This diary entry is related to rebutting pro life arguments. So if you don't want to argue abortion, click the "back" button. Now.
A pro life member of a yahoo abortion discussion group recently posted this blog entry by a Randy Alcorn. After I scanned the post, I felt it was loaded down with logical fallacies, bumper-sticker worthy slogans, and the usual emotobabble spouted by some members of the pro-life movement. I want to rebut this nonsense, but I am having trouble coming up with the right words. So I am showing it to all of my fellow Kossacks and asking for your opinions, and suggestions.
The title (not sure if it's original) given was Randy Alcorn on Personally Prolifle/Politically Prochoice.
Okay (deep breath) here goes:
17a.he only good reason for being personally against abortion is a
reason that demands we be against other people choosing to have
abortions.
Waitaminnitnow. You aren't any one else's keeper, Mr. Alcorn. So you don't have any say in the decision. Unless it's YOUR body.
Pro-choice people are constantly saying "abortion is a very difficult
decision" and "it's a heartwrenching choice for a woman to have to
make, so let her make it in peace." The logical response to this is to
ask "Why is abortion such a difficult decision? I don't get it. Please
explain it to me."
My logical response (at first)was, because it's none of your business. Then I thought about it a little more and came up with these reasons:
1)Something has gone wrong with the pregnancy (eclampsia, ectopic,etc.) and going to term will kill the woman.
- Something has gone wrong with the pregnancy and going to term would cause permanent harm to the woman's health
- The pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
- The woman realizes she doesn't have the rsources to support a baby at this time.
Did I miss anything?
If they hesitate to respond, as they often do, the follow-up question
is, "If it's just a blob of tissue, if it's not really a child, then
it should be no more difficult than choosing to have your appendix
removed. Right? So what is it about abortion that makes you say it is
so difficult and heartwrenching?"
The only two responses I could come up with:
- The fetus is planned for and wanted, but one or more doctors have determined it has a fatal condition "incoompatible with life".
- see the other responses above.
If a person is honest, there is
ultimately only one answer to the question. Abortion is a difficult
decision for one obvious reason--it is the killing of an innocent
baby, one's own child.
There is that statement: "If a person is honest." The implication is, the person MUST agree with the writer to be honest. The rest is just personal opinion.
If abortion doesn't kill children, why would someone be personally
opposed to it? If it does kill children, why would someone defend
another's right to do it?
Right here, Mr. Alcorn does more framing to suit himself. He uses the loaded term "children", not the more medically accurate "fetus".
The position of being personally against
abortion but favoring another's right to abortion is therefore
self-contradictory and morally baffling. It's like saying--exactly
like saying--we're personally against child abuse, but we defend our
neighbor's right to abuse his child if that is his choice.
To me this is a false choice. Abortion is not the same as abuse of an already born child.
17b. To be pro-choice about abortion is to be pro-abortion.
More "framing and caging" from Mr. Alcorn. He is defining pro choicers by HIS terms.
Suppose drug-dealing were legalized, as some have advocated. Then
suppose you heard someone argue this way about selling cocaine:
Mr. Alcorn is comparing apples to the Hubble Space Telescope. Cocaine is a dangerous and illegal drug. Not even playing the "six dregrees of seperation" game could connect that with abortion.
I'm personally not in favor of drug-dealing, but this is a
matter for a drug-dealer to decide between himself and his attorney.
Lots of religious people are against drug-dealing, but they have no
right to force the anti-cocaine morality on others.
Words cannot express how stupid this argument is. Please help me to do so.
We don't want to
go back to the days when drug-dealing was done in back alleys and
people died from poorly mixed cocaine, and when only rich people could
get drugs and poor people couldn't. It's better now that qualified
drug dealers can safely give cocaine to our children. I personally
wouldn't buy drugs, so I'm not pro-drugs, you understand, I'm just
pro-choice about drug-dealing.
Jeez loueez Mr. Alcorn is trying really hard to be snarky here, but I feel he isn't doing a very good job of it. Drug dealing IS done in back alleys, and people already die from "poorly mixed drugs". Drug dealers are slightly lower on the humanity scale than child molesters.
In terms of the bottom-line, there is no significant difference
between people who are in favor of drug-dealing and people who don't
like it personally but believe it should be an option. Someone who is
pro-choice about rape might argue that this is not the same as being
pro-rape. But what is the difference, since being pro-choice about
rape allows and effectively promotes the legitimacy of rape?
"pro choice about rape"? This is going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Dated attitudes about women is one of the factors which "promotes the legitimacy of rape."
Those who were pro-choice about slavery fancied that their moral
position was sound since many of them didn't personally didn't own
slaves. Yet it was not just the pro-slavery position, but the
prochoice-about-slavery position, that resulted in the exploitation,
beatings and deaths of innocent people in this country.
I was wondering when he would bring up slavery, the 2nd favorite angle of some pro lifers.
Similarly,
most people in Germany did not personally favor the killing of the
Jews. However, they did nothing to try to stop that killing.
Ah, the Holocaust, the favorte angle.
In ancient Rome it was legal for fathers to kill their newborn
children by setting them out to die of exposure or be eaten by wild
beasts. While many people would not do this with their own children,
they recognized the rights of others to do so. The early Christians
saw this "right" as a wrong, and when they could find such children
they took them into their homes to care for them.
\
I would like to know what his source for this is. And what it had to do with abortion.
Some people have the illusion that being personally opposed to
abortion, but believing others should be free to choose it, is some
kind of compromise between the pro-abortion and pro-life positions.
Why not? He doesn't give us a more compelling reason than:
It
isn't. Pro-choice people vote the same as pro-abortion people. Both
oppose legal protection for the innocent unborn. Both are willing for
children to die by abortion.
More "framing and caging".
Those who are "pro-choice" are by definition willing to extend the
right of choice to the arena of killing babies.
By WHOSE definition, Mr. Alcorn? Conservapedia's?
They must therefore
take responsibility for the killing of those babies even if they do
not participate directly--just as those who are pro-choice about
crimes of racism must take responsibility for those crimes even if
they do not personally commit them. To the baby who dies it makes no
difference whether those who refused to protect him were pro-abortion
or "just" pro-choice.
What? Now he's trying to equate abortion with racism? This just comes off as some much emotobabble.
17c. What is legal is not always right.
A favorite bumper sticker style slogan. It must be effective with some people because it keeps coming up again and again, ad nauseum.
One of the weakest arguments for the legitimacy of abortion is the
fact that it is legal. Civil law does not determine morality.
Gee, I thought civil law determined what is legal. Morality is something more personal than that.
Rather,
the law should reflect a morality that exists independently of the
law. Can anyone seriously believe that abortion was immoral on January
21, 1973 and moral on January 23, 1973? If abortion killed children
before the law changed, it continues to kill children after the law
changed. Law or no law, either abortion has always been right and
always will be, or it has always been wrong and always will be.
This statement falls apart when you realize no children are being killed.
Our country's history is full of examples of legal things that were
not right. Perhaps the most notable example is slavery. In the last
century the slaveowners argued that the slaves were theirs and they
had the right to do with them as they wished. They claimed that their
personal rights and freedom of choice were at stake.
Gotta love how Alcorn tries to re-frame "freedom of choice" and turn it into a pregorative term.
They said that
the slaves were not really persons in the full sense. They pointed out
that they would experience economic hardship if they were not allowed
to have slaves, and developed slogans to gain sympathy to their cause.
They maintained that others could choose not to have slaves, but had
no right to impose their anti-slavery morality on them. And above all,
they argued, slavery was perfectly legal, so no one had the right to
oppose it.
I'm not sure how to counter this. Except to point out the bible was used to justify the owning of another human being.
This point of view was given further legal support in the Dred Scot
decision of 1857. The Supreme Court determined in a 7-2 decision that
slaves were not legal persons and were therefore not protected under
the Constitution.
Bringing up the Dred Scot decision is yet another favorite pro life tactic.
In 1973, one hundred and sixteen years later, the US
Supreme Court, by another 7-2 decision, would determine that unborn
children also were not legal persons and therefore not protected under
the Constitution. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said in 1857,
"A black man has no right which the white man is bound to respect."
Despite slavery's legality, however, Abraham Lincoln challenged its
morality. He said, "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong."
I don't see any comparison, except it was a simlar margin by SCOTUS.
In the 1940's a German doctor could kill Jews legally, while in
America he would be prosecuted for murder. In the 1970's an American
doctor could kill unborn babies legally, while in Germany he would be
prosecuted for murder. Laws change. Truth and justice don't.
A kernal of truth here: Laws DO change. But pro life sloganeering doesn't apprently.
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