In the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times, a letter to the editor about the right to choose nailed it, as did Lizz Winstead’s tweets. They both address a popular, but faulty, talking point, one with which I get bombarded every time I post anything on abortion rights, specifically that a fetus is not a child. The typical reaction from pro-forced birthers is something like, “Oh, so you support killing a child! Murderer!”
Well, no. See, a blastocyst is not a person, feti are not children, and embryos don’t vote… yet. However, I’m sure the GOP House majority will continue to try to change all that.
Oh, and let’s not forget that “scientific research has repeatedly confirmed that fetuses cannot feel pain until after they are viable; indeed, even the researchers who are trying to learn more about fetal pain don’t want their findings to be used to justify abortion bans.”
But hey, why bring science and logic into it when you’re engaged in a sing-along with Delusional XM Radio in the RWNJ Clown Car? Check out this letter responding to “House abortion bill switch reveals emerging clout of moderate Republicans,” Jan. 22, and then read the Twitter thread below, because our voices matter:
Facts, or the lack of them, have never bothered ideologues.
It is a biological fact that an apple seed is not an apple, even though, under favorable conditions, it will develop into a tree that will produce apples. We express this fact by saying that an apple seed is only a potential apple tree and beyond that a potential apple.
Similar logic suggests that the human fetus at conception is not a miniature human being, much less a person. Under favorable conditions it will, of course, become such, but it is no more an actual person than an apple seed is an actual apple.
The significant point about potentiality, as philosopher Joel Feinberg noted, is that when it comes to rights, a potential “X” doesn’t necessarily have the same rights as an actual “X.” In our system of government, the president-elect is the potential commander in chief, but that doesn’t mean he has the same rights as the current commander in chief.
Come to think of it, some day all of us living persons will be corpses, but that doesn’t mean that we are, right now, what we will become.
Shane Andre, Seal Beach
Use the words of one of the Right’s own gurus:
“An embryo has no rights. Rights do not
pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot
acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the
not-yet-living (or the unborn). Abortion is a moral right—which should be left
to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her
wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate
to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
–Ayn Rand
Well let G*D steps over Rand and give the total control to women only, because He trusted them and no one else.
Is it me, or is my avatar showing up in Rdzkz’s comment?
Thanks for this one, Jeff!