This isn’t a topic I spend sleepless nights over. However, since the West seems to be particularly interested in it, I’m going to have my say. For me the issue is a no brainer. Abortion is ethical. And for the following good reasons.
First. Let’s open up a different view of looking at a foetus. Anti-abortionists say that we’re killing innocent children. However, I can just as easily see the foetus as a parasite. Something growing inside you, sucking off your nutrition from inside, feeding itself, with nothing you can do about it. In addition, it almost kills you when it emerges. Damn, I’d hate to have something like that inside me. I’d want to crush the thing as soon as it came out. Luckily now, women can remove it while it’s still inside them.
Second, let’s say that we don’t see it as a parasite. But is it conscious? For me, life has no meaning unless it’s conscious, or was conscious at one point. By this definition, I feel no great ethical qualms about killing plants. Anti-abortionists will say that it’s heart is beating, that brainwaves can be detected, but the truth is, we’ll never know if its conscious. Most probably it isn’t, since consciousness is of no use whatsoever to a foetus. It may respond to stimuli, but that is probably just mechanical. Not conscious response. As far as I’m concerned, a foetus is a plant. Kill it if you want.
Third, let us say that is conscious. The fact is, that it’s inside a women’s body and she doesn’t want it. I don’t care how innocent it is. Protecting the innocent can’t be done at the expense of someone else if they don’t’ want to help. If I refuse to help a five year old child who comes to my door, and who’s lost, I may be called heartless, but I’m fully within my rights not to do so. The woman had sex for satisfaction, or joy, not to get pregnant and the foetus is a side effect. She may be the cause of it, but she’s not responsible for it, especially so if contraceptives were used, and didn’t work.
If she did use contraceptives, then it’s obvious that the foetus got attached to her by accident, and as I said, you can’t protect the innocent at the expense of someone else. It may be unfortunate, and I fully agree that it’s not the foetus’s fault (All this has meaning only if it’s conscious, which I doubt, for the above reasons), but that’s too bad. If a foetus is latched onto me without my consent, I have every right to cut off supplies to it, if those supplies come from me. I have no responsibility to keep something alive if I don’t want it, and it’ s hoisted on me.
Finally, if all my arguments above fail to convince, if a woman had sex, knowing that she would get pregnant, she still has the right to abort. It’s her body. And it’s every man (in this case every woman) for himself. For a woman, she is more important than anyone else. A foetus has no innate right to expect nourishment from her. If she wants to nourish it, well and good. If not, it’s just too bad. She can’t be expected to live for it.
If the government is so concerned about life being lost, let it take the foetuses, and keep them alive. It has no right to expect others to do the same, if it doesn’t benefit them.
You agree that the mind and brain are two different entities. Maybe this " mind " wanted to enter this brain ( which is why it did ) and play out its life in the environment of that particular family. Then rejecting this child in the womb,is AS sinful as rejecting a child that entered the atmosphere, through the uterus at full term.
Hey I have spend the morning reading your blog and was happily nodding along till I read this one. I do lose sleep over this, not really lose sleep but sort of ashamed of my stand. I don't want to be banned from the feminist circles so I say I am pro choice but I personally can never do it. But tell me one thing, all your arguments hold true for a month old child (I know because thats the age my son is). A new born is still a parasite, latching on to the mothers body for the most part, sucking nutrients, devoid of consciousness. So its okay for a mother who to kill an infant as the infant can't survive on its own and needs the mother. If the mother no longer wishes to take the responsibility, lets say she wasn't aware that she was pregnant and didnt have the choice to abort, would you be okay with her killing the baby because its still a parasite?
In reply to tearsndreams
Wow – that's an interesting way of looking at it. I never thought of that aspect before.
Well, of course I'm going to say a big "no" to killing a baby. Once the kid is born, I think the parents have gone too far to deny their responsibility. But if as you said for whatever reason the woman had no choice but to have the baby, then I can see her viewing it as something forced down her throat and not give it her all. This may not happen of course – she may end up loving it with all her heart. But maybe not…
Either way, I think once the kid is born it's a living creature with consciousness and the ability to feel pain. If the mother wants to get rid of it, she should find other means than killing it – liking giving it up for adoption or something.
But yeah – taken to an extreme, the parasite logic dictates killing is ok! Which is why perhaps as Samuel Butler said "Extremes are alone logical, and they are always absurd"