not a "full" human being? Or a little girl born with 4 toes instead of 5? Or perhaps a little child who hasn't yet grown into an adult? Is today's world going to mimic the Nazi's who decided who should live and who should die? Who's genetically or biologically superior and inferior? 
A fertilized egg has all the ingredients of a unique, separate human being. And all human beings are in different stages of development. So there is never any justification for killing any human being who has committed no crime, least of all unborn babies who are the most helpless and innocent of all human beings. 
