Yuyutsu "If you have a moral code, then you are likely to be religious."

What?!
Moral codes are basically founded on sympathy.
I would feel pain or suffer loss from rape/theft/etc, so I understand another person would too.
No need for stone tablets.

"Ideally so [no laws at all]."

An unrealistic extremist idealist on OLO.
What a surprise!

"Ideally you should be willing to turn the other cheek."

Why isn't "vengeance/justice/punishment" ideal?
No society has ever had moral neutrality.

"I have not yet seen the government who cares about the spiritual welfare of rapists, thieves and murderers"

Why should they? Why should I? Off with their heads!

"People are essentially motivated by two things: Love - or Fear."

And a woman getting an abortion is motivated by?

Does a woman who truly loves herself potentially risk permanent physical damage, that may prevent her ever having children or pleasurable sex again?

Or suffer the psychological torment of guilt/shame, keeping a "dirty secret" and never-knowing-what-if.

Does she love her child?
Any child-murderer could use that excuse ("I was just saving the child from suffering in this cruel world, Your Honour")

No. She fears.

She fears the loss of self-absorption.
The effect on her career.
What others will think of her premarital sex/single motherhood.
Fear of life-long attachment to the father (who may mean nothing to her).
The loss of money she could be spending on more designer handbags instead of nappies.
Fear of the most profound responsibility anyone can have: raising a child.

Perhaps she should be afraid of being found out.
How many famous celebrities have openly admitted having abortions?

The actresses, models, princesses, businesswomen, senators?

They'll admit to anything else: drug addiction, driving drunk, adultery, eating disorders, mental breakdowns.

But abortion? Never.

They'll "tell all" but remain silent about the "silent scream".
They know very well the effect *that* will have on their careers.

"we should at least keep [laws] to the minimum."

Agreed.
And what of funding?
Should the government be keeping that to a minimum, or funding everyone's abortions and contraception?
Get my taxes off your body!

Dear Shockadelic,

If you are able to base your morals on sympathy, well and good. But comes a time of crisis when emotions rage and you are unable to feel sympathy, then you need discipline to keep to your moral code anyway.

It is a good thing to keep the tension. On the one hand maintain the highest ideal without compromise, but at the same time be practical and realise that one is not up to it for the time-being.

Vengeance is far from ideal because it clouds your own mind, takes away your peace and removes you from God. Some people are born warriors and it's part of their duty to fend society against criminals, yet they too should not get angry and upset: even while they stop crime, they should not develop hatred towards the criminal, but keep their head cool and simply do whatever they need to do out of a sense of duty.

The fact that no society is ideal doesn't mean that people should give up their efforts to come as closer to the ideal as they can.

Yes, a woman who aborts usually does it out of fear.
So are people who eat meat, if you get to the bottom of their motives.
Have you no fears in your life?
Do you never act out of fear?
Let the person who is never afraid and always brave, throw the first stone.

As for funding, certainly, it is not the role of government to subsidise our lifestyle choices. Government may only pay for abortions in cases of rape, because it was supposed to prevent it and didn't.

Yuyutsu "But comes a time of crisis when emotions rage and you are unable to feel sympathy, then you need discipline to keep to your moral code anyway."

That's why we have courts with juries and judges and frown upon lynch mobs.
Let the court decide whether the doctor and "patient" involved were justified in each case.

If the court has "sympathy" in a case, they can dismiss the charges or suspend the sentence.

Instead, by arguing for legality, you are presuming justification in *all* cases.

"Have you no fears in your life? Do you never act out of fear?"

I'm not the one who brought up the love/fear dualism.
I don't have anything against either.

Dear Shockadelic,

It seems that we started to confuse two different issues:

Since you referred to the question of the relation between morality and religion, I responded to it, completely as a separate topic and out of context with this discussion about abortions.

While morality and religion are tightly connected, legality has nothing to do with either: many things are legal but immoral (example: gambling, drinking, smoking) while others are illegal but perfectly moral (example: Tasmanian doctors refusing to refer patients to abortion clinics).

Morality is private - it's about what YOU do or refuse to do, rather than about what others must or mustn't do. States/governments are not the custodians of morality, nor can they ever be because as secular entities they have none of the skills or understanding required to handle moral issues.

Also, in order to prevent the corruption of religion, we must maintain separation of state and church: but since morality is so closely connected with religion, we should not allow the state to be involved with moral issues either.

This is why there should be no law against abortions - not because abortions are moral, which they generally aren't.

Yuyutsu - can you provide some examples of laws that have no moral component?

Dear JP,

The state doesn't make laws in order to make people more moral: it makes laws in order to achieve particular external results.

Take even the most basic law of all - the prohibition on murder. It is not motivated by the compassionate desire to make the murderer more moral in order to save their soul, but by the desire to have more safety and live longer with less chances of being randomly killed.

As free choice is a divine gift, no one can ever become more moral by force, by coercion, by being told "don't do this or else". Yes, one may comply out of fear, but it wouldn't make them any better person. More likely it would tend to make them disgruntled, hateful, thus even less moral.

By no means, I am not saying that the desire to be safe and live longer is wrong, only that it is a secular rather than a moral issue.