Very good piece! You're right that too many pro-choicers don't seem to fully absorb that pro-lifers think abortion is *murdering babies*. So for many pro-lifers, the idea of legalized abortion seems insane. Moving the needle with most pro-lifers requires addressing that aspect of their belief. Just talking about personal choice and finan…
Very good piece! You're right that too many pro-choicers don't seem to fully absorb that pro-lifers think abortion is *murdering babies*. So for many pro-lifers, the idea of legalized abortion seems insane. Moving the needle with most pro-lifers requires addressing that aspect of their belief. Just talking about personal choice and financial stability usually won't get very far.
However, if pro-lifers truly believe that fetuses have the same humanity as babies, then shouldn't they also consider abortion to be *first-degree* murder? Wouldn't an abortion be the moral equivalent of a mother hiring someone to strangle her 3-week-old baby in its crib? Yet I doubt many pro-lifers would be comfortable with abortions being punished with life sentences or the death penalty. This seems to imply that fetuses aren't actually fully human to most pro-lifers either. Of course, that doesn't mean fetuses deserve no protection at all, but it might help pro-lifers see that the issue is greyer than they think (even in their own minds).
Yes, that's a good point that even pro-lifers don't really see it as equivalent to murder. And even infanticide may be seen as less bad than regular murder. In this Louise Perry post she quotes Helen Dale saying:
"An echo of humanity’s infanticidal past is still found in jury rooms throughout the common law world: the reason we do not refer to infant-killing as “murder” is because in 1922, it was reclassified and re-named with passage of the Infanticide Act. This was done because juries refused to convict—even before 1920, when they were all male and the Crown case was overwhelming—and had been refusing to convict for some time. The only crime for which fewer convictions were recorded was abortion. In Scotland, there hadn’t been a successful abortion prosecution for 50 years. To this day, infanticide convictions are astonishingly rare."
Thanks for the link to that article. "First Things" is one of the best sources of Christian intellectualism. Unfortunately almost no professed Christians have even heard of it.
Very good piece! You're right that too many pro-choicers don't seem to fully absorb that pro-lifers think abortion is *murdering babies*. So for many pro-lifers, the idea of legalized abortion seems insane. Moving the needle with most pro-lifers requires addressing that aspect of their belief. Just talking about personal choice and financial stability usually won't get very far.
However, if pro-lifers truly believe that fetuses have the same humanity as babies, then shouldn't they also consider abortion to be *first-degree* murder? Wouldn't an abortion be the moral equivalent of a mother hiring someone to strangle her 3-week-old baby in its crib? Yet I doubt many pro-lifers would be comfortable with abortions being punished with life sentences or the death penalty. This seems to imply that fetuses aren't actually fully human to most pro-lifers either. Of course, that doesn't mean fetuses deserve no protection at all, but it might help pro-lifers see that the issue is greyer than they think (even in their own minds).
Yes, that's a good point that even pro-lifers don't really see it as equivalent to murder. And even infanticide may be seen as less bad than regular murder. In this Louise Perry post she quotes Helen Dale saying:
"An echo of humanity’s infanticidal past is still found in jury rooms throughout the common law world: the reason we do not refer to infant-killing as “murder” is because in 1922, it was reclassified and re-named with passage of the Infanticide Act. This was done because juries refused to convict—even before 1920, when they were all male and the Crown case was overwhelming—and had been refusing to convict for some time. The only crime for which fewer convictions were recorded was abortion. In Scotland, there hadn’t been a successful abortion prosecution for 50 years. To this day, infanticide convictions are astonishingly rare."
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/10/we-are-repaganizing#:~:text=I%20do%20not%20wish%20to,want%20it%20to%20be%20legal.
Thanks for the link to that article. "First Things" is one of the best sources of Christian intellectualism. Unfortunately almost no professed Christians have even heard of it.