So here comes a new kind of post: "The Middle Ground". In these posts I will look at a topic, present both sides, and analyze the strengths and faults of each argument. Hopefully, I will attract more of a crowd from the right side as well as the left side. Should debate erupt in the comments section, I will play the devil's advocate. When either side makes a great point, I will deconstruct it and provide a rebuttal.
So let's start with something easy: Abortion.
The Left Side
Most leftists and liberals believe in women's rights to choose. They say choices about a woman's body belong to her and her alone, often saying that choices about a woman's body shouldn't be made by old men in congress. Criminalizing abortion simply makes it more dangerous for women who need it badly, as they resort to drastic, potentially fatal methods. Also often brought up is the issue of rape pregnancy, should victims of rape be forced to carry the babies of their attackers?
A woman's choice is one thing, but the child is half the father's as well. Shouldn't he get a say in the fate of his own child? At what point does aborting a fetus become murdering a child? During the very beginning of pregnancy, a fetus is merely a small ring of stem cells, not even close to anything anyone sane would call a thinking, feeling human being, but there is ample evidence that later in pregnancy, the fetus acts and reacts like a normal baby, something that would most definitely feel the pain of death. Criminalizing abortion, though it would not stop all expectant mothers, would prevent most people who realize the danger to themselves in more dangerous, uninsured, off the grid clinics. After all, drunk driving laws don't stop all people from driving under the influence, does that mean we shouldn't have laws against it? As for rape pregnancy, most sane people know that the claim of "A woman's body shuts down during rape" is absolute horseshit, but does a rape truly justify the death of an innocent child? Adoption is always an option. If you don't have the financial resources to raise a child, or don't want to raise a child that was the result of a rape, adoption is an option beyond killing the child.
The Right Side
Many right-wingers and conservatives bring up the prevalent issue of morality in abortion. Are you really going to kill an innocent child because you don't want it, or because of one bad decision? A common ideology is "don't do the act if you can't accept the consequences", and brings in the role of responsibility in sex. If you don't take proper precautions before sex, you have to accept the consequences and responsibilities that follow the act.
Morality is of course a huge issue in this debate, and the question is, during an abortion, are you really killing a baby, or removing an unfeeling mass of cells? Up until about the third trimester, it's really just an unfeeling, unconscious mass of cells. If you're going to argue that removing a fetus then is murder, then you can make the same argument for the initial zygote, that tiny ring of cells that no person in the right mind wall call a thinking, feeling being. Another issue for morality is that morality is relative. When talking about abortion, the "morality" mentioned by conservatives is a very christian, religious sort of morality. History has shown us that morality depends on the culture around us. The Romans saw nothing wrong with making prisoners fight each other to the death for the entertainment of crowds. Today, that sort of thing would be considered heinous. Another example is giving blacks the vote. Many people had the sense that it was moral for blacks to stay as servants, that it was the "natural order of things". Obviously today, that's an insane opinion to have.
So what do you, the reader think? Leave a comment and let this debate begin.
I'll sit here, observe and interfere,
from The Middle Ground.
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