I find that rather unfortunate because it expresses the essence of this point of view. If you really think that abortion involves the murder of an innocent life deliberately then why on Earth wouldn't you support putting both the doctors and the women who choose to have them in jail? And if you're not willing to own that position for what it is then why are you advocating against abortion rights at all?
It's the same sort of puzzlement I have over why people want to ban late-term abortion. I have only ever heard of a single case of late-term abortion where the abortion was desired because the mother was completely mentally incompetent. I thought that was a very difficult case. But in every other case I have heard about, some terrible and tragic deformity is affecting the pregnancy and is going to cause suffering. You don't find out about the worst of those things until late in the pregnancy unfortunately and nobody is carrying a pregnancy that long who really wants to have an abortion. I suppose I should qualify that statement because nowadays it has become so difficult in some places to obtain one that I suppose women are forced to wait that long. And if you really think that the late-term ones are morally worse, why would you want that outcome? Anyway, the abortions that are most morally objectionable would be the ones conducted when the mother had every possible other option to carry the child and raise it or give it up for adoption. But since that's a harder issue to address, people just go for the easy legal pickings even if it means inflicting unimaginable emotional and physical harm on people. The conclusion I am beginning to draw from all this, now in the light of the Oklahoma example as well, is that the feminists I used to scorn for taking this position were actually right all along. Political opposition to abortion must have nothing whatsoever to do with morality or the desire to protect people against harm. For if it did, surely people would worry about the cases that cause the most harm and people would take seriously the obligation to punish those who are involved with the practice in any way.
Disclaimer: I think many abortions are morally unacceptable. I don't think it can be legislated appropriately, at least not at this point in our society. But I do think late-term abortions are almost exclusively morally acceptable because they prevent extremely serious forms of harm.Statistics: Posted by Elle — Sun May 22, 2016 6:02 pm
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