Legalizing an act doesn't eliminate its moral implications. Allowing the choice of abortion prevents the degenerate possibilities that would arise from its banishment. Women could still have abortions if faced with a pregnancy that they weren't able to deal with. Providing a safe means to do so demonstrates an invested interest in the welfare of those women, rather than leaving them to attempt to deal with it on their own. It is legal because it is unfair to women who want to choose that route to have to find an alternate means to accomplish it; whether that be self induced, which is extremely hazardous, or traveling to another country to have the procedure done, which many cannot afford, thus disenfranchising them.
Forcing a woman to forgo a pregnancy would develop an array of hazardous societal implications that are eliminated by providing the means to reject the option of abortion. The debate is further complicated due to the fact that it is solely a woman’s issue, regardless of the role the father may have chosen to play. Rather than disenfranchising women, the option of a choice relieves such pressures.
There is regulation of it. Personal responsibility for one’s actions would be lost if free rein or strict banishment were given for drug use, alcohol use, gambling, or anything else that a religious doctrine finds morally reprehensible. Imprisoning women for having an abortion won’t eliminate the need or use of the option, and doing so likely could also criminalize the father of the child, thus creating additional complications for the judicial system by forcing him to face the legal ramifications of the abortion as well. Potential has no basis in the argument, as it is much more likely to plague humanity with problems rather than provide a potential means to solve them through the unplanned fruition of a life.
A concrete stance on the issue is not tangible and it’s suggestion is delusional.
Article comments
1 - Dr Dreadful
The way the article is framed does raise the broader question of whether the law should have a moral dimension at all, especially when abortion gets equated with homicide of the umbilically liberated.
Needless to say - actually it probably does need to be said since 99.999799986% of the population of the Internet is uncontrollably emotional and dense - what follows should not be taken to imply that I condone any of it...
Setting morals aside and from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, there's no cost to society incurred by the termination of a potential life, as there usually is in the case of, say, murder.
And indeed, homicide as a capital crime is really a Judeo-Christian idea. In many historical societies, murder was - as the author argues abortion to be - a personal matter. It's noteworthy that although there is a wide array of capital crimes in the Code of Hammurabi, for example, murder is not one of them. Typically it was left to the victim's family to decide what the compensation for the loss of their loved one should be. The idea was to balance the account; to rectify in whatever way the family deemed appropriate for the loss of labour and reproductive potential. The compensation could be financial or material. It could also be in the form of a life forfeit: not necessarily that of the murderer himself, but of a member of the murderer's family deemed to be of equal value to the victim. For example, if the murdered person was a 19-year-old field labourer, then his family might demand the life of the murderer's most able-bodied young male relative in return.
This all seems appallingly cold-blooded to our modern eyes, but it was at any rate quite practical. And I would even venture to suggest that it offered a more effective deterrent than any modern institution of capital punishment for murder.
2 - Doug Hunter
Good points Doc. If you stand back and think outside the little bubble that is the modern world you realize morals are just made up for the time and place and culture in which they exist. For my purposes, the more someone believes in their own morality... regardless of politics or religion... (don't think for a second this is solely a problem of the right or religious folks) the more dangerous they seem to be. It's the true believers I fear for there is no room for opposition or grey area or compromise. Wafflers that seem to play both sides of the fence tend to be the much more reasonable an pragmatic...it should be noted they usually don't accomplish much either.
I suppose we need the fanatics to 'push society forward'... forward of course being defined as wherever we're headed as their is no objective form of measurement. To me it's akin to saying we like what we like... modern society 'likes' the rules we made for ourselves better than the rules other societies made for themselves... well duh, but that is 'progress'.
As to your point, abortion certainly has a productive upside but it's not the deciding factor. Ultimately, most people don't empathize with the fetus and that's why killing it is tolerated, we don't have a strong connection to a peanut sized blob. We don't kill the hopelessly disabled that cost a fortune to care for each year with no hope of ever contributing anything back, even those with no family, because somewhere in our mind we realize that could be us... fetuses, no so much. From a pure productivity standpoint, even unwanted fetuses are a much better bet than the severely disabled or even the homeless population though... it's currently not in vogue to off them.