Abortion: 10 years as an atheist and I still don't get it

[The Grand Nudger]

---

You;d be wrong.  You employed the terms we use to denote instances of killing which -aren;t- legal or moral, but ofc there are instances of killing that would fit any of those that we do consider justifiable and can be legal.

Honestly, I'd say that a person who just "can't get" what sort of moral justifications there are for abortion isn't really unaware of there being such justifications..they just don't agree with them.

Broadly speaking, if having the child is worse than not having the child - then we consider not having the child the moral option..just like we do in any other example of an endless list of similar situations.  If we can acknowledge that it;s possible for this situation to present itself, then wev'e acknowledged the moral defensibility and justification for abortion.  We might still, for our own personal reasons, reject that option.  To roll the dice and do the worse of the two..hope that things turn out better.  That;s okay, obviously, as a decision a person makes for themselves.

---

The only difference between the ones I listed is the questionable personhood of the fetus, it was not an incorrect statement. Homicide is legally and morally wrong. It can be justified, but perhaps I was just injecting my opinion in a way to switch to that topic.

Not even remotely. Genocide patricide and homocide all find legal and morally justifiable manifestations in our world, regardless of the personhood of a fetus or, indeed, the personhood of the people discussed under any of those headers.

We just don't like to -call- them genocide, matricide, and homocide, we reserve those terms for the bad versions of each.

This is, ultimately, why forced birther activism has failed. They've imagined that personhood is the magic trick. It isn't. Compelling interest is compelling interest even when both parties are people. Just as in any consideration of some legally compelling interest, there are many ways that cross purpose moral interests can present themselves to us. Complicated opinions on these subjects manifest themselves in religious sensibilities all the same, but get condensed in the fullness of time to simple deontology wholly unrepresentative of the factors that lead to it's creation.