Can Men Speak on Abortion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uInK5r1Y95A

Abortion and the breath of life

Presidential aspirant Pete Buttboy recently said:

[Pro-life people] hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. Even that is something that we can interpret differently. . . . No matter what you think about the cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, ‘I might draw the here. You might draw the line there.’ The most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pete-buttigieg-defends-abortion-suggests-bible-says-life-begins-with-breath/

1. What are the many ("lots") of Bible passages that say life begins with breath? I'm only aware of two explicit passages:

Gen 2:7

Ezk 37:1-14

i) These aren't discussing the inception of life in general. Gen 2:7 is about the creation of Adam. But that's unique. That's hardly the norm for human beings.

ii) The Valley of Dry Bones vision is surreal. 

2. The word ruach means more than one thing: wind, breath, spirit. It's often a designation for the Spirit of God, although it trades on metaphorical associations with the breath of life. So it can denote the creative Spirit rather than "the breath of life". 

3. The Bible is addressed to a prescientific audience in which cessation of breathing is a criterion for death. And, indeed, that's still the case outside of the E.R.

4. That's a roughhewn criterion for people who are born (e.g. 1 Kgs 17:17). Prenatal life is not in view. 

5. If you wish to get technical about it, while babies in utero don't breath, they require oxygen:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318993.php

6. If the absence of breathing is a justification for abortion, then by parity of argument we shouldn't attempt to resuscitate people who stop breathing as a result of drowning, cardiac arrest, &c. Likewise, we shouldn't put patients on ventilators who can't breathe on their own. 

7. It's not surprising that an active sodomite like Pete Buttboy, who's "married" to a "husband," doesn't care about babies. He's in rebellion against natural normal family life. 

Rebutting Objections to the Pro-Life Position

https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2019/08/rebutting-objections-to-the-pro-life-position/

Do prolifers oppress women?

I don't normally plug Catholic apologists, but here's a study in how to engage a proponent of abortion:

https://soundcloud.com/trenthornpodcast/181-dialogue-do-pro-lifers-oppress-women

When is a baby a baby?

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/when-is-a-baby-a-baby/

"This is not a difficult concept"

This seems to be a popular meme. A few basic issues:

i) If you remove the yoke and white from the shell, you interrupt the process of gestation. 

ii) Turning silk into a dress is not a natural process or natural continuum. 

iii) Why is an acorn not a tree? Is the difference that some acorns never germinate?

iv) From a secular standpoint, what makes a human a person? There are physicalists (eliminative materialists) who regard consciousness as an illusion.

v) Is a comatose patient a person? Suppose the patient will emerge from their coma in two weeks, with their personality intact. Would it be murder to kill them while they are still comatose?

vi) What about lowering a patient's body temperature to the point where they have no vital signs or EEG reading? That's a surgical procedure to prevent blood loss. Is the patient still a person? 

vii) Does personhood depend on brain development? What about the hard problem of consciousness? 

Recycling the myths of abortion history

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/08/recycling-the-myths-of-abortio

Pregnancy and organ donation

So now we can evaluate how far the analogy of organ donation helps us think clearly about abortion. Something I see that complicates the analogy is that it’s hard to imagine a situation in which the potential donor put the recipient in the position of being dependent on someone else for his/her life. The parents of a pre-born human, by contrast (and usually both of them), took action that put the “recipient” in his/her vulnerable position. Does your obligation to a vulnerable person change when they are vulnerable because of your actions? I think we can assume it does.

What about when the consequences are unintended? Well, consider the liability of someone who has accidentally injured or killed someone while driving under the influence. The damage may not have been intentional, but the mishap is not a shock in light of the actions that were taken. Pregnancy after sex is similar: pregnancy may not have been intended, but no one should be terribly surprised when it has occurred. If sex puts someone (namely, the one who has been conceived) in a vulnerable position, those whose action led to the pregnancy simply can’t claim to be hapless bystanders.

Now, there are certainly situations in which the mother can’t be called responsible for the situation. Maybe there was rape, abuse, a serious imbalance of power, etc. So in this situation, is the analogy of an innocent “recipient” and an innocent Good Samaritan “donor” more successful?

I think there’s another important difference between pregnancy and organ donation: namely, whether there’s already a direct relationship of dependency in place. In the case of an organ donor, there is not. With pregnancy, there is. Maybe a more useful analogy to consider is that of conjoined twins, who began life connected. Neither party need be “at fault,” but when the relationship of dependency is in place by default, it does change the tenor of the conversation and the level of sacrifice/risk someone should be justly expected to undergo for another person.

Let’s pursue this point a bit further. Have you seen the movie Up? Remember how, through no fault of his own, an old guy ends up with a kid in his house (he had been trespassing) while the house is flying through the air. In circumstances in which the kid’s life was not in danger, it would be completely appropriate for the guy to kick the kid out of his house. But…if the kid is going to go hurtling to his death if he gets kicked out, the balance of responsibility changes. This is true even though the homeowner did nothing to bring about the situation. He might actually be obligated to put up with a considerable burden in order to protect the life of a vulnerable person who happens to depend on him for a time.

http://abigailwoolley.wordpress.com/2019/05/23/is-continuing-a-pregnancy-like-becoming-an-organ-donor

Abortion's false dichotomy

It is only in the modern West, that, in order to circumvent the biblical reverence for life for the sake of our own convenience, we have created the wholly artificial distinction between the life of a born child and the life of an unborn child. J. Oswalt, Exodus (Tydale House 2008), 459. 

Men should shut up–unless we need their votes

Men are entitled to no opinions about abortion so shut up about it but also if you don’t speak up against this abortion ban you’re a failure https://t.co/yGvTa3ENg1

— Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) May 23, 2019

Is protecting babies unchristian?

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand made the claim Thursday that the slew of anti-abortion laws passing multiple states are “against Christian faith.”

“If you are a person of the Christian faith, one of the tenants [sic] of our faith is free will,” Ms. Gillibrand told reporters following a discussion with lawmakers, physicians and abortion rights activists at the Georgia state house, CBS News reported.

“One of the tenants [sic] of our democracy is that we have a separation of church and state, and under no circumstances are we supposed to be imposing our faith on other people,” the New York senator said. “And I think this is an example of that effort.”

Ms. Gillibrand made the trip to Georgia after the state last week banned abortions after about six weeks or when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Mississippi, Kentucky and Ohio have recently passed similar measures. In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the most restrictive anti-abortion bill yet, outlawing virtually all abortions in the state, including in cases of rape and incest.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/17/kirsten-gillibrand-anti-abortion-laws-are-against-/

i) Along with presidential hopeful Pete Buttboy, this is another example of a Democrat candidate attempting to co-opt Christianity. To replace it with something contrary to Christianity, but act like that's the real Christianity. 

ii) Christianity is not equivalent to freewill theism. That's a tradition within historical theology. But historical theology includes predestinarian traditions. 

iii) I doubt she has a philosophically informed concept of freewill, but she sets it in contrast to "imposing" one's views on others. Since, however, she's not an anarchist, her position is nonsense. She's a lawmaker. She believes in passing laws that tell people what they can and cannot do. Laws that impede their freedom. That's what most laws do, after all. Most laws mandate or forbid various behavior. Most laws curtail liberty. 

iv) Separation of church and state is not a tenet of "our democracy". The first amendment prohibits the federal gov't from establishing a national church. That's it.

v) But suppose, for argument's sake, that separation of church and state was a tenant of our democracy. That would mean local, state, and federal gov't must never mandate or forbid conduct that violates an individual's religious faith. Yet she supports the Equality Act, which is a massive gov't intrusion into the religious freedom of Americans. 

vi) She commits the genetic fallacy. The relevant consideration is not whether an idea is religious or secular, but whether it's good or bad, true or false. Unless she takes the position that religious values are automatically wrong, there's no reason why religious values shouldn't figure in law and public policy so long as they are good.

vii) We have a system based on popular sovereignty. If a majority of voters wants law and public policy to exemplify Christian social ethics, they have the Constitutional right to elect officials who will enact such policies. 

viii) Naturalism is unable to justify moral realism. So unless laws are just an exercise of arbitrary power, they must have theological underpinnings. 

NPR propaganda glossary

https://wamu.org/story/19/05/15/guidance-reminder-on-abortion-procedures-terminology-rights/

The "fetus"

In the debate over abortion, both sides have preferred language and labels. Prolifers prefer more personal, informal language like "mother" and "baby" while abortionists prefer more impersonal terminology like "woman" and "fetus". 

Now, there's nothing wrong with using medical terminology in its place. "Zygote, embryo, fetus" chart different stages in gestation. However, the medical jargon doesn't mean it isn't a baby. 

To take a comparison, a hand doctor or heart surgeon has technical, discriminating jargon for parts of the heart or hand. But the fact that he can use more specialized terminology doesn't mean he's not operating on the hand or heart. It's not contrary to science to say the organ or body part is a heart or hand, even though more exacting nomenclature is available. 

To take another comparison, I could call a woman my "wife" or I could use gynecological terminology to describe her. But it's not as if "wife" is an inaccurate and unscientific designation. 

"Forced birth"

Abortionists sometimes brand prolife legislation as "forced birth"–as though there's something inherently objectionable about that. Let's consider the permutations of that objection. What exactly is the objectionable principle?

i) Is the objection that no one should ever be forced to do anything they don't want to? Consider individuals who voluntarily incur a financial obligation, like using a motel, dentist, or rental car. Is it wrong if they are "forced" to pay for the goods and service they used? That's hardly plausible as a general principle.

ii) Is the objection that no one has a claim on the use of someone else's body? If so, consider some counterexamples: Suppose somebody in a wheelchair needs help getting over the sidewalk curb. Strangers have a moral obligation to help him (or her). In that sense, someone can lay claim to the use of another person's body. 

Likewise, if a child falls into a river and is about to drown, strangers who know how to swim have a duty to rescue the child. Once again, that's a moral claim on the use of someone else's body.

These are very limited examples, but they demonstrate that you can't rule out as a matter of principle a person in need having a claim on someone else's physical agency. 

iii) Is the objection that while we can be forced to do something or undergo something if that's a consequence of something we consented to, we can't be forced to do it or undergo it absent consent at the outset. If so, what about men who are drafted to fight in war? That's involuntary. Moreover, many of them die, are maimed or disabled as a result of military service. Surely that's at least as traumatic as a rape victim given birth. 

iv) Apropos (iii), is the objection, not to "forced birth" in general, but to "forced birth" in case of rape victims? Is the objection that it's grossly unfair to make pregnant rape victims carry the child to term. 

If so, I agree that it's unfair to make a rape victim go through that ordeal. However, it's possible for something to be unfair, yet still be a duty. 

Suppose I have a teenage brother who's disabled in a cycling accident by a reckless driver. It's unfair that he suddenly requires special assistance from me. I had my life planned out. Now I have to make adjustments and sacrifice my dreams. But it doesn't follow from this that I don't have an obligation to help out my disabled brother, even though the situation was forced on me (indeed, forced on both of us).

Suppose my wife cheats on me. She has a child by another man. At the time I don't know about the affair. I don't know the child isn't mine. 

Suppose I find out at a later date. Suppose, moreover, that when the child turns five, my wife leaves me with the child. She divorces me and moves in with another man. 

I'm "stuck" with a child I didn't father. That's "unfair". But at this stage, I'm the only father the child has ever known. It would be psychologically damaging to the child to put him up for adoption at the age of five. The child reminds me of my wife's affair. Should I withhold my love from the child because it's unfair that I was thrust into this situation? Surely not!

v) Admittedly, moral arguments have no traction if you're addressing a moral nihilist. There are people who will reject these examples because they're nihilistic. And that's one of the dangerous things about atheism. 

Misanthropic feminism

Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies. 

Commenting on this statement, Christian philosopher Tim Hsiao said:

There are at least two problems with this line of argument.

First, the relationship between a parent and a child is very different from a relationship between siblings. Parents have a special responsibility to care for their children in a way that siblings do not. Why? Because they are the ones who are responsible for their children's existence. More specifically, they caused their children to exist in a state of great vulnerability, need, and dependence. In doing so, they incur an obligation to provide for the well-being of their children. That's why parents are often referred to as the guardians of their children.

If I push you into deep water as part of a swimming lesson, I owe it to you to make sure that you don't drown. The reason is because I have done something to put you in a position of great vulnerability. The same thing is true of the parent-child relationship.

Second, abortion is not just the mere withholding of treatment or refusal to act. It actively seeks out the death of the unborn. I may not have an obligation to give my blood to my brother, but does that mean I can go ahead and blow out his brains? Of course not. The fact that I may refuse to assist someone does not allow me to do some positive action that brings about his death. So even if the message is correct, it does not give the mother the right to actively seek out the death of her child.

This graphic takes a very low view of women. It treats pregnancy as if it were some kind of disease or pathology. But that is not at all the case. Reproduction is a natural part of the human experience, and to treat something so wonderful and joyous in such a negative light is dehumanizing.

Speaking for myself, I'd add that:

i) I think there's certainly a moral obligation for one sibling to donate blood to another sibling. I'd go beyond that: as a rule, a sibling has a duty to donate a kidney or half their liver to another sibling (unless the sibling has abused their health).

ii) Or take someone unrelated to me. Suppose I find an abandoned child at a rest stop. Minimally, I have a duty to temporarily care for it until I get hand it off to the authorities. But suppose there's no one else to care for it. That was commonplace in the ancient world. Children exposed to die. Foundlings. Even though I didn't create the situation, even though I'm not responsible for the situation, there are circumstances in which I can have social obligations despite the fact that it's unfair and burdensome.

Sex strike

Happy Mother’s Day! What an amazing gift it is to have these two wonders and prepare them for life and love.

A very wise friend told me yesterday we have a singular purpose on our short time on this planet, “to love and to be loved.”

I concur. I wish you all a beautiful day. pic.twitter.com/azMffTaMfZ

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) May 12, 2019

Our reproductive rights are being erased.

Until women have legal control over our own bodies we just cannot risk pregnancy.

JOIN ME by not having sex until we get bodily autonomy back.

I’m calling for a #SexStrike. Pass it on. pic.twitter.com/uOgN4FKwpg

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) May 11, 2019

Her initial tweet has been getting lost of buzz. A few observations:

i) The assumption is that a sex boycott hits men where it hurts the most. It hurts men disproportionately. That plays on the misandrist stereotype that women don't like sex: sex is just an onerous favor that women do for men, like a reward for mowing the lawn. Or a bargaining chip to get what they really want in exchange for sex. 

But if women have so little interest in sex, why are they getting pregnant in the first place? Why are the getting abortions? Why do they clamor for abortion as a fallback in case of pregnancy? In almost all cases, their pregnancy results from consensual sex. Remember the supermodel who dumped Tebow because he refused to have premarital sex with her? 

ii) With the proliferation of sexbots, women are more expendable in that regard. Of course, sexbots are a pathetic substitute for the real thing. But they're easier to get along with than feminist banshees like Milano and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

That's not a recommendation. I'm not making a moral assessment. I'm just responding to Milano on her own crass grounds. 

iii) If women wish to have sex without getting pregnant, why aren't they using contraception? Evidently, Milano thinks women are so lacking in foresight and impulse control that they engage in activity with easily foreseeable, but undesirable consequences. 

Even if, for argument's sake, we cast the issue in terms of bodily autonomy, this is not about denying women the right to control their own bodies, but the failure of many women to exercise self-control. If they don't want kids, practice abstinence or use contraception. Abortion is a fallback for women who are able but unwilling to control what they do with their bodies (prescinding the fraction of pregnancies cause by rape). 

If feminists think women are that reckless and impetuous, why should they be in positions of authority and responsibility? Why should they have the right to vote or be public officials in policymaking positions? 

iv) Then we're treated to the euphemism of "reproductive rights," as if prolifers want to pass laws making it illegal for women to reproduce. But what prolife laws actually reject is a murder exception for women–or mothers in particular. We don't think being a woman exempts you from the prohibition on murder. If it's okay for a mother to kill her baby, it is okay for husband to kill his wife? 

v) Pregnancy is how every feminist came into the world. Suppose a ship capsizes and a passenger climbs into a lifeboat. He then fishes a floundering women out of the water. But when a girl swims over to get on board, the second passenger kicks her away, causing her to drown. The second passenger was rescued but rather than rescuing another passenger, kicks her away. And what if that was a mother who turned her daughter away? 

Abortion operates with a Nietzschean philosophy, but if Nietzschean ethics is the yardstick, then men have all the rights. If it boils down to ruthless power, men come out on top.  

In another tweet she poses as the proud mother with her kids. But if she thinks she has the right to kill her children before they are born, does she have the right to kill them after they are born? Likewise, if abortion and infanticide are rights, does that mean matricide and patricide are rights? Do grown children have a right to do to parents what parents have a right to do to babies? 

Ineffectual outrage

I see lots of Christians expressing indignation at how the Democrat party has become the party of infanticide. But while the disapproval is certainly justified, we have no moral leverage. Those who support killing newborns can't be shamed by our disapproval. If anything, they enjoy provoking Christian outrage. All the denunciations are ineffectual. They don't change anything. Change requires trench warfare. 

My body, my rights

A popular abortion slogan goes like this: "a man has no right telling a woman what to do with her body". There are verbal variations on that slogan, but that's the basic idea.

But what does it actually mean? I doubt most women who say it have given it much thought. On the face of it this slogan bundles two claims into one statement:

1. Does it mean a man never has a right to tell a woman what to do? By contrast, does it mean women do have the right to tell other women what to do?

Does it mean that if a woman joins the armed forces, a male C.O. has no authority to issue lawful orders to a female subordinate? We could multiple examples.

If women who recite this slogan really believe no man ever has a right to tell a woman what to do, do they put that on their resume or job application? 

2. Or is the claim more specific? Is the claim that while there are situations in which a man has a right to tell a woman what to do, he never has a right to tell a woman what to do with her body?

Once again, is it a general principle: no adult has the right to tell another adult what to do with their body? Or is it specifically about men and women? Do women have the right to tell other women what to do with their bodies?

Human beings are embodied agents. I daresay many feminists think human beings just are their bodies. 

Don't laws generally tell us what we can and can't do with our bodies? A law against arson says human agents can't use their bodies to set fire to someone else's house, car, or business. 

A law against vandalism says the agent can't use their hand to scratch the paint on someone's car with a key.

A law against shoplifting says the agent can't use their hands to steal stuff from a store.

Laws like these apply to men and women alike. 

Infanticide and bodily autonomy

The most popular argument for abortion is bodily autonomy. Perhaps because you can fit "hands off my body" on a placard. But now that the Democrat party is rapidly moving towards infanticide, where does that leave the bodily autonomy argument? A newborn is no longer in the mother's body. This exposes the fact that the bodily autonomy argument was always disingenuous. 

They don't care

I took an abortionist out to lunch once, prepared to give him ten reasons why the unborn are human beings. He stopped me, and said, “I know that. We are killing children.” I was stunned. He said, “It’s simply a matter of justice for women. It would be a greater evil to deny women the equal right of reproductive freedom.”

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/we-know-they-are-killing-children-all-of-us-know