For those who may have forgotten:
This most contentious of issues has yet to be discussed among us. The mid-term U.S. elections showed resounding defeat for abolitionists seeking referendums on all types of abortions, yet defeat for pro-choice activists advocating the termination of parental-notification legislation. While it seems a sign of a centrist majority desiring a middle ground, it is, as with the vast portion of hot-button issues, truly the product of zealous, motivated far-sides of the spectrum. So what is the answer? What's the epistomological truth of the issue?
Personally, I came down on the side of parental-notification in the elections; if a minor has to have a parent's authorization to a get a piercing, a tattoo, a day off of school, why would an abortion not require, at the very least, that the parents of the girl (emphasis on girl, under 18,) are notified of her plan? Isn't any elective surgical procedure something that requires a guardian? However, when it comes to the abolitionists, I have no kind words either.
Our culture is a society of death.
This previous sentence is important to remember when considering the following. Our religions ("our" to mean our world), without major exception, reject life and embrace death. This cannot be put more simply. They reject the value of life, replacing it with vagaries about salvation and man-made, allegedly "divinely inspired" morality sets. Are there exceptions? Assuredly, in individual adherents. But, even assuming the grandiose visions of the ancients were not drug-and-ego induced hallucinations and were indeed valid information about the afterlife and guideposts to constructing one, these do not negate the value of life in this earthly plane, as insidious philosophies would have you believe.
Now, that all seems histrionic and paranoid, but observe the subtleties; notice how anti-life religionists pervert the value and rights of the living by assigning rights to the non-living, i.e., the unborn. Devaluing life is the cornerstone of a religionist philosophy, as men must be broken against the jagged rocks in order to be ruled. By battering mankind into believing it is impotent to change itself, that the universe is unknowable, and that reality and knowledge will always escape us, they attempt to mold the malleable masses into fodder for their respective god, as if (as has been said here) the one with the biggest summer camp is the one and true AllMighty(TM).
I may be hamhanded in my attempts to convey my stance (to thus invoke opposition for the sake of testing and expanding my understanding), but try and see through my incomplete analysis to the truth within - setting aside technical issues such involved in the subject such as terms, trimesters and partial vs. impartial-birth, the issue at its core is one of morality. Do we, a secular society, embrace the values of a death-oriented religious philosophy, or approach it from our own, again secular, ethical standpoint? Do the rights of the unborn (i.e., non-living) supercede the rights of the living? I posit that they do not.
The fact that AnthonyByakko (henceforth described as "Mr. Byakko") finds it necessary to entreaty us to "see through [his] incomplete analysis to the truth within..." belies the utter irrationality and vacuity of his arguments. For in reality, there is no truth at the center of his statement, but rather an extremely clumsily constructed series of sophistries. In the following paragraphs, I, unlike Mr. Byakko, will actually support my statements as I attempt to expose the nearly unmitigated fallacy of his assertions.
First and foremost, as Hegemon so adroitly pointed out, a large part of Mr. Byakko's argument rests on the assumption that the unborn are not living. This is a completely untenable position, as it is neither supported by scientific or philosophical consensus, or (in Mr. Byakko's post, at least) rational argument. Of course, there are many arguments both for and against the possession of life (or as some would have it, "humanity"), and this is indeed the central issue of the abortion debate. All but a small contingent of radicals agree that if the fetus is alive, then killing it would be murder, and this immoral. (Note: Objectivism holds the view that the fetus is alive, but that the mother may cut the cord, effectively aborting the unborn child, at any time.) Following the precautionary principle, which states that "if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action." What this means in terms of abortion is that since we don't know (and likely can't know definitively) whether the unborn are living human beings, no irrevocable action (abortion, or the prospective murder of the fetus) can be taken.
We shall come back momentarily to the issue of abortion, but the eclectic nature of Mr. Byakko's post necessitates a short digression. Mr. Byakko asserts that most world religions "reject life and embrace death...rejecting [the value of life] and replacing it with vagaries about salvation and man-made, allegedly "divinely inspired" morality sets." Once again we find Mr. Byakko overstepping the bounds of rational argument, and venturing quixotically off into a land of groundless supposition. His declaration that the morality sets of religious philosophies are man-made rather than divinely inspired is completely unprovable; as unprovable as the proposition that God does not exist (or, indeed, the proposition that He does exist.) Apparently, Mr. Byakko is content to assemble his arguments out of half-truths (as well as outright lies) and still expect something vaguely resembling truth to be the end result. The idea that most religions reject life and embrace death is yet another distortion of the truth. Religions (or Christianity at any rate) do indeed embrace life--as a gift from their creator--but neither do they fear death. They accept life as the wonderful thing that it is, but also believe that it is not the only form of existence, that there is a life after death. In that sense, to a Christian, there is no such thing as death (which means, to atheists and those of a similar persuasion, the cessation of existence), because the soul survives. Christians do not embrace death, for the same reason we do not embrace the Easter Bunny (and, to be fair, atheists do not embrace God): we believe it not to exist. Therefore, the only philosophy that could possibly be death oriented is a secular philosophy, because death to Christians merely means a second birth.
Coming back to the issue of abortion, Mr. Byakko says that "anti-life religionists pervert the value and rights of the living by assigning rights to the non-living, i.e., the unborn." Having already established that "Religionists" (or at the very least Christians, who make up around 33% of the world population) are philosophically unable to be either anti-life or pro-death, we can clearly see the falsity of the pejorative "anti-life" that Mr. Biakko has assigned to "religionists." Additionally, having established that it cannot be proven that the unborn are non-living, Mr. Byakko's description of the unborn as "non-living" is at best completely useless where rational argument is concerned, and at worst an outright lie.
What the Church is doing is not "assigning rights to the non-living," but assuming the humanity of the unborn, which is really the only morally conscionable course of action. At the very least (when the person performing/consenting to an abortion does not know whether fetuses are alive, and kills them, but they turn out not to be alive after all) abortion is criminal negligence. At the most (if fetuses are alive, but it cannot be known that they are alive, as the present situation stands) abortion is manslaughter. The rights of the living do not supersede the rights of the un-living, but the risk that murder is being performed en masse supersedes the inconvenience suffered by potential parents that is caused either by the necessitation of abstinence to avoid pregnancy, or the responsibility and difficulty of raising a child. Of course in cases where the life of the woman is in danger, most churches (including the Catholic Church) teach that the person who must make the choice in that case is the woman herself. In teaching that the life of the mother is as valuable as the life of the child, "religionists" in no way devalue life--they merely extend life to the unborn. To say otherwise, as Mr. Byakko has, reveals either a supreme ignorance, or an alarming willingness to bend the facts. In this case, I suspect it is a combination of the two.
A small after note: Throughout history, the humanity of groups has been denied in order to allow the persecution of them. The humanity of the blacks was denied in order to justify slavery. The humanity of the Jews was denied in order to justify the Holocaust. Now, the humanity of the unborn in being denied in order to justify abortion.
