[GCFL-discuss] Dull Abortions

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

I'm going to keep this short and separate, because the best thing to do
about abortion is stop discussing it. The whole debate is silly, and
distracts from more important subjects. But I have found endless reasons
and ways to distinguish between aborting a first trimester fetus and
murdering a disobedient fifteen year old.

1) If kicked out of the house, the fifteen year old is capable of
foraging for food, finding shelter, eating, sleeping, and generally
surviving, without ever receiving any help from mommy and daddy again.
That doesn't mean parents should necessarily have the right to kick him
out of the house, but I believe some states still allow parents to
declare their child incorrigible and make him/her a ward of the state.

2) If expelled from the mother's womb, accidentally, spontaneously, or
deliberately, there is absolutely no way a first trimester fetus would
survive.

3) In fact, although a new-born baby is unlikely to survive without
parental nurturing, once out of the womb, any of 4 billion other living
human beings can take full responsiblity for care and feeding, at no
further cost to the mother. Not so a first trimester fetus.

4) I have a similar opinion when unmarried fathers wail "But that's my
baby too!" IF the expectant woman chooses to carry the child to term,
THEN the father absolutely should have first right to adopt if the mother
wants to give the baby up. But daddy just cannot carry the growing fetus
for nine months in his own abdomen. Sorry, life isn't always fair.
Besides, if daddy wanted rights to the fetus, he should have married the
woman before sowing his seed so carelessly. Yeah, some people say the
same about a woman wanting an abortion, but life isn't always fair. Women
have to do all the work up until birth, so in this sense, daddy is the
one who should have been more careful.

5) A newly fertilized egg is not a human being. It is a self-executing
chemically coded ZIP file which, if it finds the proper nurturing
environment, will grow into a human being. Until extraction is complete,
it is not even in line to grow up to 15. Besides, coding errors and
viruses can corrupt the program. Pretty soon we will have the technology
to turn it into a brand new pancreas instead, which is a good thing if
you happen to have pancreatic cancer. Christian theologians have had many
opinions over when a soul attaches to the body, but few suggested any
sooner than 40 days, many said at the time of quickening, some even said
not until birth. God knows, and he isn't telling.

Mostly, I find the first trimester unsuitable for STATE intervention. We
can't impose conformity on everyone about everything, even when we are
right, or think we are. 99% of us can agree on not murdering 15 year
olds. Its hard to get 25% of us to agree on any firm policy about
abortion. Most of us have second thoughts about any statement of policy.
So, let's not try to write a law. The closer the fetus is to being a
baby, the more its chances of survival outside the womb, the more it is a
suitable subject for public policy.

Siarlys