Evangelical Switch from Pro-choice to Anti-abortion

The unborn child doesn't have legal status as a human being because it isn't considered a human being. Human being is an either/or proposition. Either it's human or it isn't. There's no "human enough to not be terminated" but "not human enough to punish the person who terminates it". But you're not arguing that it's a human life. You're arguing that it's kinda sorta like a human life.

And I think think you’re avoiding thinking about what you might feel about it. We’re human, our feelings on things that are human and do not easily give in to rational analysis like this, are important.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

But talking about our feelings on such subjects seems pretty much pointless.Regardless of our feelings the reality exists.

Genetically it is a human life; developmentally it goes through different stages about which we have increasing degrees of emotional or moral feeling. We can't legitimately call it anything but a human life simply because we know it will inexorably become a full human being if nothing interferes, because genetically it is unquestionably human.The only distinction that can be made has to do with stage of development. So if we want to include the subjective factor we'd want to make abortion legal only before our moral feelings are engaged. However, since I had a dream about losing a child with an abortion at only eight weeks -- it was probably about 18 months old in my dream -- I have to think of it as human at every stage from conception.Nevertheless I don't want to impose my view on others since abortion has become so entrenched in society. I don't want to criminalize it despite my view of it, I want to see it acknowledged as a human life in the terms I'm discussing here in the hope that the number of abortions could be dramatically reduced over time since I see it as largely a problem of education.The number of abortions has declined in the US roughly by half from well over a million a year in the nineties to around 600 thousand a year, making the total since Roe v Wade over 45 million in 2014 according to this site. That's a good trend but still way too many abortions for a civilized society.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But things do intervene, and some of that intervention is non-human. Some of it appears to be spontaneous. And as you have admitted, your argument even applies to contraception. For at least those reasons, I don't believe this line of argument settles anything.

It is absurd to use common natural interferences as an excuse to kill the fetus, which both Tangle and I have objected to.l People die all the time but we nevertheless object to murder.I do not want to argue about contraception. What I said is that the emay be some problems with it for a Christian. I'm certainly not going to impose it on unbelievers.

If abortion is a moral issue for someone then that person should not get an abortion.

xcept it's a moral problem for society so whatever can be done to reduce it would be good for the nation as a whole.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are not in a position to impose anything on anyone. That was not the argument. The argument is that a fetus is not inevitably going to become a human life. It is further along than an unfertilized egg, yes. But that does not make it human. Only potentially so. Murder applies to humans and not to potential humans.

Utter nonsense Faith.YOU believe and the "ProLife Cult" believes it is a moral problem for society but societal morality does not have to be controlled.You have no right to dictate the morality of others that does not effect you personally.

We base our entire law on the feelings of ourselves and others. Our moral codes of behaviour are built on feelings. How we feel about others determines how we treat them.
What action feels right is the basis of our entire society. Feelings are real.

I've arrived at this topic late, but this statement stood out.
it this genuinely your belief?What happens at the moment of birth that makes the foetus suddenly Human?Is it your belief that a millisecond before birth the foetus is not human, just a clump of cells. A moment later it is a living child?What causes this change in classification?
-position in/out of the womb?
-Intake of breath?
-crying?My partner is expecting our 3rd child. we have had scans which do indeed thankfully show a (very nearly) fully formed human living, growing, feeding, moving inside her womb.
He reacts to our voices, to those of his brother and sister, to music and to certain foods eaten by my partner.There is nothing on this earth that would make me believe this child is not alive. least of all the fact that he is currently located in my partners belly.To state that pre-birth, the child is not human is baffling to me. He is, in every physiological way human, he is in every neurological way human. (It is my understanding that brain waves can be detected in the foetus from week 10-12 of the pregnancy)What is it that happens at the moment of birth that changes the foetus from non-human to human?I'm not talking about a legal definition here we know that legal definitions have in the past defined people of colour, women, asylum seekers as less than or sub-human. so that is largely irrelevant here.What is it that make YOU think that a child, in the moments before birth, is not human?Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.

Just a post on my thoughts about abortion from a previous thread.I see all the discussion on whether or not it's moral to kill a baby/forming baby or clumps of cells and I just want to point out that even if this particular issues gets a clear answer (which I think is impossible)... it still wouldn't tell you if having an abortion entire is moral or not.Having an abortion affects many lives.The most direct are the mother and unborn baby.
But that doesn't mean we can discount or ignore the other less-direct ones.
And there can be situations where a "less-direct" life become even more important in the decision than the mother.Like if the mother is deciding on an abortion, but the situation is such that even if the baby is born... the mother doesn't get the child. Perhaps there is an agreement or scenario where the child will be going to another person/people who really want that baby and to take care of it. This would increase the "less-direct" moral influence of the care-giving person/people and decrease the "more-direct" influence of the mother.Every situation may very well be unique.
To speak of any of it specifically without mentioning that it's merely a single aspect of a multi-faceted whole is doing the idea of "morality around having an abortion or not" a disservice.It's a huge issue. And that vastness is a great big part of the problem.Here's more of what I was thinking from the earlier post I mentioned:

quote:

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Nobody knows (if an abortion is "good" or "bad.") There's not enough information available to tell.
Some of the information is completely impossible to find out.
That's why it's such a tough decision... if it were easy to know, it wouldn't be difficult.

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Some ideas to flesh out the point I'm making:

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-If a non-abortion had of resulted in a more-painful death (or life) of the fetus/baby anyway... then the abortion was a good thing for the baby
-If a non-abortion had of resulted in a good/wonderful life of the fetus/baby... then the abortion was a bad thing for the baby

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-If the abortion resulted in her life having the ability to make other people's lives happy/better (possibly even other children-of-hers) in a way she would not be able to if she had the abortion... then the abortion was a good thing for these other people (and possibly her other children)
-If the abortion resulted in her life not having the ability to make other people's lives happy/better... then the abortion was a bad thing for those other people.

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-If the abortion allowed her life to be happier/better... then the abortion was a good thing for her
-If the abortion led to her life being worse... then the abortion was a bad thing for her

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This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there are plenty of other effects that could be listed, I'm just showing how complicated the "was it good or bad?" question is.

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On top of all those possibilities... it needs to be understood that each item can quite possibly be independent from the others.
That is, it could be that the abortion was good for the baby (would have died worse anyway)... but bad for her (her life turned out worse because of the abortion). Or any other combination... maybe good for her, and good for others around her, and good for her future children (who might not exist without the abortion occurring)... but bad for the aborted fetus/baby. How do you weigh those against each other? How can you do it when all the "future possibilities" can't possibly be known at the time when the decision has to be made??

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Such weighing is required to know if the abortion "is good or bad."
But such weighing is impossible at the time the decision must be made... because it all happens in the future. Some of the important results may not be known until decades into the future.

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I hope this is enough to show that a single, easy answer for "Was she wrong or right to have the abortion?" is simply not available.
It's one of those super-hard decisions where we just have to do whatever we think is best based upon the information (and whatever future-prediction-abilities we have) at the time.

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THAT's why I think the decision is up to the woman-in-question, and no one else.
She is free to search out information from any and all sources (family? friends? anywhere?) but... even THAT is up to her.

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We can all judge her as much as we'd like.
But, to me, I think anyone judging harshly on someone making such a decision (forced into it or not) speaks a hell of a lot more about the character of that judgey-person than it does about the woman-in-question.

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Morality is a subject that should never be decided by society but rather on an instance basis and only by those people directly involved in that particular instance.Morality is none of societies business.

Morality is the rock our civilisation is built on. Do you think our law is devoid of morality.