Thanks for your thoughts, F.
The basic question is when does human life begin from the perspective of the abortion issue?
At the moment of conception, when it easiest *might* be said we’re dealing with a mass of cells?
What about the morning after pill, should it be allowed when it potentially could kill a life, if life begins at conception?
The way I think about it is the need to balance two opposed rights, the right of women to control their own bodies and the right to life of the unborn.
At each end of the spectrum, the answers aren’t troubled: life begins at conception; women’s say over their own bodies is paramount.
I can’t justify either absolute position. So in my view one has to do some Solomon-like balancing, when two rights go against each other, which is one definition of tragedy, right against right.
Where the US case law has struck the balance is roughly somewhere in the second trimester, maybe understood as the theoretical point at which the baby is viable outside the womb. Some have suggested it should be when the baby can feel pain. I find myself increasingly wanting to shorten the time.
I don’t know how anyone can look at the state of development of the baby at 15 weeks, almost 5 months in, and object to that as too soon to abort the right to abort.
Unlike you I wouldn’t rest my argument on “what nature wants.” Nature is mindless. Rational beings must decide by moral reasoning.
And, unlike you, I wouldn’t be satisfied which ever way the court decides in the Mississippi case SCOTUS is taking up. If the issue is truly just whether 15 weeks is objectionable as a limit on the right to abort, then I’d be dissatisfied with a ruling that it’s too soon.
At 15 weeks vindicating the right to life trumps women’s autonomy over their bodies.
Btw, these comments assume no exceptions are involved, rape, incest, danger to the health of the mother, or a severely damaged fetus. Those are the only ones I’m aware of and they each have their own agonizingly tragic considerations.
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