I despise talking about the abortion issue. Sick to death of it. Avoid it like the plague.
(I was president of the Cornell Coalition for Life for three years. Know the issue. Know the arguments – most of them – on both sides. Human Life Review. March for Life. Been there done that bought the T-shirt. Once I hit graduate school I disengaged from the issue almost completely.)
But I am so sick and tired of really bad arguments about abortion. Intelligent people I like and respect offer statements in defense of abortion rights that frankly are completely beneath their intelligence.
I have been “boycotting” Baptistlife.com forums where I was active for years. (Couple people got particularly ugly and nasty when some poor sod answered an honest question with a conservative opinion.) So as much as I would dearly love to reply to some truly dreadful statements in a recent thread on abortion (in the context of presidential politics) I will maintain the boycott and offer my responses here.
No intelligent person should ever use the “abortion is between a woman, her doctor, and God” argument. Ever. Because it is not an argument. It is a tautology. It completely bypasses any attempt to deal with the only(?) relevant question.
Is abortion the unjust destruction of a human being – or not?
See – if it is not… for whatever reason (addressing unjust – which does include the mother – or arguably human being)… then of course abortion should be legal… of course people should be free to do it or not. Of course women should decide. If it is not the unjust. If.
So the slogan (which is not an argument) simply assumes the big central question is already settled – just like that! discussion over! – and has already moved on to the implications. The argument assumes its conclusion. Hence it is a tautology. And because people throw it out with so little thought it is banal.
“Women should decide”… what exactly? Whether life begins at birth? What if they decide it does not – and commit infanticide? The slogan inherently allows people to do anything. After all – “people should decide”.
The abortion rights slogan (phrased as “women should decide” or “freedom of choice”) simply assumes a priori that abortion is not wrong. Surely intelligent people can do better than this.
Some say “scientists do not agree when human life begins”. Yes they do. Plenty of scientists who support abortion rights will look you in the eye and say “conception is when a human life begins”. (Outside the scientific community there is less consensus – see next paragraph.)
Ah – but does that human life merit legal protection? Do the needs and rights of the mother outweigh what legal protection the unborn human life may or may not deserve? (Which is where and how whether elective abortion is just invokes the status of the mother.) Abortion rights opponents assume that to settle the scientific question (when human life begins) settles the moral/legal/ethical issue. No it does not. A human being is not necessarily a person – that is someone (or something) that has certain rights and protections.
So yes as a matter of fact when Senator Obama said the issue of when life begins is “above his pay grade” that was not only flippant – it was truly stupid. You must have some notion of when life begins or else you could never decide whether to help children or promote health care or end war and so on. Just say “the fetus does not merit legal protection” and be done with it.
And another thing. Who decides whether or not abortion should be the most important issue for voters? Hello? Freedom of choice?
And yet one more other thing. No more “yeah but those guys do not care about all these other children dying and starving and such – all they care about is the fetus”. To be wrong about one issue does not make you wrong about another. Bad argument. And perhaps since you care so much about the thousands of children who die each day who are poor or hungry or homeless… why do you not also care about unborn human beings? If you generalize that abortion opponents are so hypocritical and inconsistent – then show them the better way.
(Surely there are plenty whose track record for post-natal humans is stellar. Or are such sweeping generalizations just an excuse to dismiss the concerns of abortion opponents? Stick to the issue.)
For the record – I am not saying it is stupid to support abortion rights. There may be good arguments in favor of that position. But I almost(?) never seem to hear them. All(?) I hear is slogans and banalities and tautologies and red herrings.
And also for the record – there are plenty of really bad arguments against abortion rights. (Since my pro-life activist days I have realized there are some serious flaws with the anti-abortion argument during the first few weeks after conception.) Sorry but the Bible does not in and of itself settle the issue. And yes I know all the verses that supposedly address it.
