Letters to the Editor
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A different Hypothetical
Here's a different question which is perhaps less emotionally charged:
If the pro-life side actually believes that a fetus is a life the same as a living child, then why has the SD lawstipulated only a five year prison sentence for doctors who perform abortions and nothing for the mother or other accomplices (like who ever drove her to the clinic)?
Does the pre-meditated "murder" of a "child" warrant only a five year sentence?
If a mother and father hired a hitman to smother their week old baby, would the only criminal sanction be a five year jail sentence for the hitman and nothing for the parents?
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He can't answer...
Your logic in the question you pose to Andrew Wilkow is airtight. If right to lifers agree that life begins at conception, it supposes that there is no difference between born and unborn children.
Here's another question for him.
You are on a jury charging a man with negligent homicide because he saved the petri dish and let the child die. How would you vote? Guilty or not. The accused, unlike Wilkow stands behind his beliefs and truly feels that he saved the five lives by sacrificing one.
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An Interesting Follow-up Question
Someone showed me a video recently of a very interesting "interview". Someone asked a bunch of people at an anti-abortion rally two questions (and in a fairly open, non-threatening manner, IMO): (1) Do you think abortion should be illegal?, and (2) If so, what should the penalty be for women who have abortions?
Of course, in this group, everyone answered "illegal", but no one in the taped interview was willing to answer (2). Now, a couple of people were just evasive, saying things like "I'm not a lawyer". Shockingly, though, many flat out admitted that they had never thought about it. They were sure enough about illegalization to be holding pictures of aborted fetuses in a parking lot and shouting at passers-by, but they had no idea what the criminal penalty should be. One woman even said "it's between that woman and God". If it's between the woman making the choice and God, why does it have to be illegal? The interviewer flat out asked as much, and she had no answer.
I'd really like to see NARAL or another group ask this question to pro-life members of Congress. I think most of them are smart enough to have thought about it, but it would put them in a very uncomfortable position, and it's a fair and important question. Ultimately, it's also the nature of my personal pro-choice stance. I can understand those who sincerely, morally believe abortion is wrong, but I think many of them fail to consider the moral consequences of illegalization.
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Ethics Quiz
While I strongly disagree with Wilkow's politics, and the South Dakota law, I do agree with him that this question is nothing but a "gotcha". As any ethics class will teach you, it is easy to construct hypothetical questions that reveal the flaws in anyone's ethical behavior.
(Would you leave a man bleeding by the side of the road rather than ruin your car's upholstery? Of course not? Then how can you reupholster your car, when you could give the money to charity?)
To take your school bus example, suppose one side has an innocent child, and the other has a happy couple in their 60's. Which do you save? Isn't either choice the "wrong" choice?
There are logical inconsistencies in the "pro-life" position on abortion. But there are at least as many in the pro-choice position. Where is that magical second at which a fetus goes from a collection of cells to an infant?
I am in favor of abortion rights, but pretending that our position is more "logical" than the other side's is not a winning argument.
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The fallacy of life begins at conception
These hypotheticals all have one purpose, to show that those who claim to believe that life begins at conception do not really believe it. I like to challenge them on birthdays vs conception days for the same reason. They don't walk their own talk. They are like prohibitionists with their own stash of bootleg rum, or drug users supporting the war on (some) drugs, or closeted gays supporting homophobic laws.
They don't answer because there is no answer consistent with what they claim to believe.
I sometimes wonder how these people can live with themselves, saying one thing and acting otherwise. They have long since ceased to think.
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Well, my question remains- is a baby a baby?
We could all have hypothetical debates about petri dishes and the like, but so many posts talk about unborn people like they were garbage. A "fetus" is according to dictionary.com is "the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo."
So, the day before the baby is born, it's a fetus. The day after it's born, it's a baby.
Is anyone seriously of the opinion that the mere fact that the baby is one day shy of being born it's not deserving of love, respect and the right to life?
Please. Certainly we could debate about what a few cells in a petri dish deserve, or even a tiny embryo. But a fetus? That's just another term for an unborn child.
An unborn child isn't trash, though yes, because it resides in the mother, the mother has the right to rip it out and throw it away.
How sad a state of affairs. On the one hand, you have a president ready to throw the lives of young men and women away in Iraq, and on the other hand, you have millions of mothers throwing away the lives of their kids before they are even born.
And this little baby- this little unborn baby- I don't even have the right to CARE about, because I'm a man?
Wow. Whatever happened to the idea of mothering? Whatever hapened to the idea of respecting life.
Look, this isn't a far-right issue. Even if you pray to Buddha or the Yellow Pages, doesn't a life, a little baby deserve life?
'Cuase that's what a fetus is. It's not trash. It's a baby. Look it up.