In the united states Abortion should be legalized"

Question 1. I assume that you think that we human beings have human rights. Your position, in fact, is that among the rights a human being has is the right to control one's reproduction. Well, at what point do you think that a human being, with human rights, comes into existence? Is it at birth, or earlier? I could ask the question more concretely of you yourself: you have human rights--did you acquire them only when you were born? Surely you must have had them earlier, since premature babies are human beings with human rights, and the only difference between, say, a baby who is born prematurely by two weeks, and one who is still in the womb two weeks before term, is that the one is inside its mother, and the other is not; and the one that is inside, if taken out, will live just as much as the one born prematurely. Then is it at what is called "viability" that you acquired human rights, i.e. when you were capable of remaining alive, if you were taken out of your mother? Or do you think it happened when your brain waves were first detectable (at about 6 weeks after conception)? For the moment, I'll put aside the obvious objections to these criteria; for the question I really wish to pursue is the following. Whatever answer you give-- viability, brain waves, whatever--Why don't you oppose abortion after this time? I don't mean, simply, "why don't you refrain from seeking an abortion for yourself, or for a friend, after that time". I mean, rather, "why do you do nothing to stop those human beings with human rights--as you have concede--from being killed"? It is your view that, after viability, say, the fetus is a human being with human rights, equal in dignity and importance to you and me. There are 150,000 abortions in this country each year after viability. This is, on your account, a massive violation of human rights. Why do you do nothing at all to stop this? You are pro-choice, yes, but you are pro-choice, I presume, only for abortions which are not, on your account, violations of human rights. Do you do nothing because you do not wish to impose your views on others? But of course then I could ask of you why you ever act morally, since that will always require that you impose your views? When you act against racism, for example, you similarly impose your view on others who disagree. Is it that you are uncertain--you merely believe abortion is wrong after viability, but you have little confidence in your belief? I wonder whether you truly have little confidence in it--and, if you do, whether you are at all justified in having little confidence. And I would note, furthermore, that this "lack of confidence" of yours, and this--shall we say--paralysis that you suffer, in not doing anything about what, on your account, is a gross violation of human rights, is itself a consequence of legalized abortion, of the abortion mentality, and constitutes an argument against legal abortion--because legal abortion has clearly numbed your moral sensibility, and that of others as well. But--returning to the line of argument-- suppose it is the case that you lack confidence in your belief. I fail to see why that should hold you back, if the other person is not more certain. And I don't think it is the case that people who seek abortions after viability, or the physicians who do them, are more confident that what they are doing is right, than you are that they are wrong. Or perhaps it isn't a matter of confidence at all, but you simply regard your view about when a human being with human rights comes into existence as somehow something "purely subjective". But then, I wonder: why isn't your view about born human beings having human rights similarly "purely subjective"? If the view that rights begin to exist at a certain time is purely subjective, then the view that they continue to exist after that time must also be purely subjective. But then it seems that you do not really believe that there are such things as human rights, and, in particular, you cannot really believe that there is such a thing as a right to privacy or a right to an abortion--and your lack of confidence, and paralysis, in opposing those who would abort human beings after viability, should, at least, be matched by a similar lack of confidence, and paralysis, in opposing those who would prevent abortion before viability. If you are to be consistent, your confidence in working for legal abortion before the time you think a human being comes into existence, cannot be greater than your confidence in working against legal abortion after the time you think a human being comes into existence--that is, if your view that viability marks the transition from not having rights to having human rights, is anything other than a mere rationalization. Question 2. Pro-choice people argue that the lack of consensus about when life begins implies that abortion should be legal until birth. By why only until birth? Why not after birth--that is, why do we not allow infanticide? My concern is: what keeps us from legalizing infanticide? Is it only because there happens to be a consensus that infants are human beings with human rights? But what if that consensus should change? And it is not naive to suppose it might change. There have been many cultures throughout history which have condoned infanticide, just as many cultures have condoned slavery and human sacrifice. There are philosophers who have argued that there are no good reasons for favoring abortion but opposing infanticide. And reasoning like that used to support abortion has already been used in many cases to argue for infanticide of Downs Syndrome children. Well, suppose this way of thinking did become more widespread, and a sizable section of our population began to think that it is unfortunate but necessary at times to kill newborn infants. There would no longer, then, be a consensus. So would you concede that the lack of consensus on infanticide implied that infants should not be protected from killing--that the parents should have the right to decide, that it's "their decision", not anyone else's? If you do concede this, then I would urge that it's not clear that you have any moral principles at all--since it seems you are willing to give up your moral beliefs, if enough people disagree with you. You would be, in effect, hostage to how others think. But if you wouldn't concede this--if you deny that a lack of consensus that it is wrong to kill infants would cause you to acquiesce in legalized infanticide--then why do you concede that a lack of consensus about preborn children implies they should not be protected? To put the point another way: if you lived in the United States in the 1950s, say, when abortion was considered as abominable as infanticide is today, you presumably would have denied that the wrongness of abortion hinged upon the consensus against it. So similarly you should deny today that legalized abortion follows from a lack of consensus against it. Question 3. But in general, why does any position, rather than any other, follow from a lack of consensus? Suppose someone were to argue as follows: "There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be prohibited throughout pregnancy." Why is this argument any more, or less, reasonable than the argument that:"There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be allowed throughout pregnancy?" If the former argument is a non sequitur, then so is the latter. It might be thought that, given a lack of consensus, the "easier" of two alternatives should be adopted, and it is easier on the woman to allow abortion than to prohibit it. But this consideration begs the question, by assuming that there is just one human being--the mother alone and not the child--with respect to whom we should judge the "ease" or "difficulty" of the two options. You might as well just argue outright, without this talk about "lack of consensus", that abortion should be legal--because only the interests of the woman need be considered. But if this is your view, then you very well cannot turn to the pro-life person and insist that it is wrongheaded for him to press for the illegalization of abortion, given a lack of consensus on the matter--because, again, you favor its legalization, given a lack of consensus, which is no more reasonable or unreasonable than favoring illegalization, given a lack of consensus.