Thank you so much for this post! When I saw "abortion" in the title, I was ready to unfollow this blog immediately if it was another lame attempt to justify abortion. I was pleasantly surprised to find that although you might be pro-choice, you understand the pro-life position, and you are encouraging others to respond to our concern about the mass murder of babies. THANK YOU!
I find it hard to try to convince people to be pro-choice though if the only thing separating our opinions is when the fetus counts as a baby. It reminds me of the struggles I've had in the past with debating people who think using tampons makes someone lose their virginity... But maybe that's different because virginity is an even more arbitrary concept than when a baby becomes a baby.
I do think that many abortions are significantly morally wrong. I'm politically pro-choice because criminalization isn't a magic wand that makes Bad Thing disappear, but rather requires empowering cops and prosecutors (with their highly perverse incentives), black markets and organized crime, and worst of all, a serious risk of civil war.
I like to start discussions of abortions by describing some other things I think are very morally wrong, but should also remain legal. For example, I strongly agree with Richard Dawkins that raising children to believe in Hell (where even good people of the wrong faith will go) is child abuse on a level worse than being sexually fondled. The political arguments good enough to justify keeping such religious teachings legal are good enough to keep abortion legal.
There is a utilitarian case for being pro-life that can be made though: the positive utility of an entire life almost certainly outweighs whatever the negative utility of going through an unwanted pregnancy is. The mother doesn't need to keep the child: it can be given up for adoption. So it's 9 months of disutility, versus an entire lifetime that most likely has positive utility, making this a rather clear cut calculus.
>> Lots of pro-choicers seem to think that pro-lifers are opposed to abortion because their hatred of women is so profound that they want to restrict women’s bodies (only their uterus, apparently !?) for no further reason. Lots of people seem to think that one who is pro-life must also be stupid or sexist. These people also seem not to like to not want to make friends with those who are stupid, sexist, and want to restrict the use of random female body parts.
This is a misunderstanding of the feminist view. The feminist view has never been that men simply arbitrarily wish to control women's uteruses. It's that intersexual conflict has historically raged over control of sex and reproduction (some feminists argue that there are evolutionary roots to this). Removing a woman's right to abortion reduces a woman's control over her reproductive life. See my response to Nathan Nobis for more on this.
Thank you so much for this post! When I saw "abortion" in the title, I was ready to unfollow this blog immediately if it was another lame attempt to justify abortion. I was pleasantly surprised to find that although you might be pro-choice, you understand the pro-life position, and you are encouraging others to respond to our concern about the mass murder of babies. THANK YOU!
I find it hard to try to convince people to be pro-choice though if the only thing separating our opinions is when the fetus counts as a baby. It reminds me of the struggles I've had in the past with debating people who think using tampons makes someone lose their virginity... But maybe that's different because virginity is an even more arbitrary concept than when a baby becomes a baby.
I do think that many abortions are significantly morally wrong. I'm politically pro-choice because criminalization isn't a magic wand that makes Bad Thing disappear, but rather requires empowering cops and prosecutors (with their highly perverse incentives), black markets and organized crime, and worst of all, a serious risk of civil war.
I like to start discussions of abortions by describing some other things I think are very morally wrong, but should also remain legal. For example, I strongly agree with Richard Dawkins that raising children to believe in Hell (where even good people of the wrong faith will go) is child abuse on a level worse than being sexually fondled. The political arguments good enough to justify keeping such religious teachings legal are good enough to keep abortion legal.
There is a utilitarian case for being pro-life that can be made though: the positive utility of an entire life almost certainly outweighs whatever the negative utility of going through an unwanted pregnancy is. The mother doesn't need to keep the child: it can be given up for adoption. So it's 9 months of disutility, versus an entire lifetime that most likely has positive utility, making this a rather clear cut calculus.
So your factory farming rhetoric is just for attention?
I did like your take here, though.
>> Lots of pro-choicers seem to think that pro-lifers are opposed to abortion because their hatred of women is so profound that they want to restrict women’s bodies (only their uterus, apparently !?) for no further reason. Lots of people seem to think that one who is pro-life must also be stupid or sexist. These people also seem not to like to not want to make friends with those who are stupid, sexist, and want to restrict the use of random female body parts.
This is a misunderstanding of the feminist view. The feminist view has never been that men simply arbitrarily wish to control women's uteruses. It's that intersexual conflict has historically raged over control of sex and reproduction (some feminists argue that there are evolutionary roots to this). Removing a woman's right to abortion reduces a woman's control over her reproductive life. See my response to Nathan Nobis for more on this.
https://defendingfeminism.com/2021/09/28/are-abortion-restrictions-about-controlling-women-a-response-to-nobis/