I don't have a
disagreement with their idea but I do disagree with their figures and the
notion that their idea is a solution.
The reason I posted the Respect for Life piece was to try to understand better this great chasm between the two sides on the abortion issue. I continue to scratch my head over the way people of both sides recognize the stalemate but are unreceptive to any attempt to find common ground. The Respect for Life approach is apparently an attempt at the latter so I thought I'd run it up the flagpole here. The pro-choicers were receptive to it and you didn't totally reject it out of hand. I guess that's a good sign.
There are clearly some profound differences between the camps that can't be either proven one way or the other or bridged.
The most salient one is the question of whether a fetus is a person or not. As I've struggled to understand the person side, I've found two potential justifications. One, of course, is religion, all of which I reject out of hand as outmoded superstition. The other is sentimentality, which has some resonance with me, but not enough resonance to counterbalance all the arguments on the other side.
The second difference is life at all costs vs. quality of life. Best I can tell, the argument here is about control: who makes the decisions. Do we choose for ourselves or let nature take it's course? Those in the latter camp would mix this question with the first difference--whether a fetus is a person--but I think they're sufficiently distinct areas of inquiry since those who are latter camp seem to have the same perspective about individuals making their own life or death choices, as well. A large part of this attitude probably comes from religion, where God makes those decisions, but perhaps some of it may be just personality traits. I don't know. We haven't talked enough about euthanasia for me to have much of a handle on that.
The third arm of the chasm is about the carrying capacity of Earth. This is really a secondary issue, I think, because there doesn't seem to be much interest in either overtly reducing the population or overtly increasing the population, although many on the choice side seem to think population reduction or at least reduced population growth would be a fortuitous byproduct. The question comes into play more as a choicer reaction to the lifer uninterest in the population impact of their position. It seems intuitively obvious to me that humans are taking up more than their fair share of the Earth. The lifers seem to think that their perspective is intuitively obvious, too, for example, the argument that the Earth's population would fit into Colorado. Of course, there's no way to prove this either way and there's much subjectivity about quality of life involved. There also seems to be an large element of human-centrism, which may be based in religion-based dominance of humans, a different appreciation of the environment, or simply selfishness. While I can understand the point of view of those who think that the world is not becoming overpopulated, I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would find it desirable to have a larger population. I see no advantage in that at all.
Tim, are you still there? I know I've gone on and on. I'm just ruminating. Going through a grieving process over the apparent unfeasibility of bridging the chasm. I was just reviewing in my mind what I've learned about the chasm and typing as I did so. (I subscribe to the school of thought that if you haven't written it down, you haven't thought it through.) So here it is FWIW. I'm not really debating. I don't know that there's anything left to say.
Karen |
