Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperDinoYoshi
Just because people are going to abort either way is not rationale for making it legal. You could use the same logic to say that normal murder should be legal too, afterall its going to happen anyway.
|
Policy is about protection, not about "cleanssing sin."
What it comes down to is that both pro-life and pro-choice arguments are perfectly logical...
PRO-LIFE: A fetus is a human so killing it is murder.
PRO-CHOICE: A fetus is not fully developed into a human and is part of the woman so it is the woman's choice.
Both are logical. And the dependent point on which they differ (the state of a fetus) is completely impossible for science to determine. Might as well pass legislation on whether souls exist!
And yet each point is based on a strong fundamental human right that can't just be left to the states (well... it can, but it would be similar to leaving slavery up to the states)... And they are completely incompatible.
So IMO it comes down to pragmatism. The principles cannot be empirically set against one another. So we must just look at the effects.
When it comes down to it, abortion like drugs and prostitution, if illegal makes a black market. And furthermore it is extremely difficult to figure out who gets punished and how much... And in reality, people would rarely be caught anyway.
We'd be better off looking at the social phenomena that lead to abortion and having parents (since most of the abortions we worry about involve young women) learn these things and attempt to stop them in their tracks.
And if abortion is legal, we can have regulation... perhaps even mandatory presurgery counseling to make sure that the woman understands her other options and the enormity of her choice.
And most people do think that there are some rational reasons for an abortion... but trying to define them is problematic. For instance I think it's strange that we are so focused on method of abortion rather than reason for abortion. There are occasions where the so-called "partial birth abortions" have been used for problem pregnancies where the baby has a definite chance of death before or soon after birth.
Legalizing abortion and allowing upfront counseling allows for a case-by-case basis of figuring out when an abortion is fathomable between the woman and the doctor.