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

[fpb.livejournal.com]

There I cannot follow you. The problem with taking any rational approach to sex is that sex is not a rational thing. It draws people to itself. It is addictive. To tell people that they can take or leave sex - under whatever condition - will insure that they will take it. And people under the control of desire are not rational. Even if they know every last morbid detail of what syphylis or chlamydia do to you, they simply will not think that it would happen to them, or else they will say, as C.S.Lewis points out, "Just let me have this and I do not care about the consequences". There are people who even consciously spread venereal disease by having unprotected sex while they know they are ill. To a person in the grip of desire, the rational faculty is nothing more than a tool: to be used when the will requires it, and silenced and hidden away when it would risk contradicting the will. The lust, the corrupted will, rules supreme, and only hears what it wants to.

[wade-scott.livejournal.com]

I would say that's true for some, but not for all. I have had friends and family where that is the case--the are addicts. Addiction is not a healthy, "normal' state of being. By giving your will over to a desire and eradicating your ability to choose, you open yourself up to negative consequences. Same with alcohol, cocaine, or gambling, to name a few.

Now, even people who are not addicts will make mistakes and overrule their rationality to do things they know are wrong. Like have sex with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. There are still mental and physical consequences for their choices.

And I must disagree with the idea that when you tell people that they can take or leave sex it insures that they take it. I don't, and I know many people who don't, as well. I say teach correct principles and let people govern themselves. But if you don't teach them that sex (or anything else) has mental, physical, and emotional consequences both good and bad, then their ignorance will rule supreme, not their wills.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not think our views contradict each other, but I do think that I lay a lot more stress on human weakness and corruptibility than you do. That is, I think, largely a matter of experience. But I do not think we disagree on anything fundamental.

[wade-scott.livejournal.com]

And what I've appreciated is our discussion of the issues--I've had LJ discussions that were more put-downs and personal attacks.

Yeah, I have a tendency to be of two minds--the one where I give people the benefit of the doubt, and the other where I think people are complete and utter morons. I guess the difference between theory and practice. :)