The pinnacle of pro-life positions would be the immediate euthanization of all humans. That would promote the greatest possibilities for non-Human life which vastly exceeded it in every way until recently. The longer the Human cancer is allowed to grow on earth, the greater the extinction and devastation and suffering of all other species and hopes for their future evolution on a future earth. One species vs billions, which has the greater moral and ethical claim?
Brushing away any even acknowledgement of non-Human "life" is just one way the infuriatingly wrongly self-identified "pro-Life" movement flagellates itself and the general public.
I have long argued the question is what is Human, not what is life. Life foremost includes all other species, in my view. And then such things as sperm, unfertilized eggs, and cancer, which are all examples of "human life."
If I remember correctly, the authors of Roe v Wade pointed out, "human life" is not an identified concept in the US Constitution. No privileges or responsibilities are explicitly applied to "humans."
Rights to abortion for millenia, pretty much uninterrupted from Christian Roman times until the 19th century, was that "Human Life" began when the entity started to move...the first sign of being alive (under pre-medical science notions of life being substance plus motion), and abortion therefore was fully acceptable...if sometimes discouraged...until the "quickening," a term that occurs even in biblical texts.
Such notables as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had no problem with pre-quickening abortions.
Jews understood their laws as explicitly permitting abortion.
It was only in the 19th century, and arguably in the project of defining an explicit and superiorist identity among the now dominant anglo protestant states, that the "right to life" from conception became dogma in the Catholic Church and elsewhere.
So, what does it mean to be Human? It means to be both social and independent, and to have an existence that operates that boundary. When does that start? I have long argued it starts about the same time as the first human memories are formed. about the age of 3. Before that, we are some kind of thing that has not become fully human yet, but is in the external process of building that capability.
But I am not thereby arguing that a right to infanticide to the age of 3 need exist. I am arguing that the principle of when abortion is allowed ought to be described by a different principle.
It's a legal principle related to the limited power of law and the state.
The division between human and fetal categories begins at birth. Fetal life can have two outcomes...as a living human or as a terminated fetus. It is at all times up to the woman carrying the fetal life to decide which kind of treatment is to be sought. After a human life is born by that choice, it is no longer her choice.
I accepted Roe's Trimesters and Casey's viability as reasoned compromises including consideration of history (since the third trimester begins with the quickening). Viability (as mandated in Planned Parenthood v Casey) is a fairly reasonable idea, but I think it's a slippery slope. Remember I think that one is not fully human until the age of 3. The Romans left it to the patriarch to decide if the body was to be given a name. If no name was given in 3 days, euthanasia was the assumption.
So the question in my mind is not life, human life, or anything like that. Pro-Life is the biggest hypocrisy, as everyone knows, as pro-lifers bear little responsibility for the poor people trying to raise to many kids. The question is when is the law allowed to insist that a woman birth the entity growing inside her? The answer is never.
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