re: "Anti-Abortion Marchers Gather With an Eye on the Supreme Court" (The New York Times, January 21, 2022)
The statistics are perfectly clear: a solid majority even of Christians rightly believe that abortion should be legal, a matter of personal liberty consistent alike with the founding principles of the United States and of basic good morals.
Irrespective of the Supreme Court's ruling, the moral majority who support women's right to choose whether to give birth or not should vote for the party that will enact legislation, perhaps even a constitutional amendment, to protect that basic right to not have yourself turned into a slave producing babies at the dictate of others — that sort of state control of the most personal, private matters might fit with the communist ideology of China, but not with those who value democratic principle that respects individual liberty.
Persons alone deserve the human rights that come with being a person. No foetus, human, pig, sheep, cow, or any other equally living being's foetus, with or without a heartbeat, has ever displayed any of the defining characteristics of a person, so cannot be entitled to the moral consideration due actual, existing persons such as pregnant women.
_______________________________
It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/march-for-life-rally.html#commentsContainer&permid=116512763:116512763
Also:
ReplyDelete@omartraore
From the moment of conception, the embryo is alive. It is no more special than the embryo of any other animal.
From six or so weeks, there is a something vaguely like a heartbeat, to which fact the proper response is: "So what? Pigs, rabbits, rats, cows and sheep all have very definitely beating hearts, which don't stop meat eaters slaughtering them en masse every single day."
A human foetus is arguably a human being. Again, that's nothing so special. It simply means that the human foetus contains human DNA.
What matters is when a living being with heartbeat becomes a person. No foetus, human or otherwise, has ever been a person. No foetus, human or otherwise, has ever displayed the set of characteristics that define persons as beings deserving of special moral consideration. The law is right not to recognize a foetus, human or otherwise, as a human person. This is for the very good reason that merely being a living thing, even a human living thing, even a living human thing with a heartbeat, is not enough to be a person, human or otherwise.
At https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/march-for-life-rally.html?fbclid=IwAR1058e8olk2jh_X2nL4SkIiPwEyr7zt59vrPRCP1Rk2YfeiDY0GNMt8k1E#commentsContainer&permid=116509896:116512781