Just because we can do anything we choose is not a valid reason to commit actions. We all have the capacity to kill another person. Just because some do - does not make it valid behaviour. A civilised society outlaws behaviours that breed disease, fosters murder, and self destruction.

We have the capacity to heal many diseases, but that in many cases is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than the security fense at the top. Especially in cases where we have a choice that leads to disease or ultimately death.

Abortion is one of those actions where choices should have been made before consequences to terminate a life was seen as an appropiate action. Self gratification was seen as the pinacle of the decision at the time, rather than the bigger picture that it would result in an unwanted pregnancy. Poor decisions have poor outcomes. That is why the sacrifice of infant children to Marduk in ancient times was so abhorrent.

"We all have the capacity to kill another person."

Philo, that is where I disagree with you. This idea that we are all born killers, who have to learn not to kill others is nonsense. Its the other way round. Just about all social species evolved not to kill their own, for obvious reasons, it makes good evolutionary sense.

Yes some people are born with psychopathic tendencies, but they are few and far between. Yes some people can get so emotionally engulfed that they lose control of their ability to reason and in an act of passion, kill somebody. (more people die from acts of passion then from some killer who intrudes etc)

Yes we can learn to become killers, just as we can learn to become Catholics. That does not mean that we are born with those tendencies.

Morality is grounded in biology. Just look at the behaviour of various primate species between each other. Its not much different to our own. There are good evolutionary reasons for all this. The very notion that we are all born savages and have to learn morality, is a flawed one, promoted by the Church to justify its existence.

Philo “Just because we can do anything we choose is not a valid reason to commit actions.”

No but just because someone is pregnant does not give you the right to undermine their right of self determination and deny them choice.

As for Fences at the tops of cliffs… the world is not a safe place, pretending you can prevent all the negative thins which might happen will only result in people living half lives, surrounded in cotton wall (or fences) and achieving nothing for themselves. You will still need ambulances and people will still climb over fences.

As for killing another person. That is true, however, abortion is not murder because of the nature and status of an embryo / foetus, which has not achieved a state of individuality. It is not a person in the “individual sense”. It is an extension of the woman in whose body it is developing and thus subject to her decision and right to decide whether to abort or not.

I see no one from the pro-choice side of the debate arguing that having an abortion is necessarily the right thing.
What I see from the pro-choice posts is a common respect for other peoples right to make choices for themselves, regardless that they might be poor decision resulting in poor outcomes.

The “worst outcome” is when people are denied the right to make decisions and treated like cognitive incompetents to suit the dogmatic edicts of someone else.

Yabby disagree with morality being grounded in biology.

Animals are without morals because they cannot make reasoned choices. Animals are driven by biology along a single path, where the sole purpose of sex is to procreate, just like the Catholic Church demands.

RCC would deny us our individuality and exercise of freewill because it is not good for the Church, it challenges their power.

That is why the RCC are anti-abortion, because it is an area in which the individual woman can be seen to make a choice over her own body, instead of following the edicts of a religious tyranny.

(overdue follow up from previous post)

Meg1, from your arguments (see my previous post), I would conclude that you are anti-abortion because-

1)You believe in God and God's morality
2)You believe God tells us that killing humans is wrong
3)You believe foetuses (and zygotes, embryos etc) are human, and therefore killing them via abortion is wrong.

Does this accurately sum up your argument against abortion?

With her/his post on Saturday, 18 March, Reason has taken up the challenge to this basis of an anti-abortion debate.

Philo has responded that
"Wisdom comes from recognising how God designed Creation to best function. Violation of the best principles known to man leads to greater sickness injury and death."

This turns the debate from abortion being a violation of an absolute rule handed down from above, to abortion being wrong due to its consequences (for example, if it leads to greater sickness/injury/death).

I'm not sure Philo(or other anti-abortionists) would want to adopt a consequentialist argument to abortion (but can tell me otherwise), but if so, Philo may be in trouble with examples such as this-

"indulgence in anal sex increases the possibility of infection and tissue damage not normally found in vaginal sex with one exclusive partner."

If greater sickness/injury/death is the criteria to make an act wrong, then unprotected sex is always wrong compared to protected sex.

Furthermore, this argument accepts that abortion may then be right if the social consequences result in less injury/sickness/death than the death of the foetus and any negative social consequences of abortion.

How right/wrong abortion is then becomes a somewhat empyrical matter. I am happy to argue this, but I'm not sure Philo should be.

For example, suppose as a matter of empyrical fact we determine that the earth can only sustain its current population, yet a billion babies are due, and if they are all born, the fighting over limited resources is likely to kill more than a billion people. Sure, this scenario is hard to "prove", but a consequentialist argument would make the abortion of some/most/all of these billion unborn humans a good moral action.

LAB, you might define morality as a conscious thought process, but if individuals naturally behave in a way that you consider moral, because they evolved that way, then clearly it is grounded in biology. That’s exactly what we find in other primate species, if we study primatology.

Social species evolved in certain ways which benefit each other, for the survival of that species. So killing our own, avoiding incest, feeling empathy
for others, altruism, food sharing, helping the weaker, condemning of deception, social exclusion of those individuals who don’t “follow the rules”,
pair bonding, are all grounded in biology. You might then sit down and define what comes naturally to many, because the thinking parts of your brain are a little larger then other species. That’s about all.

No brain function is just about thinking. We are affected by what we feel and
that involves our genetic history. That’s how the mind works.

“For much of the starving 3rd-world countries it isn't a
matter of over-population” LAB, when a third of women in the third world say that they they would like a choice on family planning and didn’t want another kid, its not amazing that the third world population is increasing by 80 million a year. Why should those women be denied the choices that 1st world women have? Why should they be forced to have children that they don’t want? What is your problem with letting women decide?

Nature kept a balance in the population of Africa, until European missionaries arrived and screwed up the natural system. Now its White European religious dogma
that is denying them choices.

Funnily enough LAB, its in Western countries that women are treated with some respect, despite their having rights to contraception and abortion. Its in third world
countries that they are treated like chattels, in countries where these choices are denied to them. Sounds like your male responsibility argument has been blown clean out of the water, by the prevailing facts

Yabby,
Would you believe it how people twist things to their own predetermined agenda. I said nothing about being born psycopathatic or about being born killers. What I said is: Just beacuse we can does not mean we do; and this makes it acceptable.

Of course 99.9% 0f people have no inclination to kill another especially their children. But the fact is that any one of us could; but that does not make it socially right. My point was: anyone can murder (no exception) using an implement or chemical or bare hands. Many of us would not consider killing our children, even if somtimes we might feel like doing it in a fit of rage.