I was at an abortion protest at a local university handing out pamphlets and talking with people this morning. As much as I hate that the protests are necessary I love doing them. I feel like I'm doing something that's actually making a difference. I love discussing this issue with people because I know that the only way that we will see abortion end is by changing the hearts and minds of the masses. I hope that the protests that we do can cause a ripple effect and will one day make abortion unthinkable.
The university protests are focused around a number of large signs that contain graphic images of aborted babies that are compared to different past genocides in history. The volunteers hand out pamphlets to those passing by and try to start discussions. I usually ask people that are lingering around what they think about it all. I is a great seed for conversation. The focus of discussion varies from person to person. A lot people don't really like the use of graphic images while others want to hear our response to various pro-choice rhetoric. I just love when I can have rational discussions with people.
One thing that I noticed today was that I had a number of the conversations come around to euthanasia. It was a bit of a new spin on the old argument. I've heard many people say before that we need abortion or else the children will suffer terrible lives. What I haven't heard as much before is people who are willing to acknowledge that a fetus is a human and yet believe that it should still legal to abort it.
One of the signs that we use compares a premature baby at 24 weeks gestation hooked up to life support with an aborted baby also at 24 weeks gestation. I asked one girl that told me that she thought that a woman should have a right to choose what she thought of that particular sign. She said that it didn't bother her. I asked her if I were to kill the live premature baby if that would bother her. She told me that it wouldn't bother her if the child wasn't going to have a good life. I wasn't really expecting that answer. I had a couple other similar discussions where people basically argued that abortion was OK because euthanasia is OK.
The problem with her rational is that you and I don't have the right to decide what a reasonable quality of life is for another person is. If we did then my government might decide that the people in Ethiopia are suffering from so much famine and are taking resource from others who could use them more effectively and so we might as well just go nuke them. Clearly that would be insane but I don't believe that abortion is different. I think that the issue is that most people who would advocate "abortion euthanasia" either don't think that the fetus is as human as them or that the good of abortion would out weigh the fact that someone is dying (ends justify the means argument). I believe that both of these beliefs are flawed. I believe that a fetus is human and therefore no good that could come from killing it is justifiable.
Posted by rose at March 10, 2005 04:54 PM