Have you read the posts on SI of fundamentalists advocating forcing 13 year old
girls pregnant by rape to bear the rapists' children? Forcing gestation of a fertilized
egg is more important than any other consideration including common sense.
Rules. Definitions. Force. Dismissal of suffering. Banning of RU486. Res ipsa
loquitur.
Res ipsa loquitur AS LONG AS you don't believe that the fetus is a person. Otherwise, quite the contrary.
I'm not even sure you're capable of looking at the consequences of the belief that the fetus is a person. But if you are, I think you will have to agree that FROM THAT WORLDVIEW it is not necessarily uncaring to force a 13 year old girl pregnant by rape to bear her child. You can have enormous sympathy for the girl, recognize that her rape and pregnancy are tragedies, but believe it would be an even greater tragedy to murder an innocent person to save her the trauma of bearing the child. Nine months out of her life to save the live of someone who on average would live 70 years. Is it more caring to destroy seventy years of human live to save a young girl the trauma of bearing a child, or is more caring to require a young woman to give 9 months of her life bearing a child she doesn't wan in order to save an entire lifetime of someone who might find the cure for Cancer? There is no good solution to this situation, but FROM THAT WORLDVIEW choosing life instead of death for one person at the cost of nine months out of the life of another person is NOT necessarily uncaring.
Personally, that's not my worldview. But just because I don't subscribe to that worldview doesn't mean I condemn those who do, and consider them uncaring because they have a different approach to caring for human life than I do.
From your worldview, they are uncaring about the mental health of a 13 year old girl.
From their worldview, you are not only uncaring of the entire life of a person, you are willing to condone murder to save a person the trauma of giving nine months of their life ti bear a child they don't want. And I don't think all fundamentalists simply discount the emotional pain of having to bear the child of a rapist.
Is it imposing their beliefs on the girl? Of course. But then, that's what society does. The whole purpose of substantive law is to impose the moral or ethical or religious views of one segment of the population on another segment of the population which does not share those moral or ethical or religious views. That is the primary function of substantive law. (Substantive as opposed to procedural, which tells you to go on green and stop on red, drive on the right, etc.)
Is it moral for Bill Gates to have 20 billion dollars all his own while other people face the choice of watching their children starve or stealing food to feed them? Our society says it is. That's a moral viewpoint which we enforce by putting the thief in jail. Is it caring to jail somebody whose child is starving because they tried to steal food to feed it? Our society says it is.
Is it okay to allow a parent to kill a child who is in what medical science believes is a permanant coma? The answer depends entirely on your moral worldview and values. Our society says it is not okay to actively kill the child, but it IS okay to withhold food and water from it and let it starve to death or die of thirst. This is caring according to the rules of our society. In other societies, it may well be more caring to actively kill the child rather than let it suffer starvation.
I think you need to be very careful when you accuse people of not caring. Sometimes you need to judge them by the standards of their worldviews, and realize that in fact, based on their beliefs, they are extraordinarily caring when under a different worldview they are cruel and vindictive. |
