The abortion paradox

[The Grand Nudger]

I told you already. Whether it can survive without the mother or not.

That seems to be a very arbitrary measure. And it seems more reasonable to me that many more adamant pro-abortion advocates. Many decisions boil down to a judgement call and I can understand why someone would believe this to be one of them. Generally, I believe people should try to base life and death choices on firmer criteria or at the very least defer in favor of the possibility that we are talking about a human life even if it is unborn.

We are defering in favor of a human life, the mothers.

Especially when we are talking about late-term abortions or those currently considered to be on the edge of viabiity. Is there really that much difference between three-months and four.

Yep.

And when we look at an ultrasound of a very early term fetus, for all intents and purposes, it looks human.

Time to grant statues legal personhood. I know that this isn't what you mean, but the statement is so simplistic that the most concise way I could express my dissatisfaction with using this as some determining factor was the above.

With respect to choice, I'm reminded of the movie, Crimes & Misdemeanors. In it, Martin Landow plays a doctor that murders his mistress to prevent his wife from discovering the affair.

Why am I not surprised that the analogy being offered centers around murder?

His brother, played by Jeffery Orbach, arranges the hit. Raked by guilt the doctor threatens to confess the crime. To this the brother replies, "The time to confess was to your wife about the affair. Not now. This is murder."

He still has the choice to confess though, doesn't he, really not the best analogy.

My point is that the time to make reproductive choices is before pregnancy, either by contraception or abstinence.

Ideally sure, unfortunately "ideally" doesn't get us very far in the real world.

Once a child has been conceived, I believe the parents have tacitly assumed a moral responsibility for the being they created and primary responsibility for the care of the child until it becomes an adult. There are appropriate time windows in which to make choices and a time after which one must live with those choices.

I still don't see much in the way of consideration for the human life I mentioned above. I'm not sure why one's own rights just disappear the moment sperm hits an egg. Look, I understand that you feel that "life begins at conception", but the way you feel about something isn't exactly the sturdiest of posts to which we might tie legality. Life does not equal personhood, personhood confers rights, not life. Make the case for personhood and you'll have more than a mantra. Here's an interesting thing to ponder over. Should assailants who (directly by their assault) cause a miscarriage be charged with murder? That's the kind of case I'd be looking for if I wanted to set a precedent that could lead to the adoption of a pro-life platform in public policy. Such a case would certainly have more to say on the subject of abortion than a murder movie....

Some other people have argued that by my logic, people should also allow diseases to progress naturally without medical intervention. This argument is severely flawed. Pregnancy is a natural function of the body.

You think a disease is an "unnatural function"? Good luck with that. The very reason that diseases are so troubling is that they leverage the "natural functions of our body" to perpetuate themselves.....not entirely unlike a fetus, eh?

A healthy pregnancy is not a disease or bodily malfunction that requires medical treatment.

No, we don't consider pregnancy a disease, or a malfunction, but it does require treatment. One such option is abortion.