Dennis Perrin:
> Conversely, if you think a fetus is a "parasite" then why would you be upset
> with children starving or being shot? Isn't this the elimination of said
> "parasite" at a later stage of growth?
> ...
Obviously, once the fetus is born, it's no longer an invader or parasite. Until it is born, however, if it's unwanted in one's body, it's just that. This is obvious.
The soullessness you complained about previously is not an attribute of this particular argument, but of liberalism in general. To determine what may or may not be done to someone's body in liberalism, it's necessary to construe the body as a piece of property, a thing, and then ask who has power over it, what rights its "owner" has. It's just as "soulless" to deny that those who happen to be the carriers of fetuses have no power over their own bodies, have become, as it were, mere support systems for this suddenly all- powerful putative human.
I say "putative" because in fact most zygotes (human beings according to most anti-abortionists) do not become human beings in fact. A large number of them fail to implant themselves or are spontaneously aborted. However, this goes back to the argument about whether fetuses are human beings, which, as I have pointed out, is irrelevant.
The fetus, as a being with will and interests, is not the issue. It's an empty marker for misogyny and religious zealotry.
-- Gordon