The Mental Mindfield of Abortion
I love having discussions about controversial issues. Yet more often than not, I tragically find myself deliberately avoiding the mother of all moral debates. Not because anything inherent about the issue, but rather by how difficult it is to get past the deeply entrenched rhetoric of Choice(TM) versus Life(TM).
As far as I can tell, both arguments are engineered to bring out the worst in people. Both frame their arguments in a context where the only salient issue is already decided, then provoke people into passionately re-enforcing what is obvious to them and irrelevant to their opposition. The result is two groups of previously rational people exhausted by frustration with each other.
Here's a mind map to illustrate better...
To summarize, if you believe that the fetus is a person, then abortion is the act of killing that person which is obviously wrong. In that light, any arguments about a right to chose abortion will be about as unpalatable as a similar argument to chose rape.
Similarly, if you believe that a fetus is not a person then the moral implications of abortion become virtually irrelevant. The inability to chose or the threat of being stigmatized as immoral become the greater injustices.
What about the age old question "When does life begin?"
Close, but also wrong.
The notion of your life beginning is inherently misleading. It implies that there was some transition from a time when you existed, but were not alive, to a time when you became living. It obviously maps nicely to the idea that you are created at your birth, but technically the evidence tells a very different story. Soul or not, you are a collection of living cells. Every cell in your body has your DNA and has a lineage that traces back to the first cell that bore your DNA. That living cell originated from two living gametes (sperm and egg), which originated from living cells within your parents, which follow the same pattern of cellular ancestry back to the beginning(s) of human life. And then continue back to the beginning of life itself.
Your life is just a tiny branch of a billion year old history of cellular divisions and recombinations. A life did not begin in you, you began in a life. So when did your life begin? ...Billions of years ago. Happy birthday.
A better question to ask is when did you begin?
As far as I can tell, both arguments are engineered to bring out the worst in people. Both frame their arguments in a context where the only salient issue is already decided, then provoke people into passionately re-enforcing what is obvious to them and irrelevant to their opposition. The result is two groups of previously rational people exhausted by frustration with each other.
Here's a mind map to illustrate better...
To summarize, if you believe that the fetus is a person, then abortion is the act of killing that person which is obviously wrong. In that light, any arguments about a right to chose abortion will be about as unpalatable as a similar argument to chose rape.
Similarly, if you believe that a fetus is not a person then the moral implications of abortion become virtually irrelevant. The inability to chose or the threat of being stigmatized as immoral become the greater injustices.
What about the age old question "When does life begin?"
Close, but also wrong.
The notion of your life beginning is inherently misleading. It implies that there was some transition from a time when you existed, but were not alive, to a time when you became living. It obviously maps nicely to the idea that you are created at your birth, but technically the evidence tells a very different story. Soul or not, you are a collection of living cells. Every cell in your body has your DNA and has a lineage that traces back to the first cell that bore your DNA. That living cell originated from two living gametes (sperm and egg), which originated from living cells within your parents, which follow the same pattern of cellular ancestry back to the beginning(s) of human life. And then continue back to the beginning of life itself.
Your life is just a tiny branch of a billion year old history of cellular divisions and recombinations. A life did not begin in you, you began in a life. So when did your life begin? ...Billions of years ago. Happy birthday.
A better question to ask is when did you begin?
Labels: Abortion choice life Jesus freak
posted by Michel Charlton at 4:24 PM
2 Comments:
Turns out the wait for another post has been well worth it; brilliantly written, Michel.
I started to read the article thinking, "I'm going to post to let Michel know I read this ... and it's going to say, 'I'm not going to touch this issue with a ten-foot pole.'" Then I read it and came out with a completely different viewpoint than I entered with -- about as good a compliment as a writer could hope for, I think, so kudos.
It got me thinking: the "religious Right" believes in life for humanity, but screw everything else (after all, God put everything else here for us to use as we see fit, right?).
The real distinction, in my mind, is the difference between life and the absence of life; Once we stop egotistically thinking of only ourselves, either you're a Buddhist or a Nihilist when all the chaff has been separated from the debate.
Just wanted to say hi and let you know I'm reading. :) Great post btw....thought provoking for sure.
*psst...it's me, Leanne*
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