Abortion Debate

We’re in the middle of a battle between the anti-abortionists and the Roe vs Wade supporters, with more and more states passing laws prohibiting almost all abortions. I’m pretty much on the Roe/Wade side and am offended by the other side referring to their view as pro-life, implying that the other view is anti-life, a group made up of baby killers.

I’ve been gathering notes on thoughts as they pop in my head but I haven’t yet made sense of them. So I’m offering them up to see if they come together in some sort of coherence.

Miscarriage usually happens within the first twenty weeks of pregnancy and is sometimes referred to as “spontaneous abortion.” If Missouri’s new law says that anyone performing an abortion is guilty of murder, does that suggest that any woman who has a miscarriage is guilty of murder because her body has chosen to abort?

Is motion one of the determinants of lividity, and if so, then is a moving sperm, tadpoling its way up the uterine canal a life form? We even have a means of birth control called “spermicide,” which suggests that we actually do “kill” sperm with it. Is an egg swimming down to meet the sperm also a life form? Is a miscarriage Nature’s way of saying a fetus should not be born? What about a fetus that can be medically determined to be defective, that if allowed to be born would be a life-long burden medically, emotionally, and financially for the parents? What kinds of defect might be considered as justifying abortion? Deaf and dumb? Pre-natal genetic disorder that would cause death after only one or two years? Mental retardation? Spinal defect that would cause life-long quadriplegia? Defective heart valve? Down syndrome? Also, who would decide—the courts, the parents, or the woman?

Why do the courts and theologians all say that life is determined by the presence of a heart beat? The heart is only one of our organs, so why zero in on only the heart? The debate about when life begins—at moment of conception or at time of birth? Now, that’s a real philosophical conundrum. If one believes it’s at the moment of conception, then any douching by the woman after a successful (conceptive) sexual encounter would be considered murder. Isn’t an abortion simply a somewhat later method of douching? How much later would be too long—4weeks, 8 weeks, 16 weeks, beyond 16 weeks?

If our present methods of birth control aren’t working in some parts of the world, what about aborting the millions of children born into extreme poverty in communities without knowledge of or means for birth control, in places where children starve to death in childhood? 

If the earth is approaching its maximum capacity for sustaining mankind, why do various religions continue to say that we should “go forth and multiply?” There may have once been an ancient reason for multiplying to preserve the species, but that is no longer necessary. Shouldn’t we be striving to achieve zero population growth? If Nature considered all life to be sacred, then why does Nature have nearly all species produce more eggs or babies than can survive? If every baby sea turtle made it from sandy nest to the ocean, wouldn’t the seas soon be filled to the brim with sea turtles? Or the earth with rabbits, or quail, . . . or people?