Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Abortion

  • Orwellianism of the Day

    "Abortion is health care."  I didn't make that up. It is from a protester's sign.

  • Advice for Leftists: Don’t Call it Infanticide

    Call it fourth trimester abortion. That should appeal to your twisted Orwellian sensibility. Why shouldn't infanticide also be celebrated?

  • Jews and Abortion

    Here: Jewish law does not share the belief common among abortion opponents that life begins at conception, nor does it legally consider the fetus to be a full person deserving of protections equal those accorded to human beings. In Jewish law, a fetus attains the status of a full person only at birth. Sources in…

  • Slavery, Abortion, and ‘Skin in the Game’

    Slavery is is widely and rightly regarded as among the worst of moral evils. Abortion is not. On the contrary: the latter is now celebrated in some circles. Why the difference? Why the difference when both are grave moral evils? 'Skin in the game' plays an explanatory role. Not the whole role, perhaps, but a…

  • Can One Reasonably Hold that Abortion is Murder but Ought to be Legal?

    Victor Reppert poses the following important question on his Facebook page: What, if anything, is wrong with holding, at the same time that a) Abortion is murder, and b) abortion should be legal? It's not a logical contradiction, is it? Is it merely counterintuitive? Is it un-Christian? One way of reaching this position might be to…

  • Chelsea Chucklehead the Orwellian

    According to Chelsea Clinton, who is self-avowedly "deeply religious," to stem the slaughter of the pre-natal would be "unchristian." But of course one cannot expect the child of Bill and Hillary to have a functioning moral compass.  Mockery and derision are essential weapons in modern political warfare for the simple reason that our enemies, bereft…

  • More Proof that ‘Progressives’ are Morally Obtuse

    Re: Twitter's Content Blockage: Some examples of this supposedly offensive content include pictures of children developing in the womb and even simple ultrasound images of babies — like the ones that expectant parents hang on their refrigerator doors.  Twitter's actions suggest it’s OK for Planned Parenthood to tweet that a woman has a right to an abortion, but when I tweet and…

  • The Left: Morally Obtuse and Economically Retarded

    As witness the Deep Thoughts of Chelsea Clinton: Has abortion made America more prosperous? Chelsea Clinton seems to think so. The former first daughter spoke recently at a “Rise up for Roe” event in New York City, one of a series of meetings organized by NARAL and Planned Parenthood to oppose the confirmation of Brett…

  • Are There Reproductive Rights?

    I should think so. The right to procreate is one; the right not to procreate is another.  But no one has the right to kill an innocent human being. So no one has the right to kill an innocent human recently born, not even the mother.  Infanticide cannot count as a reproductive right. Now if…

  • Does a woman have a right to do whatever she wants with her own body?

    If I grant you that, will you grant me that the fetus growing within her is not her own body, but a separate body, a separate biological individual, a separate life? Related: The Woman's Body Argument

  • Should a Pro-Lifer Advocate the Killing of Abortionists?

    Mike Valle on his Facebook page raises the title question in these terms: "If you believe that abortion is truly murder, then wouldn't it be incumbent on you to kill an abortion doctor? After all, wouldn't you kill a serial killer in the act? " One way to construe the question is as follows. Is…

  • Let Roe Go

    Megan McArdle: I am myself uneasily pro-choice. Moreover, just a few days ago, I argued that the increasingly bitter judicial wars tearing apart today’s politics can only be ended with more judicial deference to legislatures and to precedent. It stands to reason that I would be dismayed by the politically electrifying prospect that Roe might be overruled entirely.…

  • Secular Arguments Against Abortion

    A question rarely asked is the one I raise in this post:   Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises? Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last…

  • A Common Abortion Mistake

    It is often said that  a human fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A human fetus is an actual human life.  Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And…

  • No Voice for Men in Abortion Debate? Do Arguments Have Testicles?

    Michael in Russia writes, Got a question for you. I am a pro-abortion man (or even more generally a pro-death man since I support capital punishment too). You strongly oppose the former. I'm not going to repeat all familiar pros and cons. Rather, I've got one peculiar premise which I have never met in discussion…