Letters to the Editor
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the difference between a fetus and a baby
...is the intention of a woman to carry it to term.
And that is exactly what has so many folks, especially men, up in arms: that a woman could choose to have a baby-- or not-- when they are convinced that god alone can decide to make a baby-- just like in that virgin birth scenario they invented.
Surely-- simple, human, women cannot be trusted with such awe-inspiring responsibility. No, they must submit and allow men to set the rules in this, as in so many other areas of life, where they are performing so justly and competently, and have made the world so much better for so many.
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Trickier trick questions
The article, and several of the letters, posted "trick questions" about abortion, all featuring on the one side an unconscious (comatose patient, blastocyst) entity and on the other side a conscious one (fire fighter, 2 year old child).
So let's just skip the trick questions and ask the basic one: if you had to choose between the health of a conscious woman or older girl (who perhaps has other children, or is a brain surgeon, or is poor, or is drug addicted) and the life of a fetus (6 weeks old, say), what would you choose?
For the last 30 years, this country has said that the girl/woman's health wins (for many reasons -- privacy rights, rights to bodily integrity, etc.), but now in the state of Georgia you have politicians arguing that a fetus has the same legal standing as a woman (but not, presumably, as a man, since they would like to have notification laws, parental consent laws, etc.).
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Questions
I like that most people having a problem with the tables being turned on the conservative don't end up answering the question either, they just post a new question. Why? Because that's what conservatives do when they don't have an answer, they change the question to something they like better.
To "A Parent"
I'm not alive and reading this because "my mom chose not to kill me." I'm alive and reading this because my mom chose to have me. There's a big difference there.
How do I feel about that? I'm sorry the women in question didn't have full access to do so in all states. Lets take the fetus that you consider a baby out of the woman and see if it can survive. No? Then it really isn't a baby yet. Dr. Spock calling it one is a convenience of terminology, not a scientific definition. He's writing for people that are intending to have a child.
And lets consider the flip side of the problem that all the "Every Sperm is Sacred" crowd never wants to talk about. Abused children, unwanted children, abused women, abandoned children, mothers who can't take care of the children, people who might be fine parents some day, but not now and women horribly mutilated because of illegal abortions.
If you really want to reduce abortions, make birth control and sex ed universal. Support research into better birth control. You'll never end them all, human behavior and sex being what it is, but you can reduce them with real education and better social programs. The abstinance only nonsense is just that, nonsense.
As far as "debating cells in a petri dish", once the others on the "make all abortion illegal" side are willing to debate it, let me know. They aren't talking about 8 weeks, they're talking about ANY weeks. Just look at the earlier poster "A reader" who's arguing just that.
Here's the problem with most conservatives, including those making this type of argument. They have no ability to understand that not everyone is in the same situation they are. They look at themselves and think everyone in the world is exactly the same. They aren't.
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forget the two-year-old
How about a 20-year-old? Or a 40-year-old? It's a relevant question, the protestations of a "trick question scenario" notwithstanding.
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Life's sacredness not based on your emotions
Obviously most people would rescue the 2-year-old, including me, a pro-lifer, primarily because I know the 2-year-old can feel pain whereas the blastuli cannot. However, Grieve's question is sophomoric in the least, and bordering on demonic at the worst. The value of any human life has nothing to do with whether or not you agree it is valuable. It is inherently valuable, period. It does not matter if I like unpopular minorities or not -- I have no right to put them in camps, as did the Nazis. It does not matter whether my plantation needs forced labor to make it thrive -- enslaving people is wrong, period. It does not matter whether the unborn person can feel pain or not -- it is valuable simply because it exists. Basing your morality on emotional attachment is a foolish, indeed self-defeating game. Why should I save Grieve's life, ever, since it's clear he does not believe he should have been respected when he himself was a blastocyst? I must save his life because he simply IS, not because he's too dense to recognize the inherent worth of others. That's it.
I have an "unplanned" child, who has turned out to be the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Unlike my pro-choice friends, I did not agonize over the decision to kill her in the womb, despite her "unplanned" conception, because I never believed it was my right in the first place. When you start assigning yourself the right to take others' lives, the slope is endlessly slippery. Yes, sometimes we can put trenches in the slope -- i.e. the just war theory -- but as the modern world has shown again and again, from the execution of innocents on death row to the bombing of innocent civilians again and again by supposedly moral Western powers, humanity has no business deciding who has a right to live or die, and the moment humans take that right for themselves, they cede their own right to be defended from a similar fate, something Grieve, nor for that matter, the liberal and conservative death trippers among us, don't seem to grasp because, like Grieve, they're too busy smirking and too lazy to actually consider the frightful implications of their casual musings on murder. Why must the pro-death crowd continually plunger our nation into these tortorous moral debates? Why can't people simply realize that you can't keep killing people, whether they're just conceived or on the verge of natural death, without eventually opening the door to all kinds of horrors of which they never dreamed because they were too busy thinking of their own selfish agendas and not of how they're casual use of killing is slowly turning America into a Orwellian nightmare, where soon, everyone's life will be judged as "valuable" or not according to the standards of the death trippers and not the universal standards embodied by the Enlightenment geniuses who founded our great nation by proclaiming, in word, if not deed, the inherent equality of all?