Andrew at the Sharpener and Owen Barder comments on….yes, you’ve guessed it, abortion. Rather than go into the debate point by point a quick recap of my position. I’m agin it in all but the most limited circumstances. Despite a very Cathloic education no, I don’t base my views on the religious position (as I no longer have a religious position it would be odd to do so).
1) We pass through this universe just once. To find our passage curtailed, brought to a bloody end by the decision of (whim of?) another person is, to my mind, the worst thing that can happen. Yes, this applies to abortion, capital punishment and murder. There are two lets outs. Immediate self-defense and in the course of a Just War (which are just wars is a subject for someone else to deal with).
2) I may be mangling Peter Singer’s thinking a little here but here’s what I think he’s saying. That becoming human is a process, not an event. Somewhere between conception and age 21 one accumulates a series of rights (and responsibilities). To life itself (or perhaps, to be more accurate, to theright to not having it curtailed by the actions of another), to vote, drink, marry, leave school, etc etc. Singer uses this at times to argue that infanticide is no more morally reprehensible than abortion, for example (at least, that’s the impression I’ve got).
The process not an event I agree with. No, a conceptus does not have all of the same rights as a mature adult (voting and drinking, for example, would be a tad difficult…so too driving).
The next stage would seem to be that we need to have a timeline of how and when the specific rights are "awarded" during this process. We change these all the time (the age of consent, for example, the age of voting).
My assumption (and it is an assumption) is that the right to life, the right to continue in that process of becoming fully human, trumps almost all of the others. Except, as noted, for the two get outs, immediate self-defense by another and in the course of a Just War.
Perhaps not the most philosophically mature or elegant exposition but them’s are my views. Just sayin’ and all.
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