Abortion is Murder: Always, Sometimes, or Never?
Eric Zorn and Jill Stanek in a Battle Royale: Zorn challenges Stanek to explain why, if abortion is murder, pregnant women who have abortions aren't guilty of a capital crime and should not be prosecuted.
Zorn suggests the debate may go away the day that scientists design an artificial uterus capable of bringing all of the unwanted frozen and in vivo embryos into the world.
I say, why wait? If anti-choice women like Stanek would stop flapping their gums and offer up their own uteruses to these frozen embryos just yearning to be born, just think of all the innocent lives they could save.
So come on, Jill, put your uterus where your mouth is. If life begins at conception, shouldn't adoption?
Go join the debate, or start your own thread here.
24 comments:
Humphy's Liberal mantra was
It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped
I think Jill's concerned about those at the dawn of life.
It's a deeper kind of liberalism then we see today.
I'd rather be anti-choice than pro-death YDD.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm for reducing the number of abortions too. I just don't think you get there by lying to kids in sex education classes and restricting access to birth control for teenagers and adults.
Want to be "pro-life", "pro-family" and "pro-child"? Expand the family and medical leave act to include everybody, so women don't have to worry about losing their jobs when they get pregnant. And make quality child care available and affordable in every community so women can return to work after their pregnancy and support their kids. Make health care universal from 0-18, and fully fund our public schools so those kids have a chance at a better life.
And, I issue the same challenge to you that I issue to Stanek and every other so-called "pro-life" American. Put your money where your mouth is and adopt a child in need of a home. Jesus had a pretty harsh view about people who only talk a good game.
YDD,
You have no idea what any of us have done within our lives.
Jesus best left out of the debate too.
Plenty of non Christians opposed to abortion as birth control.
b
YDD, come pick me up and we'll adopt a child together.
YDD: Sorry, but your argument only makes sense if you operate from a premise that your opponents are being intellectually honest. And I'm afraid I don't see any support for that premise.
Bill: "You have no idea what any of us have done within our lives" is one of the best inadvertant pro-choice arguments I have ever read.
And the fact remains, if anti-choice Christian women really believe that abortion is the killing of an actual human being, YDD is right -- they are morally compelled to "offer up their own uteruses to these frozen embryos just yearning to be born." But only if they actually believe that.
But it seems that their words say they believe it and their actions say something else.
Bill: "You have no idea what any of us have done within our lives" is one of the best inadvertant pro-choice arguments I have ever read.
How so? We're talking public policy here.
For some reason, liberals on this blog always turn a policy debate on abortion or same sex marriage into a debate about someone's personal life.
I don't know why it always takes that turn... YDD nor you Austin have any idea what's happened in my life (or most others here) with respect to children, abortion, sexuality... why you go from policy to the personal is strange...
YDDem would've told slavery abolitionists to put up or shut up by sponsoring freedmen in their homes. Unless the abolitionists were willing to do that, they would have no right to talk either. Of course Dems of that era (such as Stephen Douglas) were pro-choice on slavery.
At lease I now know where YDD is coming from.
He is for a totally socialist society. Let the government take care of us from the cradle to the grave because we all know they can do better for us than we can for ourselves. Let's not hold anyone accountable for their actions. Everyone's a 'victim'.
Well the pro-death err I mean pro-choice people do have a choice. They can choose to either have a child or not have sex unless using birth control. The argument that birth control is not readily available ignores the fact that every health department (county and city) in the State of Illinois will dispense birth control options with no questions asked.
As far as adoption goes there are many kind people out there that are involved in the adoption process and do 'put up' as YDD challenged.
YDD needs to realize there are many alternatives to always running to the government to provide a solution. Socialist programs as he always espouses work in the short term but eventually collapse under their own weight bringing down the very governments that originally provided them. And there are many answers to unwanted pregnancies and preventing them in the first place rather than killing the unborn babies but I guess that takes more thought and effort than the pro-death crowd wants to exhibit.
This is definately an interesting debate. But all that I can think about is the comment that Dickem Daley said when refering to Barack Obama, "He had broad support from a variety of people; black, white, pro-life, anti-life." Classic Daley...
Daley voted pro-life when he was a Senator. He was officially pro-life when he was State's Attorney.
He changed in 1989 when he ran for Mayor. Talking with people around him, he changed because one cannot be pro-life and be respected or raise money in liberal and Jewish (Rahm Emmanuel was Daleys fundraiser) fundraising circles.
John Daley was pro-life as a State Rep, State Senator, and Cook County Commissioner. Senator Jeremiah Joyce and Senator Tim Degnan were both staunchly pro-life.
But they are all focused on making lots of money now, and not the reflexive cultural conservativism at least on social issues of their Catholic heritage.
"For some reason, liberals on this blog always turn a policy debate on abortion or same sex marriage into a debate about someone's personal life."
Bill, these issues are all about someones personal life. You, Jill, and the government should not interfere.
HHH said it was the moral test of how Gov treated those at the dawn of life.
Jill says that dawn starts with conception and the unborn has a right to life which the government should protect... especially protect because the unborn defenseless.
I'm not a 100% with Jill S. by the way, but she takes the morally unambigous position that life starts at conception.
Those who disagree with her are stuck with the morally ambigous region of the clash of rights between the mother and the unborn child. The mother's right to govern her body and the unborn's right to birth and life.
I'm more in that murky area, but I find the kind of arguments YDD very much putting off.
Either way, the law has to take a position. Read the testimony on the born-alive act to see how poorly written law left healthcare providers within inches/seconds of performing legal abortions or murdering new borns.
The law has to take a position here and can't just shuck it off as a libertarian issue.
Bill-
Those who disagree with her are stuck with the morally ambigous region of the clash of rights between the mother and the unborn child. The mother's right to govern her body and the unborn's right to birth and life.
I think the 'ambiguity' is only projected there by others. For many abortion-proponents, viability is the key word. If the fetus can survive without the mother by whatever means then at that point it should not be killed but instead transferred.
I think YDD said it but it could have been someone else. This issue will never really go away until the advent of artificial wombs capable of sustaining and growing foeti through to birth. Of course, the question then will be whose responsibility is it to raise said children if there are not enough adoptive parents willing to take these 'orphans'.
Bill,
Do you acknowledge the lack of morality of Stanek?
Do you find it moral to oppose public funding for birth control?
Do you find it moral to oppose public funding for pre-natal care?
When we say that government has no role in funding pre-natal care, aren't we saying that we don't believe that the government should protect that fetus?
How about health care for children? How can you claim to have any sort of moral stand and then oppose public funding for health care for children?
How can you claim to have any sort of moral stand and then oppose public funding for health care for children?
Easy, I don't claim a moral stand.
I agree with Scalia when he says Judges no better then anyone else in making moral judgements. They have no business doing so.
I'm certainly no better then anyone else.
I do agree with Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence (not the Constitution: a far more conservative document) when he wrote,
We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
For the law to protect the self-evident-right-to-life, the law needs to know when life begins.
If it begins at conception, then abortion is confilict between the unborn's right to life, and the mothers right to control her body.
It's a clash of rights. In all honesty, I don't have the moral answer here. You won't find me telling anyone who argues the woman's right to control they're immoral.
I do grow more and more disturbed by the pro Choice's tone of voice in the arguement. I callousness I hear towards the sanctity-of-life. I believe life is sacred, even if I doubt God, or believe at times justice requires we take life.
If you think that life is paramount and outweighs any right a woman has to control her body, especially an innoncent life --as only an unborn child can be-- then you have a pretty easy case of it.
It's certainly a decision I would but before voters to decide.
I would never try and make a moral case for any public policy such as health care, birth control...
I'm with Niebuhr hear with his book Moral Man and Immoral Society. I find the Social Gospel a poor arguement to correct political ills or injustices.
Here is some commentary on Niebuhr,
An outspoken progressive and reformer from the start, Niebuhr was nonetheless always unhappy with the sentimentality and pacifism that pervaded the social program of liberal Christianity-especially mainline Protestantism-which (to oversimplify somewhat) sought to correct political injustices mainly through appeals to reason and conscience. In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr broke decisively with this "social gospel" outlook, insisting that power is the principal ingredient in arbitrating the competing claims of nations, races, and social classes. According to Niebuhr, conflict and tension are permanent features of history. While social improvement is possible, the justice of this world is born in strife and is always provisional, fragmentary, and insecure.
Bill,
First, how can law protect life when it does not require that the mother receive adequate pre-natal care? Do you really think that if mother fails to receive that care, that there is a reasonable chance for a healthy and successful pregnancy?
Second: Let me get this right. When you stay Stanek is "morally unambiguous" you are NOT saying "morally correct"?
Maybe we agree. I find her to be morally unambiguous also. Of course, I find her to be morally reprehensible. I believe that our government has a role to make sure that women receive adequate pre-natal care and that children receive adequate health care. Stanek disagrees with me on those issues.
Ultimately, I am not clear on your last post.
Do you view Ms. Stanek as taking a moral position or not?
I agree that the Roe v Wade was a bad decision as the constitution can only be reasonably inferred to guarantee an abortion when a woman's health or life were at stake or when she was raped (as making abortion illegal in these cases is clearly taking one's life or liberty without due process of law). Other abortion cases do deal with where the balance of rights lays between the right to life of a developing fetus and the right of a woman to control her body, both of which are real and important rights. In cases where there is such a clash of rights, our American federalism is the best way to address the issue, letting different states come to different solutions through their legislative processes. The same approach should also be taken with drug legalization, as states should be able to set their own drug policies with absolutely no interference from the Federal government.
My personal belief is that life begins at implantation (as this is much much more logically, morally, biologically, and philosophically justifiable than the view that life begins at conception for a variety of reasons that I may elaborate on later), but that an appropriate compromise between the developing fetus's right to life and the mother's right to her body is to make abortion legal in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, with some mandatory counseling on adoption options. Also birth control would have to be freely and easily available to all citizens no questions asked in order to minimize unwanted pregnancies. I have no moral objection whatsoever to stem cell research as unimplanted zygotes are no more individual humans than a clump of my skin cells.
It should be noted that my compromise idea is basically how most European countries have settled on the abortion issue.
Bill- You're right, I have no idea what you've done with your life. If I were a betting man, I'd bet you're an adoptive parent. I know Jill Stanek is not.
And you're wrong. The law does not have to take a position on when life begins, any more than it has to take a position on when life ends. Or whether two people of the same gender can have sex. Or two people of the opposite sex who are not married. Or whether there is one God or many deities.
Now, if Buddha appeared with a flash of light on the floor of the Senate during a C-SPAN broadcast and delivered his message of salvation, I'd be the first one to argue for allocating state funding to erect temples in every community and require a moment of mantras for every public school child, and amend the First Amendment.
But we don't know, we are human, and we are limited in our knowledge. And so the law remains silent.
Is that the end? Absolutely not. Parents still teach their children to pray, and parents can still teach their children that life begins at conception and abortion is immoral except in cases of rape or incest or a mother's health is threatened, or only when her life is in danger, or even never-ever. And citizens are free to buy billboards, demonstrate, write letters to the editor, books, to convince the children of others.
It's not an easy solution, and maybe it's not elegant. But it does work in the real world.
Bill: "HHH said it was the moral test of how Gov treated those at the dawn of life."
HHH said that?
I adopted a puppy once, does that count?
Anonymous said...
I adopted a puppy once, does that count?
3:05 PM
I don't know. Are you going to teach it to bite abortionists? Of course, it needs to bite in a very pro-life way.
Austin,
HHH --the liberal-- makes a moral test... along with Jill.
Not me.
I'm far less a moralizer.
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