Abortion Post the First: The LAME Arguments

I was a card-carrying pro-lifer. I made the signs and walked the “Walk of Life” and cowered slightly when pro-choice, militant feminists yelled obscenities and threw rotten peaches at me. I donated money to anti-abortion programs.

 

It felt like the right thing to do. Human life is sacred, right? And everyone I loved and trusted most was convinced that the pro-life view was the only right one, the only moral one, the only Godly one. There were “proof texts” in the Bible used by all my pastors that, as far as I could tell, only peripherally related to abortion, but those guys were smarter than me and what did I know?

 

A few years ago, I finally started asking myself the tough questions. It was hard to distance myself from the emotion of it. In fact, emotionally, I will always be anti-abortion. Though I’ve never had an abortion myself, dear friends of mine have, and it was hard to watch and experience their pain. Abortion is not an easy answer, no matter what one’s views, and even when one is completely convinced that it’s the right thing to do, the social excoriation is excruciating.

 

I’m going to write this out in two parts. This part could be subtitled: Some LAME Arguments Used in the Abortion Debate. The next post, later this week and hidden under a heavy-lifting cut tag, will be: Why Current Christian Biblical Proof Texts are LAME and Why a Bible-Thumping Fundamentalist Could Be Pro-Abortion.

 

So, for today, the LAMENESS of two major, current arguments.

 

 

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So there you have it, two of the lamest arguments ever. I’m currently learning about the psychology and brain patterns of babies and fetuses, trying to determine at what point a baby becomes sentient. I think it’s safe to say that with modern technology, a fetus becomes viable at about 6 mos gestation—but only if the mother has great health insurance.

 

Next post: How Surprised I Was To Learn that The Bible Argument Against Abortion is LAME

 

More reading:

The wikipedia entry on maternal mortality. It’s a bit outdated—the pertinent study was done in 2000, and m.m. has been on the rise since—but it’s good reading.

 

And here is a really great study the religious right uses to draw crappy conclusions. (Pro-lifers never ever cite other, peripheral reasons for the findings, such as social ostracision and pressure, religion-induced guilt, the burden of keeping a secret, etc.)