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

[The Grand Nudger]

Does it? Where?

Numbers 5:16-28

Take the the abortion poll we had. There were 4 or 5 options. 
Tell me what makes your opinion objective cos i only see subjective opinions here.

What subjective facts have you seen anyone refer to in order to establish a position?   

Mainly the opinion of when it should be legal to kill an unborn child. A persons opinion is influenced by his/hers experiences making it subjective,  right?

Negatron.  What makes something subjective, is a reference to a subjective fact.  Not the objective fact that you've had experiences.  We tend to think that our experiences are capable of stacking the deck, just as our properly subjective opinions can, though, sure.  

I think that abortion sucks and that math is tedious.  That doesn't make abortion immoral, and 5+5 is still 10.  

One persons objective may be the mothers well being, the other persons objective is the babies well being

Whose truth is truer?

That would be an equivocation.  There are objective facts about babies and mothers.  If some situation with moral import involves babies and mothers, both sets of facts will need to be accounted for if we wanted a complete picture of the moral field.  

Take the case of an abortion.  It's objectively true that when abortion is illegal, babies still die.  It's objectively true that when abortion is illegal, more women die in the process.  It's objectively true that both babies and mothers are worse off, if dying or being killed is the metric, when abortion is illegal.  

We can handily separate legality and morality here, if we like.  As a matter of policy, it would be immoral for us to make abortion legal - but that won't certify every abortion as a moral act.   Abortion can be employed in the process of ethnic cleansing, for example.  It can be employed at a lower intensity when the expected race of the child is not socially acceptable.  We can come up with any number of other blatantly immoral reasons to abort.  For some, this would be enough to call it a day...and even if we moved down the scale from legit villain level to moderate inconvenience, those people will tend to insist or imagine that every person or most people getting an abortion falls into those negatively weighted categories.

That, in and of itself, is likely to be highly immoral of us.  Though it could be simple ignorance.

Let's take a minor detour and address that, lets address the worst connection that forced birthers want us to make.  Infanticide.  People who have abortions all belong to that category.  Infanticide is bad.  There are stories all over the world.  Facing invasion, people will burn down their houses, sow their fields with salt, strangle their children, and disappear into the woods.  Facing crop loss and famine, people will poison their kids in their sleep.  Newborns, toddlers, tweens, even young adults.  We're not sure that there's any "there" there, until some time after birth - but no such ambiguity exists in these cases.  These people killed people, their children.  

If you can see why the heuristic "infanticide is bad" falls apart, above, then congratulations.  You're considering a larger body of relevant facts.  Infanticide can be the most moral decision in a field made entirely of sub-optimal outcomes.  The decision a mother makes today to abort her child in the case of an abusive parent, so, spouse or family member isn't much different than the choice those resistors made facing invasion.  A desperately poor mother makes a decision similar to poisoning kids in their sleep.  

Those are fairly common reasons that people get abortions.  Let's tackle another commonly assumed to have a negative weight by forced birthers.  Just don't wanna..aint ready.  At the very least, these people are indicating that they would be neglectful (if not utterly incompetent) parents.  That they will harm the child, as well as themselves, by having a child.  We can see the consequences play out in teen pregnancy, and in the cyclical nature of teen pregnancy.  We need only take a persons word (or reasonably expect) that they are a terrible parent or that conditions in their life are unsuitable for children to accept that they have made a moral decision not to have one.  That their motivation is to reduce the amount of suffering, yes...to themselves, but also the suffering they will cause another by a unilateral decision they've made.  It's useful to remember that none of us asked to be born.  Giving birth is a situation with moral import as well.

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Not sure I grasp your point.  You accuse us of being murderers, then ask us to justify the death of bacteria.  It seems as if that justification should come from the pro-life crowd.

My point should be clear, I think. Only a superior moral reference can settle this issue. Avoiding this fact runs into problems, abortion is one instance when one simply can't have a coherent justification for ending the infant's life without earning the murderer title.

Fine, if you say so.  Quick question then.  Is it possible for a murder, or a murderer, to have ethical or moral warrant?  Are there any stories in your magic book about good kills?