:-)
Where there are so many angry people on both sides, it's always good to let people make up their own minds (if they have one), imo- if that is possible. And in this case it certainly is possible for the government to stay out of the question. There are few other issues, save for drug and sex laws, where the sides are so polarized. Drug use and sexual behavior should be questions also left to adults, I think, for the same reason that abortion is left to adults. While we have to legislate a baseline morality, for the already born, we should keep it focused as much as possible on the highly practical things we want to prevent- like already borns murdering or raping other already borns, or stealing, or physical brutality. Why? Because society doesn't function well if those things happen. Society functions just fine with abortion, and it would probably function less well (from my POV anyway) without it.
It doesn't matter that you could use the same arguments to justify infanticide. That is irrelevant, and it is merely a desperate appeal to emotionalism. Nothing particularly wrong with infanticide- it just leads to a slippery slope of delineating a cut off in already born people which is difficult to resolve. Also, humans tend to get attached to things once they see them- and thus everything become much more emotional at that point- it's not logical, but it's the way people are, and must be taken into account.
It also doesn't matter if fetuses are people, I don't really care if they are or aren't, and I don't see why it makes any logical difference. Our society kills people. We simply make choices about which ones it is ok to kill. People have always killed people. We even have precedents telling people which people it is ok for them to kill (the body of case law on self defense). |
