Comments on: If Liberal Individualists Had Campaigned Against Abortion

By: David Mills

David Mills — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:14:45 +0000

One likes to be kind to commenters, but this is a ridiculous statement. Moral conservatives aren’t “eluding” the location of the unborn child because it is not a “problem” in the sense Mr. Mendez asserts that it is. The problem here is that some people think the child’s natural location in his mother’s womb a moral problem in itself. (Though it may, of course, be a practical and pastoral problem for some mothers.) To disagree with people who assert that deficient morality is not to elude anything, but to recognize a natural relation and the moral responsibilities it brings.

By: Sergio Méndez

Sergio Méndez — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:00:08 +0000

“In such a parallel world of possibility, we might now regard the moment of birth itself as relatively unimportant, a distracting and arbitrary instant in the growth of a human being.”

The problem is not the moment of birth. The problem, which conservatives elude over and over, is WHERE the fetus is located (inside the body of a personn).

By: Ray Ingles

Ray Ingles — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:25:43 +0000

Harry – In this, as in so many other areas, your accounts of the motives and beliefs of others fail to match my experience.

By: harry

harry — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:45:16 +0000

In my experience, people do not oppose abortion because they are religious – they see the killing of unborn children as self-evidently barbarous for the same reasons that they recognise the religious dimension, which essentially relates to an acceptance of dependence and a certain view of human dignity.
Having been involved in the Pro-Life movement for years (since before Roe) it has been my experience that it is easy to get sincere Christians involved in the movement and nearly impossible to get the non-religious involved. It is not like there are a plethora of “atheists for life” groups out there. Waters is right, though, that involvement in the Pro-Life movement seems to hinge on one’s view of human dignity. If humanity is no more than the accidental result of mindless, purposeless processes, as atheism sees it, then humanity has no more of a God-given, inalienable right to life than does a cow. And just as with cows, it is not all that big a deal if they get butchered by the millions for the convenience of others.