After a friend printed a misguided defence of abortion (from her comments thread)

[fpb]

Rephrase your premise as follows:
I don't agree with abortions... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with rape... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with burglary... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with assault... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with embezzlement... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with fraud... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.
I don't agree with forced marriage... but if they're going to happen (which they will), they need to be safe and legal.

etc., etc., etc.....

Excuse me, if something is wrong, why the Hell should it be safe and legal, only because "it's going to happen"? Crime is always "going to happen". That is the point of having laws. We do not have laws against something which, though wrong, is never going to happen (e.g. there is no law against stealing someone's soul). The point of having a law against it is to state that it is a disapproved and forbidden activity, and that, if you are caught (which, alas, will not always be the case), you will be punished. This trash about "it's going to happen anyway" is simply something that abortionists repeat ad nauseam, on the principle that if we hear a statement often enough we're going to take it for granted.

Comments

[becomethesea.livejournal.com]

Haha, I just saw after replying to my thread that you posted in your journal. :) Here's my response copied to your thread:

I know where you're coming from. I suppose what I should clarify that the difference between the other examples you provided is that (safe) abortions are a surgical procedure performed by a person with medical training and the intention is to perform the "surgery". It pertains to the body and the choice of the the individual performing the operation being willingly performed upon the woman asking for the procedure.

It's not an easy thing to covey over the digital medium... but see, a woman and her doctor will continue to look at an abortion as an action that doesn't violate the life the fetus. There's gray area there, versus the examples provided (rape, burglary, assault, embezzlement, fraud, and forced marriage), which are explicit actions against a seriously defined individual in the eyes of a person to whom a fetus is not a living being.

Maybe that clarifies my statement a little better?

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Well, that rather is the core of the problem. It's a category error.

To someone who classes abortion as surgery, albeit distasteful surgery, affecting only one individual, the argument makes sense.

To someone who classes abortion as murder, on the other hand, it's not even relevant.

(Which makes it a fairly pointless argument to make, really, since the only people who will agree with it are the people who already agree with the premise that they're not actually doing anything of moral weight, if you see what I mean.)

[cheyinka]

"I want this distasteful surgery to become so unnecessary that it is exceptionally rare, and I want it to be done safely, legally, and well when it is necessary" sounds a lot better than "Yeah, it's a person, but my rights come first," which I have encountered, in so many words. I'm not sure it is better, though; those making the latter argument will almost certainly be unwilling to listen to someone who thinks abortion is at best manslaughter ("we didn't know it was a human life we were ending, but that ignorance was not excusable"), but at least they're arguing on the same grounds (whether or not the unborn human has the same rights as its mother, or any rights), while the "safe/legal/rare" proponents see it as "you mean you don't want it to be safe?" and that argument doesn't intersect with its opposing argument at all.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The doctor who performs that operation is the same person who will let a Terri Schiavo die of hunger and thirst. Or, if the law allows it, kill her altogether. Both operations come under the heading of medicine, as indeed do the experiments performed on helpless victims by various tyrannies including but not restricted to the Nazis. Medicine justifies nothing; it has to be justified itself.