I don't see a reason why one is appalling if the other isn't also.
Who said it's not appalling?
I'd go so far as to say that most people who believe in defending the right to abortion don't like abortion -- they would prefer that people be able to avoid the whole mess if possible. That's why pro- and anti-abortion groups have been known to work together on pre-emptive family-planning measures: they both want to minimize the number of times the issue even comes up.
Similarly, if you can ease the problems which make people not want to bring kids into this world -- such as the problems which are killing so many of them so young -- you decrease the demand for the whole operation.
The larger picture is one of overall harm minimization: not just harm to fetuses, but harm to children who will have to live with all sorts of suffering for a lot longer, and harm to parents who can't support those children. (Just as people think starving a child is a greater harm than poisoning a rat, people can believe that aborting a creature that hasn't yet achieved full consciousness is less harmful than bringing it into a state of prolonged suffering. But the details of that are a whole different argument, full of grey areas and uncertainty, and separate from the point I'm trying to make here.) Prohibition isn't a simple answer; as we've seen, the abortions will still happen, but in ways which make it more likely that the mother will suffer or die as well. The most productive way we can deal with a thorny situation is to build as much common ground as possible, rather than sidetracking from the huge things that need doing on that common ground and focusing only on the wedge issues.
We should save the point-scoring and logic-chopping over matters of principle till after we've attacked the crisis we all agree on.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-08-25 05:06 am (UTC)I don't see a reason why one is appalling if the other isn't also.
Who said it's not appalling?
I'd go so far as to say that most people who believe in defending the right to abortion don't like abortion -- they would prefer that people be able to avoid the whole mess if possible. That's why pro- and anti-abortion groups have been known to work together on pre-emptive family-planning measures: they both want to minimize the number of times the issue even comes up.
Similarly, if you can ease the problems which make people not want to bring kids into this world -- such as the problems which are killing so many of them so young -- you decrease the demand for the whole operation.
The larger picture is one of overall harm minimization: not just harm to fetuses, but harm to children who will have to live with all sorts of suffering for a lot longer, and harm to parents who can't support those children. (Just as people think starving a child is a greater harm than poisoning a rat, people can believe that aborting a creature that hasn't yet achieved full consciousness is less harmful than bringing it into a state of prolonged suffering. But the details of that are a whole different argument, full of grey areas and uncertainty, and separate from the point I'm trying to make here.) Prohibition isn't a simple answer; as we've seen, the abortions will still happen, but in ways which make it more likely that the mother will suffer or die as well. The most productive way we can deal with a thorny situation is to build as much common ground as possible, rather than sidetracking from the huge things that need doing on that common ground and focusing only on the wedge issues.
We should save the point-scoring and logic-chopping over matters of principle till after we've attacked the crisis we all agree on.