One accusation that both conservatives and liberals make against one another is that their opponents' hierarchy of values is out of order, if not outright contradictory.
For instance – Conservatives, how can you say you are concerned for the poor if you want to cut social programs? Why do you get so bent out of shape about homosexuality when seemingly more pressing social issues are at hand?
Conservatives, of course, have responses to these challenges, but I am not sure that they convince their liberal detractors.
But in the case of abortion, it seems hard for us conservatives to understand how liberals fail to recognize the humanity of at least the late term fetus. In light of this, their outrage at using waterboarding, a non-lethal (though not kind) interrogation technique seems laughable.
Even worse, the liberal reluctance to define the humanity of the fetus is now leading us down the slippery slope towards infanticide.
Case 1: Sweden legalizes sex-selection abortion
When we value our individual freedom above the rights of the unborn, this is just one of issues we will face. Failing to heed the problems that female sex-selection abortion has created in China and India, Sweden has now legalized what some are calling 'gendercide or 'femicide.'
Many in the U.S. are also considering what to do about this 'choice' – should we take it away? China is and Britain have both banned it. Are they being oppressive?
But not 'progressive' Sweden.
Case 2: Texas set to reduce penalties for infanticide
Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston has proposed to reduce the penalties for post-partum depression murder of a child less than a year old.
Liberals are defending the legislation saying that it is compassionate towards those with mental illness. Is this compassion? For the mother, perhaps, but for the baby, er, not-quite-human-infant?
This reduction of penalty is exactly what we might expect from a value system that does not protect the helpless. It is part an parcel of the 'all heart but no logic' liberal approach to ethics and morals, which is generally subjective, anti-life and anti-family, and bad for society. God help us.
"Is China being oppressive?" is like asking "Is the pope Catholic?". Yes, banning sex selection is oppressive, though for China it may be necessary. However, that won't address the root cause: a patriarchal culture that devalues girls. I think the real question is how China can fix their culture so that girls are no longer unwanted.
I agree with your evaluation of the Chinese culture and patriarchy. As far as changing their devaluation of girls, Christians have been there for decades reversing this particular backwardness of their culture, despite the caricature of Christianity itself as Patriarchal.
Missionaries are the ones who helped get rid of female foot binding, and who also have been there for decades creating orphanages and rescuing female infants from infanticide.
Also, as I mentioned in Religion, innovation and economic progress – Part II, xianity has also spread literacy across Asia. See also Social impact of missions in higher education.
Hi Daniel:
It seems to me the question comes down to the issue of personhood. I personally do not believe that an early term fetus is a person, so abortion of early term fetuses is IMO a medical procedure and not a crime against humanity. Torture on the other hand is. Someone who is just as confident that the fetus IS a person would undoubtedly think abortion is murder. For those in between, undecided as to this metaphysical issue, there's a couple of ways you could go:
1. You could claim that the morally safest option is to assume personhood (the fetus might be a person after all) so as not to risk murdering a person.
2. You could leave the ambiguous case to each woman and her conscience.
My argument for abortion choice would be that there IS no morally safe choice. If the fetus is not a person you are forcing a woman to stay pregnant with all the physical/emptional/spiritual consequences and then have to deal with what to do with her baby (it's a baby by this time). it would be wrong to force a woman to go through this if ending the pregnancy didn't deprive the fetus of its (non-existent) rights.
It's interesting to me that this is a Christian issue, as the Bible doesn't weigh in one way or the other. The Bible verses usually cited don't seem to me to say what abortion foes say they do.
your friend
keith
your friend
keith
>> KEITH: I personally do not believe that an early term fetus is a person, so abortion of early term fetuses is IMO a medical procedure and not a crime against humanity.
Of course, we agree on that. However, at what point DO you think the law should observe personhood, and at what point do you believe it begins?
For me, I believe it begins at conception, but will allow the law to wait for heartbeat and brainwaves, a criteria almost identical to end of life personhood.
While some require cognition (at 27 weeks or so), I find this grossly late, since the fetus doesn't need cognition to feel, react to, or have it's development affected by pain. To me, that's the same as saying "an infant really doesn't know what's happening to it until age 1, so we can kill it."
>> KEITH: My argument for abortion choice would be that there IS no morally safe choice.
That's because you place moral weight on giving the woman a choice to terminate her fetus. I do not. IF the fetus is a person, no amount of weight put on choice matters, just like it would not in infanticide.
Most women have the choice to have sex or not. I would give them a choice up to about 4-6 weeks, after which, like it or not, they have no more right to kill the child than they would a born infant.
You make the 'immoral' choice to forbid infanticide, yet I'm not sure why you then give the 'choice' to abort so much more weight when the child is still in the womb. Seems unkind to the child.
>> KEITH: f the fetus is not a person you are forcing a woman to stay pregnant with all the physical/emptional/spiritual consequences and then have to deal with what to do with her baby (it's a baby by this time).
I hate to say it, but you speak of being pregnant like it's a cancer. Forcing a woman to be pregnant? In 99% of the cases, she should have known that was the likely outcome of sex. Sure, it's tough, but that's what adoption is for – to GIVE the child life, rather than take it away because it is the 'inconvenient truth' of a life spent having careless sex (in most cases).
And even if it is rape or incest, the pregnancy really isn't the problem, it's the rape and incest which needs to be healed, forgiven, and prosecuted. Why try to use two wrongs to make a right?
>> KEITH: it would be wrong to force a woman to go through this if ending the pregnancy didn't deprive the fetus of its (non-existent) rights.
I think it all revolves around whether you have compassion on the unborn child or not. Since your assignment of personhood is very subjective, you have to also defend the above statement for a newborn and it's 'non-existent' rights. It's heartless and cruel to the child.
>> KEITH: It's interesting to me that this is a Christian issue, as the Bible doesn't weigh in one way or the other. The Bible verses usually cited don't seem to me to say what abortion foes say they do.
That is another argument, but I think that they are not only implied, but if you look at OT law, those who cause miscarriage are guilty of two murders, right? I find it amazing that someone who exhibits as much kindness as you can be so callous to the unborn child. It seems that you are not even slightly alarmed at late term abortions. At least, not enough to consider it murder, or in the case of African Americans, genocide (50% of black pregnancies end in abortion).
Is it out of sight, out of mind? In this case, I think you are siding with the powerful and ignoring the helpless. Whom would Jesus abort?