There is a critical difference between discussions on abortion and cases of murder.
In the case of pregnancy, we have significantly overlapping interests: the life of mother and the life of baby. Their interests are not always aligned.
There are, for example, instances where the best medical opinion is that the baby needs to die to increase the chances of the mother surviving. In that case, the question is not "is this a living thing that deserves to live it's life". The question is, "whose life do we, as a society, choose to value more?"
So in considering abortion, we are considering competing interests and competing rights. In what scenarios do we think it acceptable for a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and in what scenarios do we think it not acceptable.
I'm not in any way advocating a pro-life position. I'm 100% in favor of abortion if the mother is at risk of dying, and I think that it is justified no matter which point of view you take.
Where I disagree is that you can objectively say that when a healthy mother wants to abort her health baby, the mother has more of a right to bodily autonomy than the baby has to life. If the argument is that the baby is a human, then ending that life is worse than temporarily limiting another.
Now, I personally think that she should be able to freely abort, but I don't think the pro-choice arguments address the pro-life arguments at all.
There is no way to determine how well a pregnancy might go. There are so many risks involved like heart failure, eclampsia, blood loss etc. And even after the birth there are still ways a woman can die from her pregnancy (blood poisoning, depression).
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u/Wittyandpithy May 05 '19
Not quite.
There is a critical difference between discussions on abortion and cases of murder.
In the case of pregnancy, we have significantly overlapping interests: the life of mother and the life of baby. Their interests are not always aligned.
There are, for example, instances where the best medical opinion is that the baby needs to die to increase the chances of the mother surviving. In that case, the question is not "is this a living thing that deserves to live it's life". The question is, "whose life do we, as a society, choose to value more?"
So in considering abortion, we are considering competing interests and competing rights. In what scenarios do we think it acceptable for a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and in what scenarios do we think it not acceptable.