March 24, 2005

Abortion: Net Zero Effect?

Jesse makes an argument I gave a while ago (go find the link yourself, I'm on break and lazy)

If pregnancy is truly this life-altering process, why do anti-choice advocates simply treat it as if it's a factory line? (Because they don't give a damn about the woman or the fact that children exist after the umbilical cord is cut, but bear with me.) If children are little more than plugins to industrial womb variables - this woman shall bear us nine, with optimal utilization - and the argument against abortion is that it doesn't provide enough foot soldiers, a simple X and Y argument, it cheapens the lives of everyone, it cheapens the decision to abort a fetus. It's a slap in the face to anyone who believes that an individual can accomplish or achieve, to anyone who truly thinks that each life has value. If you're a mass, a lump in a clump of lumps waiting to be shaped by forces beyond anyone's control - what's the difference between abortion and pregnancy? It's a tick in an attendance book, and if you don't show up, you just get someone else to make another tick somewhere else.

By reducing a pregnant woman to an incubator, a broad range of anti-choice arguments undermine the significance of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood.

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