Blog for Choice
Jan. 22nd, 2008 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottahillI was inspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kcobweb to talk about my thoughts about abortion, in honor of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As a Catholic, I hear anti-abortion sentiments a lot; there was one priest in Boston who seemed to work "the unborn" into every one of his sermons, and I was so sick of it that, when I moved to Dallas, I was terrified of how much worse the churches here would be. (As it turns out, we accidentally moved into the neighborhood of the most liberal Catholic church in Dallas, but that's another story.)
When I started college, I was nominally anti-abortion given my upbringing, enough so to mention it to J and tick her off. Then I went to a talk on campus by a (former?) Catholic priest who was pro-choice. His argument was that, while abortion was a sin, we had no right to prevent a woman from committing it, because God had placed the responsibility of the fetus's life solely in the hands of the pregnant woman. No one else can keep that fetus alive, no one else can take responsibility for its existence, and complete responsibility must come with complete control. Thus Catholics could try to dissuade pregnant women from abortion, but to force the issue was violating a God-given right.
This argument convinced me to become pro-choice, though anti-abortion, and I remained so for a while. I mentioned that "abortion was a sin", but everyone sins (even if you're an atheist you know what it means to sin against yourself) and forgiveness is a crucial part of Christian theology (although try telling that to the Southern Baptists. But anyway....)
What finally convinced me that early abortion was OK was, ironically, a phrase used by some anti-abortion campaign: "one-celled human". That was completely absurd. You cannot have a one-celled human, or an eight-celled human. Where did they get this idea? I discovered that the idea that "humanity starts at conception" is a logical fallacy: "Clearly a nine-month-old fetus is human, one cannot determine the transition point from non-human to human, therefore the fetus must be human all the way through." This is not a convincing argument.
There must be a point, however, where the fetus should be recognized as human, making an abortion morally questionable. But the timing of that point is going to come down to one's own definition of humanity, and given the argument above about responsibility, it's gotta be up to the pregnant woman to decide, via faith or science or gut instinct, whether the fetus has become a human being.
All that being said, I can appreciate the pro-life point of view. Given their postulates, abortion results in the death of 1.2 million people in the United States every year: that's a staggering number; if you thought that that many people were dying as the result of some law, wouldn't you oppose it? So while I disagree with their postulates, I have some sympathy for them...IF they're honest. Too many anti-abortion groups, however, use questionable statistics and anecdotes to scare women out of abortions, and I think that weakens their message. If the argument "Abortion kills a human being, your baby" isn't strong enough to support their movement, they are in sorry shape.
Since I believe a fetus becomes human at an unknowable point in time, it is important to me that abortions occur as early on in the pregnancy as possible, like the morning-after. Because of this, I find many of the proposed waiting periods and pressuring tricks used by the anti-abortion groups morally repugnant, because they are delaying the process and thus causing the death of a slightly older and more human fetus. And of course, it would be best if these pregnancies didn't get started in the first place, by means of contraception.
I'm very tired now, and I've said about all I meant to. I might add more when I read this over tomorrow....
kcobweb to talk about my thoughts about abortion, in honor of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As a Catholic, I hear anti-abortion sentiments a lot; there was one priest in Boston who seemed to work "the unborn" into every one of his sermons, and I was so sick of it that, when I moved to Dallas, I was terrified of how much worse the churches here would be. (As it turns out, we accidentally moved into the neighborhood of the most liberal Catholic church in Dallas, but that's another story.)When I started college, I was nominally anti-abortion given my upbringing, enough so to mention it to J and tick her off. Then I went to a talk on campus by a (former?) Catholic priest who was pro-choice. His argument was that, while abortion was a sin, we had no right to prevent a woman from committing it, because God had placed the responsibility of the fetus's life solely in the hands of the pregnant woman. No one else can keep that fetus alive, no one else can take responsibility for its existence, and complete responsibility must come with complete control. Thus Catholics could try to dissuade pregnant women from abortion, but to force the issue was violating a God-given right.
This argument convinced me to become pro-choice, though anti-abortion, and I remained so for a while. I mentioned that "abortion was a sin", but everyone sins (even if you're an atheist you know what it means to sin against yourself) and forgiveness is a crucial part of Christian theology (although try telling that to the Southern Baptists. But anyway....)
What finally convinced me that early abortion was OK was, ironically, a phrase used by some anti-abortion campaign: "one-celled human". That was completely absurd. You cannot have a one-celled human, or an eight-celled human. Where did they get this idea? I discovered that the idea that "humanity starts at conception" is a logical fallacy: "Clearly a nine-month-old fetus is human, one cannot determine the transition point from non-human to human, therefore the fetus must be human all the way through." This is not a convincing argument.
There must be a point, however, where the fetus should be recognized as human, making an abortion morally questionable. But the timing of that point is going to come down to one's own definition of humanity, and given the argument above about responsibility, it's gotta be up to the pregnant woman to decide, via faith or science or gut instinct, whether the fetus has become a human being.
All that being said, I can appreciate the pro-life point of view. Given their postulates, abortion results in the death of 1.2 million people in the United States every year: that's a staggering number; if you thought that that many people were dying as the result of some law, wouldn't you oppose it? So while I disagree with their postulates, I have some sympathy for them...IF they're honest. Too many anti-abortion groups, however, use questionable statistics and anecdotes to scare women out of abortions, and I think that weakens their message. If the argument "Abortion kills a human being, your baby" isn't strong enough to support their movement, they are in sorry shape.
Since I believe a fetus becomes human at an unknowable point in time, it is important to me that abortions occur as early on in the pregnancy as possible, like the morning-after. Because of this, I find many of the proposed waiting periods and pressuring tricks used by the anti-abortion groups morally repugnant, because they are delaying the process and thus causing the death of a slightly older and more human fetus. And of course, it would be best if these pregnancies didn't get started in the first place, by means of contraception.
I'm very tired now, and I've said about all I meant to. I might add more when I read this over tomorrow....
