cocoalrose:
I was just looking at one of the babies tags I track (for my other blog) and saw a user’s post about how atheists and other pro-choicers need to stop saying that abortion is a religious issue. I would reblog the post, but I don’t want to get into it with some random girl on Tumblr whose mind is already made up. It’s kind of moot to debate it, so I’ll copy and paste it. Here is the post (and I’ve included the original poster’s tumblr in the source in case you’re curious):
You know what makes me really mad?
The people who think abortion is a “religious” issue.
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I had to believe in God to think killing people is wrong. Oh, so you’re an atheist? Do YOU think crushing people’s skulls and tearing them apart limb from limb is okay? No?! Then shut up.
The issue with abortion has nothing to do with God. Yes, he thinks it’s wrong. But according to the LAW of the UNITED STATES in which we all LIVE, murdering people is ALSO wrong. Because BIOLOGY has PROVEN human life begins at conception, it’s MURDER. Murder…is WRONG! Fancy that.
And also, if abortion is okay, how come I can’t kill people and go home like nothing happened?
ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY RIGHTS BECAUSE I’M A GIRL?!
HOW DARE YOU.
HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME KILL PEOPLE, YOU ANTIFEMINIST RELIGIOUS NUT, TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY CHOICES.
Yeah. That’s how we see you every time you talk.
So maybe you should stop talking.
End rant.
I thought about reblogging this…but there’s too much wrong with this that, again, it’s not even worth it to debate it with the original poster. All I’m going to get are more insults.
The reason she is so “insulting” - which in this case I think is just being passionate about what she believes, is because human lives are at stake and have been killed over this. You say, “yeah, I’m an ***hole about religion but that’s because religion kills people and takes away rights”; why do we not have the right to be an ***hole about abortion because we believe it’s killing people and taking away the most fundamental right, the right to life? There is no difference.
And before you reply saying “they’re not people!”… just hold it. I’m getting to that.
But I had to respond somehow, so here it goes:
1. If you’re going to claim that atheists can’t have morals because morals are derived from God, then you can’t also say that “…I didn’t realize I had to believe in God to think killing people is wrong.” Saying that just proves that your God isn’t necessary to being a good person.
Without the existence of God, or AT LEAST the existence of some unseeable, metaphysical, objective moral facet to the universe - both of which atheists deny - nothing can be right or wrong. In a worldview of absurdism, preferring one set of moral ideals to another for any other than practical or political reasons is nonsensical, because right and wrong are not existent. Morality is an illusion, and in the end, my going out and murdering six little children in their home has no moral significance at all.
But of course you don’t have to believe in God to believe that murder is wrong. Every person has that instinctual knowledge, regardless of their atheism or theism. “We can act in a moral way without God” is an obvious statement. It is when you say that things are objectively right or wrong while simultaneously saying that matter is all there is and that there is no God, that there is a problem.
2. No, I don’t think “crushing people’s skulls and tearing them apart limb-from-limb” is okay. But your God seems to praise infanticide: Happy shall he be, that taketh thy little ones and dasheth them against the stones! (Psalm 137:9).
The old atheist standby verse, I see, used universally to “prove” God’s wickedness and malice towards humanity. Doesn’t work. God is not advocating infanticide nor saying that it is man’s right to commit infanticide. He is describing the destruction of Israel because they turned away from Him. Context, please.
But, Biblical support aside, the “joys” of smashing skulls is not why people get abortions; they don’t use these methods solely to be malicious.
No, they don’t. They get abortions because they don’t want the responsibility. And I think that is just as bad.
It’s not like these women seek out opportunities to get raped and knocked up so they can skip on down to Planned Parenthood in front of a bunch of friendly and supportive protestors.
Are you trying to justify killing by saying that it is response to rape?
Rape does not justify abortion. Killing an innocent human being for the crime of another is detestable. You say that women don’t want the child because it is a memory, a living flashback, of that traumatic experience. So you are trying to clear away the crime of rape by killing a child. But you have become a worse offender than the rapist! You have blood on your hands.
So until you follow your Bible and throw your future babies against rocks, and enjoy the process of doing so, you should shut up.
Please show us all the verse reference for the command to throw babies against rocks.
People who do this are NOT following the Bible. You are using a blatant straw-man argument, exactly what you accuse of the OP of using.
3. ”The issue with abortion has nothing to do with God. Yes, he thinks it’s wrong. But according to the LAW of the UNITED STATES in which we all LIVE, murdering people is ALSO wrong.”
So you’re that lucky human who has the insight into the inner workings of God’s mind? Gotcha. But I’m going to have to disagree with you.
Eh?
Zygotes are not people. They’re zygotes. Blastocysts are not people. They are blastocysts. Embryos are not people. They are embryos. And, you guessed it! Fetuses are not people. They’re fetuses. Murdering PEOPLE is wrong, yes, but technically, these things are not yet people.
Ah, now we get to the meat of the debate. Are fetuses entitled to human rights like the rest of us?
This rolls around to the question of what gives human life its value, why we honor it and why it has any worth at all.
You seem to think that it’s some sort of “age” thing, where life only becomes valuable at a certain point in time, and before that it’s fine to kill it… well in that case why are YOU the one deciding where that age is? I might set it at, say, 15, and before that it is OK to kill toddlers and little babies… who is to say? What objectivity do you have?
What I believe is that life is precious at all stages, not because of how advanced it is in development, but because of the kind of thing that it is. And I don’t think it takes a belief in God to see that.
The problem here is I think you are going by your feelings. It doesn’t ‘feel’ wrong to kill a zygote or a fetus, therefore it isn’t wrong. But what feels OK or morally neutral can still be wrong. Keep that in mind.
Until a cluster of growing cells is self-sufficient enough to survive after being severed from an umbilical cord and placenta, I feel confident in saying it’s not fit to be a person yet.
Well this just goes back to my previous point. By the way… does self-sufficiency determine the value of human life… because I think you’d say that people on a life support machine or in assisted living centers have a right to their life. If these people are dependent on a machine or on others for life but still are valuable, why does this not extend to fetuses?
It doesn’t have a birth certificate. It doesn’t have a Social Security number. It is going to be a person, yes, but the word “going” does not mean “is.”
No… what it is “going” to be means exactly that it “is” that thing. A eagle embryo is still an eagle (by the way, which is why breaking eagle eggs is illegal in some states, because the eagle is the national bird.) It has not reached full development, but it is still a person. And as I said before, the worth of something’s life does NOT depend on is stage of development… it depends on what kind of thing it is. Human life is INHERENTLY valuable, not simply valuable at some age or point in life.
4. ”Because BIOLOGY has PROVEN human life begins at conception, it’s MURDER. Murder…is WRONG! Fancy that.”
This is hilariously wrong (and a tad dramatic, but I’ll resist the same ad hominem tactics the original poster has clearly employed). I would even go so far as to argue that human life began roughly 110,000 years ago. But even then, this is not when human life truly began. Life began with human kind’s ancestors at least 3 billion years ago when the predecessors to all life on this planet came to be. It’s been an ongoing process since that point.
You are playing word games, but why? This is semantics. Life begins at conception, and it also began 7 or so thousand years ago. Two different starting points. Don’t see the point of your statement.
5. “And also, if abortion is okay, how come I can’t kill people and go home like nothing happened? ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY RIGHTS BECAUSE I’M A GIRL?! HOW DARE YOU. HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME KILL PEOPLE, YOU ANTIFEMINIST RELIGIOUS NUT, TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY CHOICES. Yeah. That’s how we see you every time you talk. So maybe you should stop talking.”
Your straw man is showing. I’ve got no interest in killing anyone. Please stop implying that all pro-choicers really want to do is tear people limb from limb and lobby for the rights to do so. That’s not what this argument is about.
It may not be that gruesome, but it is PRECISELY what this argument is about. If fetuses are morally equivalent to grown people in terms of the value of their lives, then abortion really is like tearing people limb from limb. What you have to refute is that fetuses are equivalent to people int arms of the value of their lives.
And no. I will not accept that a cluster of cells which lacks self-awareness and even the ability to survive as anything other than a parasite has more rights to my body than I do. It knows less about the world than an earthworm.
1. Self-awareness does not determine the value of human life. A little boy in a coma as a result of an accident is not sentient but still has a right to life. Think about the implications of what you are saying.
2. People’s status as a “parasite” doesn’t change as they grow up. All throughout our lives, we rely on other people for food, security, and love, just as a fetus relies on its mother for oxygen and food… do we now have a right to kill everyone who, for instance, borrows money or buys groceries, because clearly their “parasitic” nature makes them worthless. You don’t realize that the reasons you don’t value the lives of fetuses extend to adult, developed people.
3. Nor - according to you - does it change over time that a person is simply a cluster of cells… even the biggest, strongest bodybuilder out there is only a cluster of cells, albeit a little more complex and a little bigger than a fetus… but if you don’t value fetuses because they’re only “clusters of cells,” then why do you value the lives of other grown human beings?
This is not to say that I love abortion. This is not to say that I have detached my feelings from my opinions on it. And assuming so only shows your ignorance on the real issue. Abortion is not a happy thing. The circumstances leading to it are often just as dismal. Sure, it makes me sad that some people see it as an out of responsibility, but considering that these people cannot care for a child and that there are already too many children in this world who are sitting in orphanages, I don’t think ending a fetus’s growth (when it cannot feel pain and doesn’t have any knowledge that it even exists) is the worst thing to happen on this planet.
It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. It’s either right or wrong. So don’t play these games about “well it’s unfortunate but it has to be done,” if it is wrong it oughtn’t to be done no matter the circumstances.
Instead of making this procedure illegal, we need to be focusing our efforts onsafe sex. Ways to fight rape. Ways we can prevent abortion. If we become better at preventing the things that LEAD to it, we’ll be better of than just making the procedure illegal and pushing it into the dangerous world of black market surgery. It needs to be an option people can seek out safely.
Making abortion illegal isn’t necessarily our goal as pro-lifers. It is certainly a big one, but an even bigger one is to have people see the MORAL PROBLEM with abortion… if technically it is illegal but everyone still wants to get an abortion because they still think it is OK - but can’t only because it is illegal - what have we really accomplished?
You cannot legislate your ideologies on other people.
Oh yes, you can. Politics is ENTIRELY based on ideologies. What causes problems is whether or not that ideology is worthy of legislation. that’s what we need to discuss.
I’m an atheist and I think abortion is an unfortunate thing; I think it’s sad that circumstances exist that make it a reality. But I can’t say that I would or wouldn’t ever get one, and I can’t judge those who have made the decision to. I am in charge of my body, and my body only. I do not have the right to tell another woman that she cannot do with her body what she wants. No matter what I think about abortion, I respect what should be a woman’s right to choose whether or not it is right for her.
“NO matter what I think about abortion, I respect… a woman’s right to choose whether… it is right for her.”
This is sickening. I am sorry, but that is what I feel. You can’t invoke “someone’s “right”” to any extent. When someone chooses to commit a moral evil that harms others, I will stand up and combat their “right” to do that. I WILL “suppress” their right. Every time. If you don’t like it and I can’t convince you, then you and I and our respective groups will just have to fight for the direction America is going. because I’m not giving up this easy, and neither will people with my convictions.
The person who countered all these pro-choice arguments deserves a medal. A big shiny freaking medal. Thank you!
