Friday, October 15, 2010

Anti-abortion while remaining firmly pro-choice

Anti-abortion while remaining firmly pro-choice | The Australian: What's required is a more nuanced ethical line. This would enable one to be both pro-choice (recognising that termination is the lesser of several tragedies), yet anti-abortion (because it really is hard to find anyone whose catch cry is 'yay termination - let's have heaps more').

One of the ways I dealt with miscarriage was to remember that it was longing and grief, rather than biological reality, that gave my lost foetuses the shape of babies. They represent life, but not as we know it. This is why termination is not on par with murder.

Editor: Biological reality says 'embryo' and 'fetus' are just stages of life, not unlike 'infant,' 'toddler,' and 'adolescent.' Just because we don't know these stages as well as the latter doesn't mean they are not life. Science is teaching us more and more about these stages every day. When will the 'pro-choice' movement catch up?

1 comment:

  1. The comments above represents the idea of morality using symbols we call words. Unfortunately those specific words do not represent morality as we know it. That is why squishy thinking is not on par with focused action.

    To be clear, not a sane woman alive wants to have abortion as noted above. But why? Because she knows it not only emotionally represents ending a life but that it also physically ends one. Women have abortions because of the fear of the unknown future not because they thought their way clear to realizing it is 'not life as we know it.' The only solution for fear is empowerment through relevant information, services and ongoing community support.

    Let us not use mental gymnastics to justify the choice of a community to continue to allow women to be forced to choose between the political exploitation of their circumstances and abandoning their natural impetus to make room for a new human being.

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