Quote:
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Originally Posted by ijdgaf
And if it's against a person's morals, then nobody's forcing it upon anyone.
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(ijd isn't the only one to have made this particular point, but his was a concise quote so I picked it.)
It seems to me that a person can have 3 possible moral stances on abortion:
1. It's morally right for anyone and everyone.
2. It's not morally right for me, but it's morally right for anyone who thinks it is.
3. It's not morally right for anyone.
The problem with the quote above is that it assumes people who are morally opposed to abortion fall into the second category. That isn't the case. People who fall in that category, in my experience, are generally pro-choice - they consider the main issue in the debate to be over whether a woman should have the right to choose an abortion, and they say yes, she should.
People who are pro-life, again in my experience, are generally in the third category. If I think abortion is the termination of a human life, and I don't think it's right for individuals to terminate human lives, then I'm not just opposed to
personally having an abortion; I'm opposed to
anyone having an abortion.
Put the child on the other side of the womb and let's suppose that infanticide were an issue (yes, I know it isn't, but work with me here). Let's suppose that some people think an infant, who's dependent on others for basically everything, isn't really a human being, so they have no problem with infanticide. Others think that dependence isn't the issue, since the baby has human DNA and is a living human person; they think infanticide is tantamount to killing. Would you tell the anti-infanticide people, "Well, just don't terminate your own babies, then. No one's forcing you to do that. But it's intolerant to keep others from terminating their babies if they don't believe they're human."? Of course not. If the issue is truly about
life, then it's not just about protecting your own offspring; it's about protecting
all the innocent lives. That is why pro-life people are not content simply to refrain from having abortions themselves while having no problem with the rest of the world having abortions.