Category: Abortion
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What Does Abortion Have to Do with Religion?
The abortion question is almost always raised in the context of religion. The Vice-Presidential debate provides a good recent example. The moderator introduced the topic with these words: “We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion…
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Arguments Don’t Have Testicles
If someone questions your right to have an opinion about abortion if you are man, say Arguments don't have testicles.
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A Prime Instance of Political Correctness: The Blackballing of Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff is a civil libertarian and a liberal in an older and respectable sense of the term. He thinks for himself and follows the arguments and evidence where they lead. So what do contemporary politically correct liberals do? They attack him. His coming out against abortion particularly infuriated them. Mark Judge comments: Hentoff's liberal friends…
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Asserting and Arguing: Analysis of an Example and Response to Novak
In my earlier posts on this topic here and here I did not analyze an example. I make good that deficit now. Suppose a person asserts that abortion is morally wrong. Insofar forth, a bare assertion which is likely to elicit the bare counter-assertion, 'Abortion is not morally wrong.' What can be gratuitously asserted may be…
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Hats Off to Hentoff: Abortion and Obama
It is often assumed that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises. This assumption is plainly false. To show that it is is false, one need merely give an anti-abortion argument that does not invoke any religious tenet, for example: 1. Infanticide is morally wrong. 2. There is no morally relevant…
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Anti-Intellectualism on the Right
As I write, the 'infanticide is just post-natal abortion' controversy is being discussed by Charlie Sykes who is sitting in for Dennis Prager on the latter's radio show. Sykes is obviously intelligent, but he just did something that is not uncommon for conservatives to do but is harmful to the conservative cause, namely, display an anti-intellectual attitude. He used the…
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Abortion and Infanticide: What’s the Difference?
If you agree that infanticide is morally wrong, should you not also agree that late-term abortion is also morally wrong? Consider this argument: Infanticide is morally wrongThere is no morally relevant difference between infanticide and late-term abortionThereforeLate-term abortion is morally wrong. To cast it in a slogan: Late-term abortion is pre-natal infanticide! But of course…
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A Response to Levi Asher on Abortion
In a very brief post I posed a question for those pacifists who are pro-choice: "If you are a pacifist, why aren't you also pro-life? If you oppose the killing of human beings, how can you not oppose the killing of defenceless human beings, innocent human beings?" Levi Asher answers at his blog, Literary Kicks. …
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Death Penalty, Abortion, and Certainty
Some opponents of the death penalty oppose it on the ground that one can never be certain whether the accused is guilty as charged. Some of these people are pro-choice. To them I say: Are you certain that the killing of the unborn is morally permissible? How can you be sure? How can you be…
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Pacifism and Abortion
If you are a pacifist, why aren't you also pro-life? If you oppose the killing of human beings, how can you not oppose the killing of defenceless human beings, innocent human beings? You call yourself a liberal. You pride yourself on 'speaking truth to power' and for defending the weak and disadvantaged. Well, how much…
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Can One Consistently be Pro-Life and Pro-Death Penalty?
This topic just won't go away. Recent example: [Texas Governor Rick] Perry’s identification as a strong supporter of “a culture of life” and what he called the “ultimate justice” of capital punishment, however, raises some potentially thorny questions about the meaning of being “pro-life.” In campaign season, the question is whether American voters, especially voters…
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Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist
Here. By Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926-2011)
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Ayn Rand on Abortion
The following quotations from Rand can be found here, together with references. An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn). Abortion is a moral right—which should…
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Philosophy TV: Don Marquis and Michael Tooley on Abortion
Listen.
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Fission and Zygotes
This post adds nuance to what I said earlier. I continue to uphold the Potentiality Principle. I have never seen a good argument against it. But there is a question about when the principle first finds purchase. Certainly not before conception. At conception? Later on? Considerations of 'moral safety' suggest we say 'at conception.' But…