Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Abortion

  • Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?

    After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man.  Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct: The strength of the religious vote for Trump initially mystified me, until I remembered the ferocity of the Left’s assault on religious believers in the past few years—the way they were hounded and vilified for continuing to…

  • A Pro-Life Feminist Who Voted for Trump

    Thereby helping to block the butchery Hillary would have exacerbated.  I hope you 'conservatives' who refused to vote for Trump will come to your senses at some point.

  • A Morally Justifiable Case of Late-Term Abortion

  • Abortion Numbers

    Here is a page displaying various abortion counters. You appreciate the grave moral evil of slavery, but not that of the vast majority of abortions? Even stranger is the fact that some who are much more vociferous opponents of abortion than me will not vote for Donald Trump a week from today.   Related: A…

  • DePaul University Bans “Unborn Lives Matter”

    Here: Reverend Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., the president of DePaul University, prevented a College Republicans poster bearing the phrase “Unborn Lives Matter” from being displayed on campus. According to Holtschneider’s open letter to the DePaul community, the poster constituted “bigotry . . . under the cover of free speech” that “provokes the Black Lives Matter…

  • What Does Abortion Have to Do with Religion?

    What follows is a re-post, slightly redacted, from 3 November 2012.  Occasioned by the Biden-Ryan Veep debate in 2012, it is equally applicable to the 2016 Kaine-Pence Veep debate, except that in 2016 only Kaine is (nominally) Catholic. ………………….. The abortion question is almost always raised in the context of religion.  The Vice-Presidential debate provides…

  • A Vote for Hillary is a Vote for Tax-Payer Funded Abortion on Demand

    Including partial-birth abortion. You say your conscience won't allow you to vote for a vulgarian who thinks, or used to think, that his celebrity entitles him to grab at the female anatomy?  But your conscience is not troubled by Hllary's support for abortion?  Then I humbly suggest that you are morally obtuse. You tell me…

  • Arguments Don’t Have Testicles

    Prepared lines come in handy in many of life's situations.  They are useful for getting points across in a memorable way and they  make for effective on-the-spot rebuttals.  A mind well-stocked with prepared lines is a mind less likely to suffer l'esprit d'escalier.  Suppose a feminist argues that men have no right to an opinion…

  • Bright Flash at Moment of Conception

    From The Telegraph (4/26): Human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film. An explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception. Make of this what you will.  But be…

  • A Possible Way to ‘Get Through’ to Liberals on Abortion

    Suppose I want to convince you of something.  I must use premises that you accept.  For if I argue from premises that you do not accept, you will reject my argument no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. So how can we get through to those liberals who are willing to listen?  Not by invoking…

  • The Potentiality Argument Against Abortion and Feinberg’s Logical Point About Potentiality

    I claim that the standard objections to the Potentiality Argument (PA) are very weak and can be answered. This is especially so with respect to Joel Feinberg's "logical point about potentiality," which alone I will discuss in this post. This often-made objection is extremely weak and should persuade no rational person. But first a guideline…

  • Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

    I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood: The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the…

  • Does the Potentiality Argument Prove Too Much?

    Here is a simple version of the Potentiality Argument (PA): 1. All potential persons have a right to life.2. The human fetus is a potential person.—–3. The human fetus has a right to life. Does PA 'prove too much'? It does if the proponent of PA has no principled way of preventing PA from transmogrifying…

  • Another Example of the Moral Depravity of the Left: Planned Parenthood

    Michelle Malkin's The Wine-Sipping Butchers of Planned Parenthood ends brilliantly: What kind of country do we live in where law-abiding businesses are fined, threatened and demonized for refusing to bake gay wedding cakes, but barbaric baby butchers are hailed by feminists, Hollywood and a president who asked God to "bless" them? God help us. In…

  • Abortion and Infanticide: What’s the Difference?

    This is a re-post with minor edits of an entry from March 1, 2012.  I agree with it still.  (Surprise!)  I would like Vlastimil V., who is currently exercised by topics in this neighborhood, to tell me how much of it he agrees with, and what he disagrees with and why. ____________________ If you agree…