Thomas wrote:Finn d'Abuzz wrote:I suppose if you believe that a fetus (irrespective of development stage) is nothing more than a lump of tissue, you can fairly easily draw a distinction, but I don't mean to presume your argument(s).
I think that's the core of the matter. I'm sure Sofia agrees that it's nobody else's business whether a woman has a tumor removed or not. I'm sure ehBeth agrees that it
is other people's business whether or not a woman commits infanticide. The problem is that there's a broad grey area between the status of a tumor and the status of a newborn baby, and that we have no cookie-cutter method for deciding where in that grey area the status of an embryo is. And
that's why this question is so awfully controversial.
If we did agree on what embryos are and on what this means in terms of the rights they may have, the question what is whose business would simply evaporate.
I appreciate how it can be perceived as a grey area, but surely it is a grey
spectrum with black and white predominate at either end. A third trimester fetus is something far more than a newly fertilized egg.
I can understand how someone can rationalize treating something that looks like a lump of flesh as simply a lump of flesh, but when it can clearly be seen as a small human, I find the tumor analogy horribly perverse.
I'm sure this will draw ire, but, frankly, any woman that can look at pictures of any fetus ( let alone her own) that has developed beyond the first trimester and still consider it merely a lump of tissue to be excised as if it were a tumor has virtually no maternal instinct, and should probably do the world and her possible future progeny a favor and have herself sterilized.
Pictures
Actually, I don't believe there are very many of such women at all.
I have mixed feelings on the issue of abortion.
I appreciate the desire of women to have complete control of their bodies, even though no one actually has such control. We are not allowed to sell our organs, we are not allowed to kill ourselves.
I understand what a dramatic impact an unwanted pregnancy can have on lives, especially in the case of a teenage girl.
I accept that when a decision must be made between saving the mother or saving the child, no definitively clear choice can be made.
I can abide some legalization of abortion, preferably limited to first trimester pregnancies, but what I cannot abide is the efforts of the pro-choice movement to dehumanize unborn children. Having an abortion should be one of the most difficult choices a woman ever makes, it should not be made easy by using incredibly cynical tumor or parasite analogies.
