Journal severoon's Journal: Hot Button Issue: Abortion 3
I have hit upon the solution to the abortion debate.
Sounds crazy, doesn't it? One of the most controversial and viciously debated topics of our day, and I have solved it. Pretty heady moment, I must admit...give me a second to take it all in.
Walk with me down the path of enlightenment on this one. You, the anti-choice adherent, must overcome one and only one obstacle to sell me on your argument. You must leave religion out of it. You must not argue based upon terms you cannot define or personal beliefs with only religious support. If you believe abortion is murder, that means you believe that a fetus is a life. If you believe a fetus is a life, then you believe you know when life begins. If you believe you know when life begins, then I submit to you that that belief is based upon your religion and your belief in some kind of god or religious text. In other words, you are trying to form public policy based upon your god.
The problem with this approach is that America does not have a theocratic government. It's right in our Constitution...you can't form laws based upon what your god tells you is right and wrong. Because if you can do that, then so can I, and I just happen to be a devil worshipper, who believes that life begins at 100. See the problem?
Don't be so smug, you anti-life abortion monger. I see you over there snickering away in the corner watching the anti-choice crowd struggle to convince me that "Science" generally agrees with them (which it doesn't--don't insult me, anti-choice people...I know science, and its definition of "human life" includes tumors, cancer, warts, boils, and pimples, all of which you would hack out in a second and let die). You anti-life believer, you want to legislate your belief that the fetus is not alive. In doing so, you, my friend, have the exact same problem as the anti-choicer. Simply: you have no friggin' idea when life begins either.
The truth is, we simply don't know at what moment life begins. The awful truth is, it probably doesn't begin at a moment. Life most things in the universe, it is most probably a spectrum over time. A fetus edges toward babyhood, becoming a truly sentient, conscious being long after having entered the world, and starting the inexorable slide towards harsh awakedness even before conception. Oh yes, the spectrum is wide and all-encompassing, and will flout your best efforts to find that one point at which the mythical light switch is thrown. The truth is, it's a continuous motion, not the flick of a switch, toward life. Too bad for you.
So what are a rational people to do? Well, let me ask you a question. I present you with an iron box that is locked and tell you that the box either has a ball in it, or it does not (I wanted an example that wouldn't require a Ph.D. to grasp, see?). So, leaving you in that state of knowledge, I then ask you to form some kind of belief about the state of the inside of the box, with respect to whether it includes a ball or not. Would any rational person commit to one side or the other in this thought experiment? Do you really think that we could call a person intelligent who decided to glom onto a fervent belief that there's a ball in there? Or the mope who decides that he's going to live his life based upon the idea that the box is empty?
Both are begging to be turned into fools. The rational mind simply admits that the current information is inadequate, and it's not sensible to form an opinion one way or the other. Therein lies the rub of my argument, friends. We do not know how to ethically gauge when it is ok to terminate a pregnancy and when it is not. And it is not a good idea to simply say, well, let's play it safe, let's assume the fetus is alive/there's a ball in the box. That's silly.
Regardless of whether you think there's a ball in this box or not, though, I think we can all agree that the least knowledgable (and trustworthy) people in the room when it comes to this particular box are politicians. Why should they get say over how to handle this? Shouldn't it be a board of medically trained ethicists? If only we kept a group of people like that around to make these kind of tough decisions on a case-by-case basis for just such a scenario rather than having the uninformed pass laws. If only it were that simple, right?
Wait, though...we do have exactly that! It's called the medical board, and each state has one. And it oversees the individual actions of each individual doctor, and makes such calls on a regular basis. And they're even willing to admit they don't know for sure, they don't have all the answers, and they're struggling along as best they can based on the current state of knowledge. And that's what we pay them to do. So why not let them work?
The answer, my friends, is to simply repeal all law concerning abortion and let the doctors decide on a case-by-case basis. Doctors that make the wrong decisions that are out of line with the state's medical standards will be called on the carpet and punished, as the system is supposed to work. And no one has to pretend they know when life begins and no one has to spend any more federal tax money trying to convince others of this obvious falsity. And best of all, no one has to bring god into it.
It's astonishingly simple--the system would work just fine if we left such medical decisions up to the doctors and the informed authorities presiding over those situations...so let's just let the system work.
Not (Score:2)
1. You must leave religion out of it. Telling religious people to leave religion out of an argument is even marginally less clever than telling atheists to include it. Most religions I know of contain a set of moral and ethical rules to guide and aid adherents to live better lives. To demand that these rules be set aside in a debate involving issues of life and death is not only unrealistic, it's absurd. Furthermore, save the totally amoral ones, most atheists have a set of moral and
Re:Not (Score:2)
Wowee! A response! I didn't think anyone read this stuff. I should've known abortion would bring the posts out of the wood work.
1. You are not really addressing the full scope of my argument on this point. You've simply pulled out one statement, which was further developed throughout the paragraph, and latched on as though that's my complete statement on this aspect of my position. It isn't.
To wit: You must not argue based upon terms you cannot define or personal beliefs with only religious support
Considerations (Score:2)
But we do know something. We know with certanty that there will be life, barring some catastrophic event. Why is it nessesary to determine with exact accuracy when life starts? Why is it not good enough to say: We are protecting the life that will be, with all of the characteristics which make life, which nobody can deny or use semantics to confuse and divide. This will