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Originally Posted by Mrs. M
I regard abortion as the killing of an innocent but I must put the mother's well-being first.
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You see, this is what does not make sense. We are starting with the premise that a newly-conceived embryo is a person, a human being, and that consequently there is no moral difference between an early-term abortion and infanticide. (I don't personally agree with that in the least, as you know, but that's irrelevant -- we begin with the premise.)
If the pregnancy is a threat to the mother's
life, not merely her mental health, then we have the weighing of one person's life against another's, we have equivalent harm, and one can then decide that the mother is not obligated to sacrifice her life to save the baby's. But if it's something much less than her life that is endangered, then it's rather a different story. To spare the poor girl emotional trauma, you are going to
kill someone else? I'm sorry, but that makes no sense, and I don't believe for a second that you would kill an actual newborn baby for a reason like that. So if you believe, for moral purposes, that an embryo is the same as a newborn baby, why would you kill the embryo just to spare its mother emotional stress?
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I agree that counseling may help but the trauma of rape itself, compounded by carrying the rapist's baby for nine months isn't something that can be "cured" overnight.
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I'm not suggesting that it could be, or that there wouldn't be lasting harm. It's very unfortunate, but then, it's very unfortunate that she got raped in the first place. Often we are faced with a choice of evils where nothing we can do is ideal. In this case, we are faced on the one hand with a chance of increasing the emotional trauma of the rape victim, and on the other hand with committing a murder. Granted that neither of those is ideal or to be desired, which one would you say is the lesser evil?
If you say it's the murder, then you don't really believe it's murder.
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Suppose the girl was a 14 year old virgin and she was raped? Don't you think it would be better to abort the baby than have the mother go through nine months of pregnancy that she would have to explain to everyone?
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Me? Certainly! But then, I don't think the abortion would be murder. What doesn't make sense is that you, who
do believe it would be murder (or so I've understood you to say), would think that was better.
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Can you truly imagine what that would do to a child? Living with the rape would be bad enough but having to give birth at such an early age could endanger not only her physical health but her mental health, too. Exceptions must be made!
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Oh, yes, I can imagine it! But the fact remains, you are setting against that admittedly very undesirable outcome, another outcome that surely is even worse: someone being murdered.
If you truly believe that abortion is murder, then there can be no exception made merely to protect the mother's mental health -- only to protect her life. If you don't agree, then I submit you don't truly believe that abortion is murder, because you reject the unavoidable logical consequences.