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What if abortion is murder? I've recently been entertaining religious moral frameworks and taking them seriously as a thought exercise. And then it made me realize thatL "if abortion is murder, I live in a society that genocides millions of babies every year". Huh.
Doesn't sound like a good society to live in. So I now hope that abortion is not murder, and I think it probably isn't. Sort of, but not entirely not either. Perhaps.
If abortion is murder, so is contraception. And abstinence. All of them have the primary impact of preventing a human mind from coming into existence. The small mass of brain cells in a fetus is clearly less conscious, in every sense, than other adult mammals.
Factory farming isn't exactly murder since those lives wouldn't exist without it, but it's definitely torture. And yeah our society does it without too much concern. Not a great look for ole humanity. But we can learn.
2UnderTruth
I do think it's worth pointing out that the typical view of "pro-life"/"anti-abortion" folks is that a fetus, as an individual organism, is "a life", but reproductive cells like sperm and eggs, on their own, are not. And it is generally the status as an organism that they say grants moral personhood, not brain function or other specific demonstration of abilities.
I'm aware that's what they say; I just don't think it makes more than one lick of sense. LW is probably not the best place to debate religious doctrine. Perhaps I shouldn't have responded.