Saturday, November 17, 2012

God's Will Versus Human Will In Abortion






Less than a week ago, a woman in Ireland died because the country’s abortion laws apparently prevented even a health based procedure to save a woman who had miscarried. Apparently the Irish government neglected to learn that abortions can be elective or spontaneous and that not all abortions are done because people are “whores” or “sluts”. In the case of this woman dying, the line that sums it up is “They valued the life of a 4 month old fetus over that of a 30 year old woman” I am glad our own country isn’t so stringent and ridiculous on such things, but there are still people that insist that every pregnancy is a gift from God, including those that result from rape or incest, as well as those that would threaten a woman’s life. My very first blog post spoke about this topic and how it was irresponsible and selfish of Tim Tebow’s mother to insist on the pregnancy when she and her unborn child were in danger. Pro life as a position should not mean you get to endanger lives on purpose and say you value life and hold it sacred at the same time. By no means am I suggesting forced abortions, since that would contradict my values of individual choice and liberty as a libertarian at heart. But inversely, someone should not be able to claim their liberties are being trampled on when they are, in their own general metaphysics, forcing a child to be born in cases where teens could get an abortion and move on with their lives, learning from their mistake. Societal pressure is a strong influence, however, and you have women feeling like they commit a horrible crime, even a sin, when trying to make a choice between themselves and something that isn’t even remotely human in appearance in many cases when the pregnancy is discovered.
Any involvement of God in these situations is next to nothing, especially if we assume from the get go that God cannot interfere when it comes to human free will. And it also makes perfect sense to say that rape children cannot, in any way, shape or form, be a part of God’s will, because that would mean God either forced a human to rape or had no problem with one of its creations being violated for some greater good that could’ve been advanced in a far less violent manner. I’m not saying there can’t be good that results from evil, but rape is one of, if not the most horrible things a human can experience and survive next to attempted murder. A God that would create good things from such horrors is far distanced from the human experience and could accurately be termed a sociopath with no empathy.

Partial birth abortion, strongly opposed by many so called “pro life” advocates, is simultaneously death and life, but is a life saving procedure similar to some abortions (ectopic pregnancies or the like, for instance) in that if you don’t do it in particular cases for which it’s performed, both the mother and child will die. Do you want that on your conscience or do you think that death is preferable to life? If the latter, then how can you really consider yourself pro life? A more overarching idea of what pro life means is preferable to using the term to mask your anti abortion stance because you don’t want to be anti something, you want to be pro something. Be honest and just say you’re against abortion instead of saying you’re for protecting life and yet care nothing about people’s liberties to manage their reproduction or otherwise. Valuing life over liberty may make sense sequentially, but it makes no sense ethically. Basic logic does dictate you need to value life in order to truly value liberty, but to preclude liberty in order to protect life is far more counterintuitive than accepting that sometimes life must be sacrificed for liberty, especially if it cannot be adequately provided for or is not viable in a world where artificial womb technology does not exist.'

A middle ground can be met. One should not take sex so casually and irresponsibly, which will prevent unintended and unwanted pregnancies, leading to a decrease in abortions for reasons of pure convenience and selfishness. The abortions that are absolutely necessary are those that would save a woman’s life from accidental pregnancies that threaten her physical or mental health. Abortion is not birth control and shouldn’t be used as such, not only because it’s more expensive, but it becomes wasteful of potential life, which has its own value, especially to prospective parents, especially adoptive ones who either cannot have children themselves or want to provide for what amount to orphans. Instead we can “waste” what are renewable resources: namely the sperm the body produces. So that’s yet another abortion related post from me. We’re getting close to 200 posts and I’ll be doing something special for that, I hope. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.