Pro-"Choicers", if you had to reincarnate as an aborted child would you still be for legalized abortion.

Question

I have also asked this question in regards to eating meat, not on yahoo answers though. Unfortunately it was hard to get a straight answer. This is a simple if than question. Don't rush to give me the pre-scripted dogma. Think about it for a moment. That is the whole point to the question, to stimulate the thinking process. If I wanted a scripted answer I would call an answering machine. Meditate with this question. If you have conflict don't be afraid to mention it. This is an excercise for personal growth not a mud flinging contest. I hope you are up for this challenge.

How can I take seriously anyone with the user name MR. RETARDO III? If you going to insult me at least do it with a little finesse.

Lindsey, yes, more insightful insults and no that is not necessarily true. Even pre-borns have awareness and can feel pain, though it is debatable as to at which point this is so. Whatever the case it is not morally correct to take a life, aware, or not as you maybe. I possibily could murder you in your painlessly in your sleep, but that would not make it any more right of me to do, would it now?

Gurrdy, could you be a little more detailed as to why you would?

kerobearusth..., first you did not answer my question. Second yes, pre-borns have souls. It is an evil propaganda to claim otherwise. At one point in history many people did not think blacks had souls, and you can see how they were treated as a result?

Candice M, At some point you will think about the larger context of life and will want to know the answers of these questions. But for now know that many of these pre-borns are aware and can feel pain. In fact a preborn near 20 weeks has more pain receptors per square inch than at any other time in it's potentially born life. Watch the video The Silent Scream and your eyes will be opened to the horror of pain abortion causes childern.

Candice M, At some point you will think about the larger context of life and will want to know the answers of these questions. But for now know that many of these pre-borns are aware and can feel pain. In fact a preborn near 20 weeks has more pain receptors per square inch than at any other time in it's potentially born life. Watch the video The Silent Scream and your eyes will be opened to the horror of pain abortion causes childern.

Seraph, first off you did not answer my question nor do think you even meditated on it. But in response to potential suffering and criminal activity, imagined worse case scenarios make a bad case for advocating such a harmful and unfair law.

jplrvflyer, your logic does not hold true for your teenage pregnancy examples. Their lives will not be ruined if they gave the child up for adoption. Second it is silly to think a child can ruin ones life. They are a gift that can transform ones life for the better. As for wanting to curb the root of the problem, me too, except I believe in a multi pronged approach with includes legislation. Legislation will not stop abortion but will greately curb abortion to the tune of millions world wide. As for being born before 1973 and adopted, aren't you glad your mother was pro-life, or at least safeguards were in place? That is unless you are so unhappy you'd rather be dead? I sure hope not.

old school, this is an exercise in perspective not an absolute metaphysical claim. And I wouldn't be so sure about reincarnation not being a metaphysical possibility.

jaz, I'm not sure you really mediated on the question but your rhetoric is slightly more evolved than many on this post. With that said, the available babies to desirious parents is about 40:1 ratio. There rarely is a good reason not to chose adoption, unless maybe there is an entopic pregnancy.

Elfwreck, Your response has been the most elegant so far and I respect that. You even allowed the assumption that it may even be painful to be one of these aborted chidren. However the picture you paint of the world and these childerns potential lives is pretty grim to say the least. This is all assumption. It is true that life can be tough, but most of us are still glad to live it, tough or not as it may be. Plus the potential for relatively happy lives cannot be proven thus it's opposite cannot be used as a measuring device for legality either. & you are right abortion is not the cause of misery but it is one of its vehicles. Most misery actually is found in spiritual deficiency and ignorance. Finally my question is not just for those who believe in reincarnation. It is a mental exercise for all even Christians, which by the way, some do indeed believe in reincarnation.

neil s, you like many did not actually answer my question. I believe this is because it would pang our conscience to sincerely ponder this question. With that said, our subjective opinions cannot be used to determine when life becomes a life. That's an oxymoron if i ever heard one. Some think a soul does not enter a body till well into childhood. Does this mean we can kill born children because they do not have a soul? Peter Singer advocates this, however his litmus test for life is self awareness, which he does not believe happens until 2 years of age or so. So as you can see this insanity must stop somewhere. It's far better to be safe than sorry which happens by the way through making convenient assumptions. I know for sure genetically a human being is complete at conception. There is no doubt to this. Let's err on the side of safety than potentially being little Hilter's without even knowing it. Though I suspect many know better in their hearts but simply won't listen.

truelaw@swbe..., It's easy to be Pro-"Choice" if you are the one not being killed.

genaddt, and given this assumption what would you conclude about being reincarnated as a child to be aborted? Would this be a karmic deterrent to not advocate the legalization of the practice, which is has been an enabler for at least 50 million deaths in the United States since 1973?

neil s, actually the heart begins to beat as early as day 17 and no later that day 25. So if this is your cut off date as to when abortion should be legal this would reduce you choices to either the after morning pill or at best RU486 since they do not do surgical abortions before a certain development. The logic is two fold. First off most women do not realized they are pregnant until implantation, the heart is beating & the child has human phenotype. The second reason is that the abortion "doctors" do not want to miss anything, which by the way, has happened.

Answer 1

Sure.

The life of an aborted child (if that counts as "a life," which is a matter of some debate) is short, and relatively free of stress. I've been told some abortion procedures are painful to the fetus, and I don't question that some of that is true, especially later-term ones.

I don't believe that aborting an embryo, before there are organs and nerves and so on, involves "pain" in any meaningful sense.

But let's pretend, for the sake of discussion, that we're talking about a late 1st/early 2nd trimester abortion, say 12-15 weeks. There's an awful lot of "person" features involved by that time, rudimentary nervous system and all that. Maybe even a detectable hearbeat. And let's further assume (and this is stretching things), that there's a "soul" involved, whatever that is.

And then that life is cut short, stopped before it has the chance to breathe air.

Would I be for abortion rights, if I had to be that life? Of course I would. Whatever lessons that person had to learn, whatever purpose that soul had, is done. Obviously, their lessons had nothing to do with personal choices, since they had none to make... perhaps they were being a lesson or example to someone else. Certainly, their life was less pained & troubled than a child who lives to the age of two in a war-torn, third-world country, and dies of gangrene from an infected bullet wound. And less pained than a child who is abused throughout infancy and raped by relatives at puberty, and forced onto the streets to whore for drug money... and if it were my fate to be reincarnated as any of those, I'd accept that, too.

I'd protest war, but not guns; I'd protest child abuse, but not families. Work against sleazy prostitution, not against sex. And so on. Abortion is only the method of death; it's not the cause of the misery that creates the need for death. If you want to stop abortions, make contraception legal, free, effective, and devoid of side effects, and make sure everyone knows how to use it & has access to it.

But your question only relates to reincarnationists. For Christians, I'm not sure how it matters--doesn't the soul of the child go to heaven? What harm is being done to the child, in that case? Or does the Christian God hate people so much that he'd condemn total innocents who never got to make a single choice in their lives?

Answer 2

Your question already assumes too much. Leaving aside the question of the possibility of reincarnation, doesn't it first need to be determined if an aborted fetus is an "incarnation' of anything other than cells to begin with? Here is the fundamental point of disagreement on this issue. Every sane person is for preserving human life. No matter how anyone tries to manipulate the wording, pro-choice does not mean anti-life. The disagreement is over when something is to be considered "alive" in a sense that is significantly different than any growth on or in the human body. No one on either side of this issue questions removing moles or tumors. Arguments to the "potential" to become human beg the question, and would make masterbation and fertility treatments murder also. There is simply not enough evidence about the actual nature of the fetus to make an air tight case either way.

I answered every relevant point toyour question, unless you suppose anyone capable of imagining the consciousness of a fetus (if there is any to imagine). And you make my point exactly - no one knows (subjectively or otherwise). It does not pang my conscience. i'm a trained physiologist and I have no reason to believe that a viable life exists until late pregnancy (when the fetus can actually survive outside of the womb). Thus my rebuttle of any "potential to be human" argument. I would not advocate abortion, and think it should be illegal after the 5th month (once the heart has begun beating).

Answer 3

Absolutely. If I were to reincarnate as an "aborted child" then that means I would not be given a second chance at life (which I don't believe happens anyway). Maybe a better question, would be, "What if your mother decided to abort?" If I was never given a shot at life I would never know the difference. Abortion is the best choice in so many situations, including rape, finances, maturity level, health reasons. I strongly believe it is every woman's right to choose -- and it's typically not an easy decision. I doubt I would ever be able to have an abortion, but I would never judge anyone who has. Pro-Life advocates who want to force their beliefs on others severely irritate me -- I feel they have no right to tell another woman what to do with her unborn child. Pro-Lifers, unless you are adopting children, have no problem supporting wellfare, and are advocating safe sex, don't try to push your thoughts on others. In a perfect world there would be no such thing as an unwanted child, but sadly it will never happen. Outlawing abortion will only force women back to the unsafe at home abortions that have occured since the beginning of time.

Answer 4

I don't think it's the right question. You are assuming that pro-choice means pro-abortion. That's a bad assumption.

Pro-choice is an acknowledgement that you can't solve this problem through legislative action. You need to address the reasons why people have abortions.

For instance, teenage girls have abortions primarily because they perceive their life may as well be over or will be ruined if they go through the pregnancy. This perception is largely justified due to how our society treats unmarried women who get pregnant, and that ill treatment starts at home. "My parents are going to kill me."

If you want to reduce abortions in this country, then you need to address the underlying reasons. You'll do a lot more to eliminate abortions if you can change public perception of the situation and alternatives.

For what it's worth -- I was born in 1962, a time when abortions were not readily available. My birth mother was single, living in a small town. She gave birth and submitted me for adoption. We never met. If abortion had been more readily available (ie: no coat hangers), she may have made a different choice.

But I'm still pro-choice. That's not the same as pro-abortion.

Answer 5

Yes. I believe in abortion. Many people who are alive today should have been aborted.

Besides just that abortion is another means to stop people being subjected to a lifetime of suffering. Would you like to have been born to AIDS infected parents and raised by abusive foster parents, only to end up on drugs, be arrested, charged for being a sex offender, then after finishing your time, not be able to get a job and turn into a serial rapist?

Should anyone have to go through that?

Answer 6

The error in your judgment is that when abortion occurs you assume that the fetus loses a human life. And of course you cannot support that. It is only what I believe to be your own false assumption.
If I were aborted, I would not die. I would be under the care of my loving God. Which is of course better than suffering in life.

Answer 7

A baby doesnt have a spirit until after it is born. my husband told me about a brother he had that was born too soon and died because it did not have a spirit. I dont have a problem with abortion, i do see adoption as more sensible but either way why bring a child into a world with ignorance and hatred if you arent going to take care of it? and what about rape victims?

Answer 8

Why would it change anyones mind? They'd never be aware of being aborted anyway, plus why should the prospect of some unlikely occurrence happening at some unknown future date for undisclosed reasons be of any consequence?

Answer 9

Yes. In the concept of reincarnation you do not have a choice or fore-knowledge as to who you will be in your next life.

Answer 10

Yes