After birth abortion?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Benny, redwoods are a good example. Pine cones are cheap, only a few germinate, and fully grown redwood trees are rare and highly valued. Fully grown eagles are highly valued and protected. Their fertilized eggs are similarly rare and highly valued. As such the penalty for damaging a pine cone is, as far as I know, almost non-existent, whereas someone who damages American bald eagle eggs commits a crime. The question is do we consider human life cheap as a pine cone or at least as valuable as the eggs of an endangered species?

The issue is, as you say, about what makes a human being human. My position is that what makes someone human is not simply abilities they currently have but also those that he or she could potentially have. Just as you own your past and present, you also own your future. Murder is wrong in part because it robs someone of their future...the experiences they would otherwise have had, the talents they might have developed, and the love they could have known. A person in a coma may not currently be consciously aware or have rational capacity but they could potentially regain consciousness. I do not see the difference between them and humans who, if allowed to develop naturally, have the potential to gain consciousness.

It is also about how and why we assign value, in general, and also in particular with respect to human life. If human life is valuable, then what is it about human life that is valuable? The follow-up question is, assuming there is something about human life that is worth preserving, what makes a human being - in its earliest stage of development - different from all other stages of development, states of health, and circumstances. What is it uniquely lacking that 1) makes someone human and 2) that gives value to life.

If there is no secular argument against abortion perhaps that is because there is no secular reason for assigning value to human life?

I submit to you that the burden is on the abortionist to demonstrate why one human being’s life is disposable while another’s isn’t. Is it because he or she is not consciously self-aware? Are not sleepers and people in comas unconscious? Is it simply enough that his or her life is inconvenient and burdensome? Are not the poor or disabled or dependent also burdensome?

I ask these questions seriously and not rhetoric to support the pro-life stance. The question of value is a philosophical problem that touches on every part of life. It’s not that someone has to have a fully developed value-system before expressing an opinion; but rather, how whatever rough-hewn hierarchy of values they do have informs their lives both individually and communally. It seems to me people who carve out exceptions so as to deny the rights and dignity of a specific class of human beings, just to accommodate their personal needs and wants, those people can more easily justify denying the humanity of other classes of human beings. The same foundational values, or lack thereof, that makes abortion morally permissible are the same as those that justify eugenics, infanticide, involuntary euthanasia, and genocide. This is not to say that women who have abortions and those who provide them are moral monsters. They can be still good people. But I would suspect they would find themselves horrified by the extreme logical conclusions of their own philosophical beliefs.