I would say that the combination of Gen 9:6 and Ex 21:22-25 makes is very clear that the old testament does not consider an unborn fetus to be “man, made in the image of God”. Accidentally killing the fetus is treated as a property crime, whereas accidentally killing the pregnant woman is treated as manslaughter.
fwiw, orthodox Judaism considered abortion a violation of the law to be fruitful and multiply, but requires abortion to save the life of the mother, as saving a human life always trumps the other laws. Judaism considers a baby to be ensouled when it draws its first breath, just as God ensouled Adam by breathing into his nostrils. In fact, the word “neshama” means both “soul” and “breath”
Does anyone think abortion is not morally wrong at all in most cases? I don’t think we are arguing whether it is wrong or not. We’re discussing whether it should be legal.
Based on this, 91% of abortions take place in the first trimester. I see nothing morally wrong with an abortion in the first trimester for any reason. I do not consider a first trimester pregnancy a child.
Where the line gets drawn after first trimester in terms of moralness of abortion is fuzzy for me. If I had to be pushed I’d draw my line somewhere around viability, 24ish weeks, but I could entertain arguments for earlier since I’m not solid on it. But even then, I feel like the moral dilemma is based on reason for the abortion. Anything related to rape/incest, health of mother, rare genetic diseases/viability of infant, etc, no moral qualms getting that late term abortion.
My personal morality says that someone having a 39 week abortion just because they decided to not have the baby for pure elective reasons says that is morally wrong. But that is the extremely extremely rare exception that I’m not even sure happens.
I think most Americans agree that is morally wrong. I also don’t think it’s legal in the US. It would certainly be extremely difficult to find a practitioner (MD or otherwise) to do it.
My son’s spouse had an abortion. The embryo had lodged itself in their fallopian tube. If the embryo hadn’t been removed, it would have killed them before it became viable. Even so, I felt a little sad that my grandchild was being killed. But I supported them at the time, and I believe it was totally and completely moral. Not to have intervened would have been immoral, imho.
In general, I have no moral quarrels with people who abort for any reason prior to quickening, which is about the end of the first trimester. That’s when it starts to feel like a baby, rather than an illness. After that, I think it would be immoral to abort “just because I feel like it”, because while I don’t think the fetus is really a human being at that point, it begins to look and feel like one, and I think it cheapens our own souls to kill a person, or even to do something that feels kinda like killing a person.
But abortions that late are quite uncommon, even where it’s legal. And most of those that happen are due to medical problems, either of the mother or the fetus.
Agreed, we are not arguing about whether it is wrong or not because, IMO, it is not wrong. Pretty presumptuous of you to speak for everyone/anyone else. And as stated almost everywhere, there are very few 3rd trimester abortions and almost everyone is medically necessary. You are free to have your own opinions, but don’t you dare assume you speak for anyone else.
I am not sure if you are addressing the people on this blog or making a statement about the general population but here are some results from a poll that is about 13 years old:
.A slight majority of Americans (52%) say having an abortion is morally wrong. One quarter says it is not a moral issue, and just 10% say it is morally acceptable. (The remaining 12% say that the morality of abortion depends on the situation or refuse to express an opinion.)
At the time of this poll 47% of Americans supported the legality of abortion. Today it is 61% .
It’s unclear to me, and probably to most atheists, whether a typical abortion is more immoral than say killing a tree. Imagine for a moment you don’t believe in a soul and it gets tricky.
To elaborate a bit, because I don’t want this to devolve more into internet catiness…
If I don’t assume a “soul”, then I tend to assume that my “self” is really in the brain, and that the rest of the body is just a shell or vehicle. The brain is the place for my personality, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, sensorium, etc. and without it, I stop being myself. If my brain was placed into another body, I wouldn’t say “I lost my brain”, I would say “I’m in a new body”. This is also why we (atheists) will say that a person changes when their brain changes, and that a person is dead when their brain is dead.
Since most abortions are done before the body has grown a brain (nevermind the kind of brain capable of hosting a personality), it does not feel immoral. And in some cases, it feels moral.
I don’t think we are arguing whether it is wrong or not. We’re discussing whether it should be legal.
I think if we all agreed it was wrong, in the same way we agree that theft is wrong, the legal discussion would be easy.
The very problem is that we disagree vehemently.
Some think abortion is nothing at all. Some think it’s kind of bad. Some think it’s murder most foul.
The only question is what do we do with that disagreement.
Based on your definition than truly what is a human child? What if aother decides when a baby is 6 months old she doesn’t want it? Why not kill it then? There’s no difference if there is no soul.
Yeah, it’s hard to say. Without a book full of “thou shall” and “thou shall not”, morality is often gray or uncertain.
Of course (actuary) it makes sense to be conservative when you are uncertain about something important. But then the question becomes how conservative?
However, I wouldn’t agree that “there is no difference”. Clearly there is a vast difference between different stages. It’s just that the changes are gradual, and unmarked.
It’s an assumption of course, as we are lacking empirical evidence of what happens after death. What about near-death experiences? There are accounts of people losing brain function, having an out-of-body experience, observing things they could not have seen from their hospital room, miraculously recovering, and then providing this impossible-to-know information.
Researchers have found that between 10 and 20% of people who have a documented cardiac arrest — that is, when their hearts stop — will report a near-death experience, says Dr. Bruce Greyson, professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia.
Don’t get me wrong, “A person is dead when their brain is dead” is a very rational assumption, but there isn’t any way to prove it. Or do we need to define “person” and “dead”. Near death experiences & and accounts of Jesus dying and appearing to over 500 people not long afterwards…
If I want the freedom to live according to my beliefs, I have to respect others’ rights to live according to their beliefs. (Within reason, of course.)
I believe that “abortion is mostly wrong, but it sometimes may be the lesser evil”. The answer to the question of when it is/isn’t the lesser evil falls into that grey area where peoples’ beliefs do vary. That, in turn, suggests that the law ought to be relatively hands-off on the matter, and that any government involvement should be focused more on reducing the perceived need for abortions instead of attempting to criminalize them.
