no brainer: abortion is killing. so what?

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Tue Aug 24 11:24:11 PDT 1999


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Kelley:
>
> i said from the get-go and many times thereafter that i absolutely support abortion on demand, unconditionally, for everyone. the whole point of my post was to argue for a way to, eventually, bring about socialized health care and to do so strategically so that, at the same time, we lobby for abortion on demand as part of that future health care system. my arguments presume that socialized health care will take a good decade or two to achieve, assuming no major catastrophes.
>
> I don't think it's possible to do the above while arguing that "aboriton is killing, so what," as you do (and I have already said why it's not possible).
>

I wasn't going to get into to this at all but ........... Saying that abortion is killing and that it is still OK even if it is "killing," really isn't different from what philosopher/bioethicist Peter Singer (Princeton) espouses regarding infants. Singer is a utilitarian who believes parents should be able to kill an infant under 30 days old if it makes them unhappy to have the infant. If utilitarian views such as Singer's win over the public mind and the bioethics profession, "kill" will not be so loaded a word or concept any more whether applied to abortion or to infanticide .

I certainly do not advocate that Singer's "ethics" should become the model for anyone. As we have had this discussion on LBO before, infants with disabilities don't even qualify for "personhood" in his view.

Marta Russell



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