If rational debate is an airplane, then religious discussion on the web is a flock of birds right in your jet engine. This is partly the nature of religion and partly the nature of the web, and my general rule that nobody ever had their mind changed by debating their views applies. Having acknowledged that, I will now attempt takeoff.
Your attitude towards abortion will be largely determined by a single factors: your view about whether a foetus constitutes a full human person, with all the rights that go with that. If the foetus does not possess the right to life – or possesses a circumscribed right to life – then abortion may be morally acceptable. Unfortunately if you do believe that the foetus possesses a full right to life, then you’re unlikely to be convinced by somebody who doesn’t share that belief, as illustrated by a savant going by the name Diogenes:
I see nothing wrong with swatting flies.
Let’s say that you have a different opinion. You think the lives of flies are sacred, and therefore you think that swatting flies is grossly immoral. You hold this view with the utmost sincerity. Unfortunately for you, I’m making the rules. And I say:
* You can’t refer to fly-swatting as “murder.” That would be “hate speech,” inciting others to violence.
* You can’t interfere when I swat flies.
* You must contribute to the purchase of fly swatters.
Now, with those ground-rules established, let’s begin a civil discussion of the morality of swatting flies. There’s no need for anger, recrimination, or name-calling. We have a sincere difference of opinion. Let’s– oh, wait, excuse me a moment [thwack!]– find some common ground.
This seems straightforward enough on the face of it – clever enough for some approving comments and links from other blogs – yet the analogy exposes the most basic problem with a “pro-life” position that abortion is murder. Let’s say that I do believe that flies are sacred, and that swatting them is essentially murder. If I was sitting in front of Diogenes trying to have this discussion, and he started to swat flies, wouldn’t I be obliged by my beliefs to stop him? Equally, if somebody proclaims that they believe that abortion is murder, and is fully aware that murders are being regularly carried out in their vicinity, don’t they have an obligation to go out and put a stop to it as soon as possible, no matter the risk to their own lives?
Yet presumably Diogenes – and the vast majority of pro-life advocates – take no such action, and in such a case, there appear to be two possibilities. The first is unpleasant to contemplate: that the person who sincerely holds this belief but fails to act on it is a coward, a hypocrite and (in their own eyes, at least) an accessory to murder. I don’t think that everybody who holds this belief is such a character, however, so the second possibility seems more likely: that they don’t actually believe that abortion is murder. If the latter is true, the inevitable conclusion is that they don’t in fact believe a foetus is a full person.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that this is the case: take for example one of the commenters on Diogenes’ post, a fellow named Exaudi nos:
All we would have to do to end this argument about flies is to line the dead ones up on the side walk in front of the establishment that brought on their demise and after the pile gets pretty deep, I think the common ground would be found.
This is a common trope on the anti-abortion side: if only people were aware of the true nature of abortion, they’d all come out against it, and therefore it’s acceptable to publicly exhibit the process and results of abortion. Now I have a problem with the idea of exhibiting corpses in public, especially for political purposes, and it seems that most people share this feeling: I wouldn’t, for example, suggest that we pile up the corpses of victims of traffic accidents to make a case for more cycle paths.
Exaudi nos’ suggestion implies that either he believes that it would be acceptable to do such a thing, or that he doesn’t believe that an aborted foetus has the same status as a corpse. If it’s the former, one has to wonder why he doesn’t propose such tactics for other political campaigns – but if it’s the latter, then the only conclusion we can draw is that, if he believes that an aborted foetus does not possess the same status as a dead person, then he neither believes that a live foetus possesses the same rights as a live person.
