Oh dear, Grainne, you've proposed not to talk about it and proceeded to talk about it! You also oppose "inflammatory" language, when the language you oppose is distasteful but unfortunately accurate, which is why it's distasteful -- those who would make abortion illegal support, by definition, mandatory gestation. Except for those who can get outta here and go someplace else.
(I know you aren't among those who advocate mandatory gestation.)
You choose to use the word "murder" for abortion. Doing that involves two intellectual errors, from my POV, and is also inflammatory. These are the errors as I see it:
1) defining "human person" in a notional, religious, inflammatory, and tendentious (to me) way that includes in the category even fertilized ova. This is the intellectual failure (imo) of failing to comprehend that
potential XYZ does not = XYZ.
2) failing to acknowledge a part of the definition of murder, the definition that distinguishes even capital punishment and military killings from murder: illegality; and thus using it incorrectly. That may be rhetorically useful as a device, but it's certainly inflammatory.
Capital punishment foes (I am one) often call state killing "murder." I don't, simply because I know the definition of the word.
This is the main thing I want to say about your continued discussion of the subject, though:
Regarding this statement of yours:
"I have already stated that I don't believe spontaneous miscarriages are murder, because there is no intent to destroy a fetus, to answer your question (again). Not sure why you keep bringing this up."
You misunderstand the question I asked in bold type. That's my fault. Let me try again, removing the phrase "holocaust of sorts," because I can see that that connotes intent, which I didn't mean. I should have asked it this way:
"If you think all abortion is murder, then it would seem that all those spontaneous ones are horrendous, or even just deeply sad and distressing to contemplate -- tragic like the Bubonic Plague, or AIDS, or the fact that our parents and soldiers and friends will inevitably be parted from those who love and need them one day by death. Sad, painful to contemplate, grief-worthy. Are those millions, hundreds of millions of routine abortions (spontaneous) grief-worthy? A tragic aspect of the human condition? To me, they aren't tragic or grief-worthy. That's because it's cells and not persons."
I would really be grateful for an answer to that question: How sad is the fact that hundreds of millions of abortions take place every month, naturally? |
