Deconstructing the abortion debate

Ethical matters arise between two feeling entities over matters of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity. When discussing abortion, there are a few core items to clarify.

1. What is a person? What traits define personhood? Note this extends beyond the human realm into discussions of AI and animal/alien distinctions of personhood.

2. If and when the sanctity of life trumps other considerations? Discuss should include distinctions between higher and lower live forms (plants to humans; sidebar for AI), and conditional aspects of humanity (soldiers, hazardous work, acts of self sacrifice chosen and forced, etc.)

3. The scope and scale of the burdens of child bearing (physical, psychological, financial, social, etc.), and the same considerations for raising a child/being a parent.

4. The conditions which women become pregnant (the good and all the bad ways pregnancy can occur).

5. The medical complications within pregnancy. Pregnancy is a process and the list of complications for the women along the way is long and scary.

6. The rights of a host and the rights of developing life form.

7. When along the chain of development does a fetus obtain human life form status. At what point along development is a baby considered a person? At what point is it just a collection of cells?

8. If a developing fetus had choice, would it choose to be born to a mother who had been raped? Would it choose to be born to a teenage mother with no financial or emotional support from her family or the father? Would it choose to be born with a horrific physical or mental disability? Would it choose to be born to a mother who was a drug addict?

9. If the state would not allow a teenage mother, young adult woman with no financial means and support network, a drug addict, a woman with major mental health issues, or a woman to too many existing kids to adopt a baby, why would that same state compelled these said mothers to go through with a pregnancy?

10. Why would a human fetus have more rights than a living animal? If ethical concerns of harm/care are paramount, then how does a meat eater dispassionately slaughter animals when alternatives to meat exist, yet become righteous over the elimination of a zygote?

11. If “pro-life” people were truly pro life, why don’t they care about the person after they leave the womb? Why are the same people who are fervently pro-forced-birth “pro-life” also the ones in that rally against universal child care, extended maternity leave, universal healthcare, public schools, public colleges, minimum wages, etc.? Why are they also gum nuts, war hawks, anti-Enviromental regulation, meat eaters, etc.? These later political positions are not “pro-life,” quite the opposite.