Anti-abortion position:
Once God connects an egg with a sperm, a human life is created. It has a soul. Killing a fertilized egg is murder.
I don't agree with the premise that life begins at conception, but it has the advantage of being a clear line of demarcation. People cite the 139th Psalm:
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
This idea that life begins at conception has been hardened by political warfare. The post-15-week abortion ban was advanced by the Mississippi legislature on the assumption that the most they could do was nudge the Roe standards. That changes with the end of Roe. There is no compromising with God. The Mississippi governor, Tate Reeves, spoke on Meet the Press.
I believe that clearly a life begins at conception, and I am trying very hard to make sure that everyone in America knows that the overturning of Roe certainly puts the decision-making on abortion policy back in the elected representatives in each of the 50 states.
Reeves kept trying to dismiss the question but Todd kept bringing it up. Reeves said he did not think an abortion ban was "going to apply to those that choose to use birth control."
Chuck Todd went back to it a third time, asking if he would sign legislation banning contraception that stopped egg implantation.
Well, I don't think that's going to happen in Mississippi. I'm sure they'll have those conversations in other states.
Todd noted that he wasn't answering the question.
Jake Tapper on Face the Nation gave Reeves the same treatment, this time on the fact that the Mississippi law makes no exception for pregnancies due to incest. Tapper asked:
So, assuming the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the state of Mississippi will force girls and women who are the victims of incest to carry those children to term. Can you explain why that is going to be your law?”
Reeves said it was because the legislature passed it that way. Tapper asked it again:
Why is it acceptable in your state to force girls who are victims of incest to carry those children to term?Reeves didn't deny it, but said, " incest is less than 1%” of abortions in America each year."
Tapper persisted. Again, Reeves attempted to deflect, not deny.
Republicans have a problem. Anti-abortion advocates put a stake in the ground, saying human life begins at conception. That was the safe, orthodox, politically compliant thing to say. Reeves says it. Legislatures may have in mind punishing sexual carelessness or promiscuity, but hard cases emerge. Conceptions sometimes result from rape and incest. Sometimes there is a grave medical complication. Some popular and reliable forms of contraception stop implantation, not conception. And, of course, sometimes even when everyone is careful and does everything correctly, accidents happen.
When it was "just politics" there could be negotiation and compromise. But the God of Abraham says a fertilized egg has a soul. Abortion is murdering it.
[Note: to get home delivery of this blog by email go to https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
12 comments:
Where is my Conception Certificate? Where exactly are "rights" of the fertilized egg and fetus enumerated? And who decided that the rights of Born Females are secondary?
There is no way that men would put up with 9 months of pregnancy plus going through labor unless they actually wanted a child at that time. And they definitely would not avoid sexual activity unless they wanted to get pregnant.
Where is the generous compensation package for this act of eminent domain?
A fertilized egg is called a zygote – more like a paramecium than a human.
Why is it that extremists get to dominate the conversation? On the one hand, we have people who don’t want any limits whatsoever on abortion (some might even like to make it retroactive). On the other hand, we have the folks who want no abortion/no exception, not even for rape or incest. These same absolutists probably wouldn’t hesitate to terminate the life of a home invader, but draw the line at terminating a life that invades their daughter’s body as a result of rape. Very weird.
With this reasoning every fertilized egg of every creature has a soul, or we can throw all science right out the window along with civilization. SNL nailed it, by the way.
No wait, I forgot...only human eggs have souls.
Maybe cats too?
Life does not begin at conception. Life began on this planet about 3.5 billion years ago, and continues today. Life flows, as a river in a delta, separating, merging, destroying and creating the "tangled bank[s]" that help to define the water's flow.
Each of us participates, each but "a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” --and we are gone, along with most of the organisms that dwelt upon us and in us, outnumbering our own cells.
Conception itself is a process, not an event. Eggs and spermatozoa are no less living than you or I or any given slime mold or cyanobacterium. The life of an individual can reasonably be said to begin during conception, but that fertilized egg doesn't, for me at least, constitute much of an individual. The God of Abraham kills most of them, anyway.
The value we assign an individual life is contingent on our own values. Adherence to a set on Bronze-Age superstitions will yield one outcome, perhaps, but then those adherents have to explain why their texts prescribe death for mixing fibers or eating shrimp, but demand merely payment of a few shekels for causing the death of a fetus.
And if the mass of cells is a human being, what are we to make of a choriocarcinoma? May we kill it? How about a parasitic twin? We already know that zealots might prefer to allow an ectopic pregnancy kiil its host. Let's not bother with IVF, or the ethicists' famous fire-in-an-IVF-clinic problem.
We all assign values based on our experiences. My mother had a lifelong hole in her heart for the tiny sister I never knew. (It was in the days before Rh immune globulin; I'm the firstborn, Rh+; my brother nearly died, and Mom's third pregnancy was stillborn). I have a tiny hole in my male heart from a miscarriage almost fifty years ago. I understand why people oppose abortion, both from a Catholic perspective and from a fundamentally human perspective. My values also rule in favor of individual autonomy over one's own body.
I'm willing and eager to work with anyone who wishes to decrease the number of abortions by educating and empowering girls and women, educating boys, providing universal medical care (including pre-conception care, maternal and postpartum care, along with effective contraception (esp LARCs)), jobs, family leave, etc, etc. But if people don't really want to decrease abortions, but merely control women, they need a different audience. I'll be at the march in Ashland on Saturday.
This is all just an attempt to control all women, by forcing religious beliefs on all Americans.
Physician-assisted suicide is also in their sights, along with anything else these cults disagree with.
By no coincidence, those who are depriving women of their rights are the same ones seeking to suppress the Black vote. They’re desperately clinging to their white male privilege and dominance, but in the long run social justice warriors will prevail as they always have.
1. Abortion is a form of birth control that causes a lot of angst in society.
2. A case can be made for approving medical intervention for aborting a fetus for several situations:
a) rape
b) incest
c) saving the mother
3. All that the supposed Supreme Court ruling does is invalidate the Roe V. Wade decision, and pushed it back to the states to resolve with legislation. Some states will automatically shift to existing law: some banning any abortion regardless of reason.
4. The abortion proponents are expressing not only disappointment, but also suggesting that there will be other unintended consequences due to the decision.
5. Very few if any are supporting the decision to have each state resolve the matter with state legislation.
There are registered Democrats and Republicans who are against abortion. Just as there are Democrats andf Republicans who support abortion.
There is no easy answer, but there are many other issues for candidates and political leaders to worry about in the coming months.
It isn't enough that religious conservatives have their own churches, cathedrals, private religious academies, colleges and universities and live in their rural and suburban enclaves of religious bigotry and intolerance. They want to impose their throwback mythologies on the rest of us. But we are in the majority and we are not having it.
Thou shall not kill. No exceptions.....abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, driving Black
The USA is not a theocracy, like Iran. Didn't we all learn that in school?
In spite of claims by the comments and conservative media, there is likely nobody who "supports abortion".
The question is whether the mother decides or the government.
Forcing a woman to have an abortion (like in China) is as wrong as preventing woman from having an abortion (like in much of the US).
I guess this is the republican plan to ensure government plays a major role in our individual family planning.
It looks like Mississippi has taken steps to help women who will be forced to become mothers!
It has increased the tax credits for donating to antichoice "counseling centers".
It also rejected extending federal Medicaid postpartum coverage beyond 60 days. Medicaid covers nearly 6/10 births in that state.
Way to stand up for women and children!!!
Post a Comment