Poop Shute

Jess 09/09/2005 said:

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me quite mad for it's stupidity. Maybe someone can explain. It said "God Would Be Pro-Life." There are two things wrong here. God "would" be, this implies that the almighty He either doesn't exist or is dead. As to say, "if there was a God, he would probably be pro-life." This bumper sticker was most likely placed on the car by an extremely religious (most likely Catholic) pro-lifer. And then secondly, and most annoyingly, those who want to bring God into these arguments, like I said, are most likely Catholic, or subscribe to some sect of Christianity. Christianity has always prided itself in the selling point that God gave us free will. Free will is the freedom to choose. So it only makes sense to me that God would be pro-choice. The almighty He wouldn't give us free will and boast about it just to prefer that we not have the legal freedom to use it.

I originally started writing this whole thing in JESS'S comments on her 09/09/2005 post, but it started getting WAY too long, so here it is.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a second... or God's advocate, as the case seems to be.

The idea is God gave us free will, but God also set down rules for us to follow and consequences for breaking those rules because he wanted us to follow them. So, yes, we can do whatever we want, but God does not encourage the exercising of that free will in every arena. In fact, free will is God's way of testing us. If we're smart enough to avoid using that free will to break his rules, then we are rewarded. One of those rules being "Though shalt not kill." So God IS definitely pro-life.

(End of advocate-playing here)

That said, the term "pro-life" itself is something I've taken issue with. I mean, yes, an embryo is definitely life, but it's smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, and in NO way represents a human being. I mean, are you "pro-lifers" going to start championing the protection of all other micro-organisms too? It hardly seems fair to leave out protozoa, paramecium and rotifera.

The dictionary has many definitions of "life." Two of which are as follows:

"the property or quality that distinguishes dead organisms from living ones, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli"

"the interval of time between birth and death."

Birth and death, eh? Whoops!

An embryo or fetus are incapable of sustaining themselves outside of the womb at all, they must live off their mother. So, where inside the womb does life actually begin? Unanswerable, but I would argue that it begins at birth. Debating about where in the womb it starts is completely arbitrary and would have no basis in science. Birth is a nice clean, beginning point. Well, maybe not clean... you know what with all the goo and whatnot that comes out.

Even after birth, babies are completely incapable of sustaining themselves until a number of years later. A newborn baby has little to no motor function, no ability to communicate, and NO cognitive or emotive ability what-so-ever. That's right, a newborn is biologically incapable of thought or feeling initially. Not that I'm advocating killing babies after birth, but if a baby cannot even think or feel (or to use the definition above, it can neither reproduce, nor respond to stimuli) immediately after birth, then how can you call it life inside the womb? The answer is you smack the word potential in front of life.

Bible-thumpers seem to think that potential life is more important than actual life. So every time I masturbate, am I murdering thousands of defenseless little sperm? Should I be imprisoned for terminating hundreds of billions of potential babies over the years? Clearly, that is much more serious a crime than say, oh I don't know, charging into Iraq and shooting and bombing thousands of actual humans.

Also, here's a news flash for all you so-called PRO-LIFERS out there. The opposite of pro-choice is not pro-life. To call one's self pro-life sounds like you're arguing with a horde of zombies who want to exterminate all of humanity. In that instance, pro-life would sound appropriate. But right now, in the real world, where zombies are confined to bad video games and George Romero movies, the issue you are arguing is choice. Not life, but choice. The argument is whether or not a pregnant woman should have a choice. One side says yes, the other says no. That makes for a pro-choice and anti-choice argument. The pro-lifers say no, because the glob of cells inside the mother should have rights and protections under the law, right? We all agree on that. BUT the key is they use that as the reasoning to say to the Choicers "no, a woman should not have that CHOICE." Being for or against life is not the issue here, especially since some of those same champions of unborn cell clumps are very, very pro-war.

Oh my! Smell that? That's the smell of hypocrisy. Kind of stinks, doesn't it?

Comments:

I disagree. I think that He would obviously have a preference in the choice that we would make when faced with it, but I think that He would want us to have the ability to make the choice. The ability to "take the test" as you put it.
I'm saying here that if God were to vote on whether or not abortion should be illegal, he would vote no. Whether he would think that abortion is not the right choice, but that it should be a choice.
There is a really REALLY big difference in being virtuous by character and virtuous by circumstance.
Take as an example a guy who is socially inept and a virgin. Can he tout being a virgin as a virtuous claim of his? No, he is not a virgin for making the choice to be, he is a virgin by circumstance. Same thought process can be applied to this discussion.
Is a woman who doesn't have an abortion in a place where it is illegal because she can't morally equivalent to the woman who chooses not to have the procedure?
Jess 09.13.05 - 12:23 pm

I understand what you are saying, but your argument there is based on the assumption that making abortion illegal makes it impossible. Look at The Prohibition in the early 20th century, alcohal sales didn't flag for a second. I know that abortions won't be like that, but you see my point? There are always ways around the law. Even in this world where abortions are illegal, women who really want one will still find a way, even if that means getting it done by some drunk ex-doctor with a coat-hanger in a back alley. So, these women in this hypothetical world are still virtuous by choice, not by circumstance, it's just that the law has made abortion the more difficult choice to make.
Joey 09.13.05 - 1:05 pm

I just thought of a better way to communicate what I mean here.
A law against something does not prevent that something, it only creates a penalty when you do that something. Perfect example is robbing a liquor store. Yes, that is illegal, and I would be thrown in jail if I did it. But do I have a choice about doing it? Absoultely, yes, I do.
Passing a law does not end free will. Only in a distopian world where we are all mindless automatons, watched every second by Big Brother is there a world where virtue does not come from choice.
Trust me on this one. I tried this exact same argument that you wrote here against a christian once a couple years ago and he expalined it the way I just did. You can't find a whole in it.
The point here worth noting is not what God would think, it's that His very existence is unvarifiable, rendering any and all of His opinions invalid in any logical argument. That's where we win. In the logic department. The other side doesn't seem to have any.
Joey 09.13.05 - 4:18 pm


Biologically a baby in the womb acts as a parasite.
Do we defend the principle of self preservation from other human beings, i.e. murder, because of choice or the protection of life?
Rights, or the ability to make choices are secondary qualities based upon higher predicates of ethic.
Brian Y. 09.15.05 - 4:57 pm

I would also point out that woman were having back alley abortions and getting very ill or dieing themselves because of the un-regulated ways in which these abortions took place. This leads me to believe that if abortion were made illegal woman would not stop getting them, but go about it another way, just like prohibition. Better to have it regulated in my opinion. I also feel that ‘God’ and ‘Religion’ should have nothing, NOTHING, to do with law making. However, this may never happen because people’s beliefs and morals are usually centered around religion therefore it will play a part in their decisions for laws and regulation. Good topic.
Tracy 09.15.05 - 4:59 pm

BRIAN SAID "Rights, or the ability to make choices are secondary qualities based upon higher predicates of ethic."

I'm not sure I know what this means, but if I do I don't know how this relates to what we are discussing. Please elaborate.
Joey 09.15.05 - 11:18 pm

Brian: the definiton of a parasite according to dictionary.com is:
"An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host."
I found three other definitions on various colleges websites and all list specifically that the "parasite" takes from the host in some way(s) and does not give back anything, and in fact some definitions specify that parasites harm the host, or even slowly kill them.
I will agree that a fetus takes from the mother without giving directly, but it's not as though the mother does not get anything out of the arrangement. The mother does NOT get anything concrete back like the nourishment, or protection she provides her fetus. What she gets back is more abstract and instinctual. No, I don't mean love, I mean the perpetuation or "survival" of her species. That is the precise reason why animals reproduce. The instinct to survive.
That is where the dictionary.com definition comes in. It states "contributing nothing to the survival of its host." The fetus itself IS the survival of the host. Even after the host dies, however that may be, the baby lives on to carry on the host's line on earth.
Joey 09.15.05 - 11:38 pm

Wow- you are long winded enough to become a politician (see gw's speech about new orleans?) however you did get an excellent point across. Kudos, and I agree, mostly with Joey. Especially about "prolife" activists. They are so prolife they see no harm in blowing up a center where abortions are provided. Most of these places also provide pre and post natal care as well. Good job Billy Bob in camo- blow up the ones planning on having the baby too. Duh.
Jaime [Who?] 09.19.05 - 2:49 pm

In that last long-winded bit I was more playing devil's advocate. I was hoping to provoke further discussion, but nobody took the bait. Oh well.
Joey 09.19.05 - 6:13 pm