Pro-life Hill gathering every Tuesday

I see what you’re thinking, but I still don’t think that calling an unborn child a clump of cells is a fair representation. These cells have huge potential unlike the way we would think of ‘normal cells’. A toddler is still in an extremely early development stage in comparison to what he/she will be full grown. Why is it wrong to kill them and not the child still in the fetus? Just because we can see them and they look so darn cute? The only difference between a developing toddler and a developing unborn child is that one is developing inside the womb and the other is developing outside.

“Why don’t female babies have right to choose to not have their heads squashed, thrown in the trash and then incinerated? ”

Female babies most certainly do have legal protection against such an act. A female blastocyst or fetus – not so much. The question is whether/when that clump of cells becomes a person with inalienable rights. The moment of fertilization? The 8-cell stage? When the neural tube begins to form? THAT is where subjective moral judgment comes in, and where people can reasonably disagree.

Talk of “murder” presupposes the decision on when the fetus becomes a person. You can use all the inflammatory language you want, but you’re just pissing in the wind until I’m convinced that a clump of cells is a human being, protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And I – along with most Canadians – are not convinced.

I don’t think – and the majority of Canadians agree with me – that the federal government should be making this subjective moral decision, nor should they be forcing Canadian women to live with the consequences of that decision.

This is just classic: “I would argue that people who think un-born babies aren’t people are deliberately distorting discussion to make themselves feel good about infanticide.”

In other words: ‘Anybody who thinks they disagree with me is fooling themselves, because I’m totally right”

Kevin: I understand that people have differing opinions on the value of a *potential* human, but giving rights to something that *might* become a person someday has huge real-world consequences for a person whose potential has been actualized. Funny how the pro-life (or should I say Pro-State-Enforced Pregnancy?) crowd don’t sweat the rights of the women who would be affected by their imposed morality.

I don’t understand – do you feel that it’s not morally subjective?

Well, no, you made it seem like you’re objecting to the line of argument about enforcing subjective moral judgements. If abortion is not morally subjective (by which I assume you mean that it’s always wrong), then how is it that so many of your compatriots (a majority of them, in fact), hold the opposite view? Or are you saying that your view is correct, and broad societal consensus is not important on such a vital moral and ethical question?

I would take these mouth-stapled protesters a little more seriously if their stance on abortion wasn’t accompanied by a number of associated beliefs which make their position incoherent at best, and insincere at worst. For instance, strident anti-abortion activism is typically associated with equally strident opposition to contraception, and very rarely with a demand that in-vitro fertilization is banned and criminalized alongside it.

So I can assume you’re in favour of criminalizing in-vitro fertilization?

As it happens, your opinion on in-vitro fertilization is incredibly relevant, since it involves the creation of human embryos (which you deem to be morally and legally equivalent to a human being) with the express purpose of having some of them discarded or frozen indefinitely (or in some cases used for a non-procreative purpose such as stem cell research).

It makes it a little more difficult to take your views seriously, when you aren’t even willing to apply your principles consistently across the board.

I was simply asking you to clarify your position. I appreciate that you’re honest enough to admit you don’t know much about the subject.

For the record, embryos are frozen indefinitely or discarded because the process of in-vitro fertilization involves (typically) paying for a number of eggs to be fertilized, but not all of the viable ones are actually used (because parents might only want one child, but two eggs were successfully fertilized or something along those lines). These are the “surplus” embryos that are at question.

My own view is that a consistent opposition to abortion on the grounds that a blastocyst has the same rights as a person demands that things like in-vitro fertilization also become illegal (or else much more expensive), not to mention “superfluous” things like stem cell research. A revision of the criminal code would be in order as well, since we’d need to consider the murder of a pregnant woman, for instance, the same as the murder of two different people.

Of course, that typically doesn’t get mentioned by opponents of abortion such as yourself. I mean, either that, or you’re valuing different lives differently, in which case your entire argument falls apart like a house of cards. But of course, if you *do* mention all of those associated measures that a consistent view of criminalizing abortion would entail, the already shaky support for curtailing abortion rights drops even further.