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

[Nihilist Virus]

I have a problem with how people draft their moral views. In particular, moral rationalization.

I'm a carnivore and I have been my whole life.  As a Christian I thought nothing of it, but when I dropped that stupid religion I began to understand that humans are absolutely brutal to nonhuman animals. The fact that I eat meat does not change this.  I will not rationalize my consumption of meat and conclude it is good or benign simply out of convenience. I acknowledge that it is wrong to eat meat, and then I proceed to eat meat.

My position is that it is wrong to kill anything that is alive. This is my a priori belief. The fact that we must kill things to survive is the secondary issue.  To say that it is morally acceptable to kill living things simply because we must is an appeal to consequences logical fallacy.  If we had Star Trek levels of technology, then it would be more obvious that it is wrong to kill anything.  It is justified to take a life if that living being poses a direct and immediate threat to your own life (at least in my opinion it is), but we should never kill our own offspring. Particularly given that we are mammals and not reptiles.

Now, I understand that the law has nothing to do with morality. For example, adultery simply cannot be illegal, but adultery is definitely morally wrong. You are causing real harm in someone's life by committing adultery. (Open relationships and swinging are not things I'm lumping in with adultery.)

And I understand that as far as the law and even perhaps even morality is concerned, an unborn child is not a person.  It is a human being, but not a person.  A dolphin has more personhood than an unborn human.

I also understand that while it is my opinion that we should not ever sacrifice our offspring to save ourselves, there is no legal obligation for a parent to sacrifice himself/herself to save the child. Nor could this law ever exist.  If, for instance, a mother found herself in an odd situation where she had to choose between her left arm and her five year old son, she is not legally obligated to give up her arm.

So I think at this point I've laid out the case for why abortion should be legal.  A civilian should not be compelled to suffer great bodily harm or risk of death (which birth often is) for anyone else, particularly if that other human being does not even have personhood.

Yet the pro-choice crowd does not seem to stop at legality. Most of them, as far as I understand, think that abortion is morally justifiable. But my understanding is that inasmuch as a man is morally obligated to stand his ground and fight to the death to protect his family (despite having the legal right to flee and save his own life), a woman is morally obligated to protect her child while it is growing inside her.  So please explain to me why abortion is morally acceptable or what I might be missing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So please explain to me why abortion is morally acceptable or what I might be missing.

You said it yourself - a foetus doesn't have the status of personhood.  Morality is only applicable to persons.  I view abortion as no more morally wrong than burning off a wart, removing an appendix, or pulling a tooth.

Furthermore, I'm having more than a little trouble with your stricture that it is wrong to kill anything that is alive.  Does this include disease vectors?  Celery stalks?  Suppose the police shoot and kill a man who is holding a classroom of  children hostage.  Is killing this man immoral if it prevents the deaths of 30 children?  While I understand that appeal to consequence is a fallacy, it is a very subjective and variable one.


Boru

[Mermaid]

Yet the pro-choice crowd does not seem to stop at legality. Most of them, as far as I understand, think that abortion is morally justifiable. But my understanding is that inasmuch as a man is morally obligated to stand his ground and fight to the death to protect his family (despite having the legal right to flee and save his own life), a woman is morally obligated to protect her child while it is growing inside her.  So please explain to me why abortion is morally acceptable or what I might be missing.

1) Morality is subjective. 
2) A fetus cannot survive without my body. My body is my body, and nobody else's, even the fetus'. It's private. I don't have to explain why I find it moral or immoral because it's nobody else's beeswax. I don't think it's moral or immoral for someone else to have an abortion simply because it's not my body and none of my business. I don't get an opinion about that any more than I get an opinion on what my neighbor has for lunch.
3) How is a man morally obligated to protect his family more than a woman is?

[The Grand Nudger]

For NV - doesn't have much to do with atheism, I'm not sure why you'd think that ten years of atheism would impact your opinion here.

In a field of exclusively suboptimal choices, we seek to do the thing that would amount to the least objectionable.  This isn't a rule of humanity, mind you, just a rough description of what Good People™ do when they find themselves confronted with Bad Choices™, lol. In deciding the final moral value of any given one of those choices as an act and how that yields a moral conclusion on the person we are considering moral desert.  

Would you deliver a child in a warzone?  If you thought that this was your duty, to carry a child in your womb and deliver it no matter the circumstances of that childs life, have you accomplished some good, or sought your own self interested satisfaction in being dutiful? What kind of person does that, do you think?

[Shell B]

Atheists only lack belief in god. There is no shared view on anything else. Therefore, I'd have been surprised if it changed your mind on other things, such as abortion.

[The Valkyrie]

It depends on circumstances. What I find acceptable circumstances for abortion some won't agree with.

This isn't a dig at you, NV, more a general comment on the most vehemently anti-choice males out there. It's easy to be opposed to abortion when you are never in any danger of pregnancy.

[Figbash]

How do you know that a woman isn't protecting her family by having an abortion?

[The Grand Nudger]

That's a great one.  A person can choose between two or more duties, with any choice leading to failure of one or more of them. It may also be the case that any given choice threatens someone else's duty. Lets couch it in terms that men instinctively grasp, lol.

Imagine yourself as a female who doesn't want a child, can't support a child, and would be an absolutely shit mother.... but -can- ruin some guys life with a child. Whats the moral obligation in this case?

Reverse the genders. What's the moral obligation for the male?

In both cases it may be to elect for or make the case for the abortion.

[Losty]

You don’t have to get it. There’s nothing wrong with thinking abortion is morally unacceptable. Don’t have one. The problem comes when you try to force your moral views on a woman at the cost of her bodily autonomy.

[Succubus]

You don’t have to get it. There’s nothing wrong with thinking abortion is morally unacceptable. Don’t have one. The problem comes when you try to force your moral views on a woman at the cost of her bodily autonomy.

Or her life.