PHOOEY!

[dalebert]

The only time I've ever experienced someone changing their opinion on abortion is when they changed their opinion on the presence of a god: atheists becoming pro-lifers when they become Christians, and Christians becoming pro-choicers once the scales drop from their eyes and they become atheists.  It's fundamentally a religious issue for most people (including many of the atheists -- a reaction to the pro-life position of Christians).  And the way to figure out if someone's position is based on science is to ask, What piece of scientific information can I give you that will change your mind?

I was hardcore pro-choice, very black and white, back when I was what most would call a liberal. As I've become more libertarian in my views, I would have to say that I lean more pro-life than I used to be, keeping in mind that my position was more political back then and I am very a-political now. Politics has such a different meaning for me now. I just see it as a tool of manipulation for people who justify exerting control over innocent people. I'm agnostic and have been since about the time I was a teen. I have some difficulty with the notion of atheism because even that requires a degree of faith without evidence. If someone presents a specific theory about the possible existence of some kind of non-human being, I will be glad to present my degree of optimism about the possible existence of such a being.

I guess some scientific information that would change my mind on abortion would be some information that indicates that it really is very black and white. As a for instance, lets say they prove scientifically that the brain of an infant is completely dormant and lifeless until it leaves the mother's body. They prove it's essentially a lump of lifeless meat and then suddenly something about the birthing process switches it on like a light switch. I would then say it has no rights up until that point and would be 100% pro-choice. And in the other direction, perhaps you could present convincing scientific evidence that the fetus is immediately viable and capable of living on it's own from the moment of conception and some simple procedure is developed to remove it and keep it alive until it develops fully, with a decent chance at full development. In other words, remove it from her body, she can walk away never to see it again, and someone else can take care of it. Then I could perhaps be 100% pro-life.

In the meantime, it seems like it's a little fuzzy. One the one hand, pregnancies are very delicate to start with anyway. Lots of pregnancies end without the woman even knowing for certain she was pregnant. When a woman can essentially take a few pills which alter her body chemistry temporarily (I'm anti drug war) and suddenly the fetus just gets rejected, it's seems like quite a stretch to call that "murder". On the other hand, consider when a woman knows very well she's pregnant and is to the point where if labor was induced, the baby has a pretty good chance of developing normally with a little bit of medical help (say 6 or 7 months-ish). Then lets say that she decides she doesn't want to have it. At this point, to be sure they don't hurt her in the process, they induce labor until just the head is showing, then drive a spike into the baby's brain. Now technically and perhaps legally you didn't just kill a viable infant. You supposedly performed a medical procedure on the mother. Whaaaaaa? Seems like a pretty clear act of aggression against a human being at that point.

In a completely godless world, I still think there is evolution which favors the survival of the species, and I think it would just be part of our instinct to react to that. It seems like a healthy and rational human being watching such an act being committed would see it as criminally insane behavior and see the surgeon and perhaps even the consenting woman as a threat to the survival of our species and might feel justified to react with some degree of force. Those are the extremes and there's a lot of gray area in between. Personally, any time it involves going into a woman's body and physically attacking the fetus, I certainly find it deeply disturbing, and that's rooted in my belief that aggression is wrong, whether or not any sort of deity exists. On the other hand, I can't see myself taking on the role of policing abortions, partly because it is such a gray area regarding rights. I know that if I were a woman, I might be ok with taking the morning after pill, but I would certainly not feel morally justified in having a procedural abortion. I think I would struggle with that decision for the rest of my life.

I posed a question once related to this. How pro-choice or pro-life would an anarchist society tend to be? I am inclined to think it would tend more toward pro-choice simply due to the level of intrusiveness needed to monitor women's bodies. If we expressed the level of morality needed to keep various attempts at government in check, and reasonably prevented them from growing powerful and abusing our rights, such a society wouldn't tolerate that level of intrusiveness into personal privacy. There would likely be a market for abortions though it would tend to be discrete, but it might be a bit risky to attempt a really late term abortion considering the enthusiasm that some organizations might have that would consider it murder and would therefore consider it justified to react against. Unlike me, they might take it upon themselves to police what they consider to be an act of aggression against a person with rights. Hard to say for sure. Thoughts on that?

Perhaps a new thread: Abortion in an Anarchist Society.