Mental Rhinorrhea has a thoughtful post, Morning After Pill Redux and Open Trackbacks, up responding to a comment I made to an earlier post there that deserves a fuller response from me than just a brief comment on her blog. Read her post first and come on back here.
Even posting this in response doesn’t do her entry enough credit, since I’m only commenting on a portion of her post—and then taking off on one of my trademarked rabbit trails. 🙂
I particularly commend her comment, “I would love to think that, God forbid, I were raped and became pregnant that I would have the emotional support needed to deliver the child to term…” My personal prayer is that no woman would ever have to face that particular decision, but if one should, Lingerie Lady’s outlook would be what I’d pray prevails.
Still, if one truly believes abortion is murder, then what? Simple logic compels the thought, apart from religious beliefs: if the fetus is not human, what species is it? Porcine? And if so when does it switch from being a pig to being a human? (OK, in cases of fetuses that grow to become politicians, the answer would be “Never” *heh*)
If the answer about when a fetus becomes human is the silly, “When it can sustain life outside the womb,” then that would suggest that most of the folk on “welfare” are abortable… among other classes of not-humans (by that definition). The question is silly, but it’s also either dangerously stupid or dangerously disingenuous… or both.
The answer is for those of us who have a moral sense to legislate that moral sense into law. After all, every crime against persons is a legislation of moraility, is it not? If murder is only “criminal” and not “immoral” then where is the justification for criminalizing it?
It is the bane of civilization: postmodern (and even sloppier post-postmodern) relativistic humanism that makes the disingenuous argument that one cannot legislate morality: if laws are not legislations of morality then they are purely arbitrary.
OK, almost hung myself on that one, didn’t I? Granted, many of the laws we are saddled with today are arbitrary, disconnected from morality, and also, not coicidentally, the prime factors in what Jerry Pournelle has labeled as the increasing presence of “anarcho-tyranny”–loosely, the arbitrary and unjust rule of subjects (no longer genuinely citizens) by bureaucrats and political elite, resulting in a disrespect for the rule of such arbitrary and unjust laws.
And make no mistake here: I have no respect for the current crop of abortion laws on just that very basis alone, apart from moral arguments: they are arbitrary and unjust. If they were just, they’d allow for the baby to be born, grow to maturity and argue its own case for being allowed to continue living or be “aborted,” but fetuses are allowed no rights in abortions. Arbitrary, because the assessments as to the humanity of the fetus are all subjective, with no foundation in fact.
Coming around to the original post by Lingerie Lady on the “womb broom” morning after pill and pharmacists who refuse to dispense it: On the grounds that abortion laws are arbitrary and unjust, alone, I would argue that anyone who refused to dispense those pills would have not only the right to assert their displeasure with the laws by refusing to dispense the poison but the responsibility to themselves and a just society to do so.
As in respect to such laws as require dispensing drugs against the personal moral judgements of citizens, “The law is a ass.*”
I heartily recommend putting Mental Rhinorrhea on your watch list. It’s going on my blogroll. Lingerie Lady’s post referred to here deserves a much fuller response than I have made, but I trust at least a few readers here will hop on over and check her blog out, and perhaps leave a few comments of your own.