MY FULL ARGUMENT AGAINST ABORTION
I've raised the anti-abortion banner on this page before (here) but since then I've heard so many arguments in favour of abortion that I've decided to devote this whole page to the topic.
Originally, I said that abortion was wrong as human life can only be legally destroyed in a state-sanctioned execution after one commits a crime, such as murder. Unborn babies have not done anything in life, and so deserve the chance to prove their value. If these unborn babies go on to kill, or rape, or maim, or bomb, then they will be judged and punished in the right manner. This is just the same rationale I use to oppose genocide, as people who obey the law can't be punished for breaking the law, as punishment is only legal if it takes place within the framework of the law.
This part of my site is not an addition to that argument, which I still believe in to the extent of my ability to believe in anything. I can, and have, listened to pro-abortion ideals, and have not heard any I agreed with. In fact, I have heard some incredibly flawed (IMHO) arguments recently. This section of my site is my private war against the mistakes that would see human life ended by people who agree with abortion. Just as I would never have sex with a woman who supports abortion, I have not seen any reason to support abortion myself. Just as I believe that there is life after death, but only for those who are moral in their actions, I think that one of the greatest social wars nowadays is the war against abortion.
I don't say that abortion is the most important war, as I remember being in a car crossing the border into Northern Ireland, where we had relatives we were visiting, when we saw the tanks, the snipers, the cameras in cages, the spikes on the road, the rocket launchers, the armoured cars, and police in bullet-proof vests, just as we heard that a large bomb had been detonated on the street our relatives lived on. We got there and saw the wreckage, and glass sprayed from one end of the street to the other. I've been stopped on the streets of Newry by armed police, and saw that this is the sort of thing needed to crush terrorism- especially fanatical action directed against the 'Great Satan'. Thus, I can say that greatest war is the war on terror; abortion is a social war. Regardless of the outcome of the third world war with al-Qaeda, we who believe in life can calmly wage our war of words with those who believe, or think they believe, in child murder.
We will will, eventually, both in the war on terror, and the war against abortion.
In the meantime, here are my responses to some of the supporters of abortion. Replies are welcomed; my email address is on my main page.
Most religious people oppose abortion. Most of the supporters of abortion are atheists. Right? Wrong! Many of the people who favour abortion call themselves atheists, but are in fact non-believers. As (I think) Stephen Hawkings is reputed to have said (and correct me if I'm wrong): a religious person looks at the evidence, and says that God exists; an agnostic is not sure; an atheist says that the evidence proves God does not exist, and a non-believer rejects God regardless of the evidence. I (me, not Hawkings) think that non-believers have some problem, which makes them reject any mention of God.
These people seem to oppose anything that any religion accepts. For example, in an internet-based discussion of the potential causes of the third world war, someone remarked that China could invade Russia, in order to capture Siberia. This would drag India into war, as India knows that it has the living space China needs for its population. A victory over Russia would give China the momentum to crush India. Once Indian nukes fly, Pakistan would be hailed into the war as Kashmir would have to be settled. The Mid-East would be nuked to deny America the possibility of inheriting the Earth, and Europe would be wiped out because it, too, could swamp Russia in a post-WW3 world. Billions would die, and that would be the end of the human race. Someone wrote, in a reply, 'Oh my God.. and we never hear about this', or words to that effect. The 'atheists' amongt the group spent the next months posting messages denying the existence of God, even though they could not show any proof of their claims, and didn't seem capable of answering questions about religious doctrine. This behaviour is not uncommon.
An atheist says that the evidence utterly disproves the reality of God. Well, how many atheists have read that evidence? How many so-called atheists have read the Book of Mormom? How many atheists are familiar with the paganistic-shamanistic religions of Mali? How many atheists know the symbolism associated with the words 'the hills shall run red with the blood of the living, and the dead shall inherit the Earth'? Those words are part of the myth of Shamain, the Celtic prince of the dead, and part of Irish mythology. The Celts feared solar eclipses because of the red light that shines on the moon during this time, as they believed that the Earth would rebel against the advent of Samhain's kingdom of the dead by casting red light onto the moon, to mark the surrender of life to the army of the dead. People believed this stuff, often more passionately than many atheists believe in anything, but many atheists profess to have the proof of no God, and yet have never looked into why people believe in a god.
To continue the Celtic example, all over Ireland people reacted to Halloween (Oiche Samhain, the night of the prince of the dead) by kneeling in total darkness, as the high king of Ireland maintained a circle of fire, burning on the Hill of Tara, where Samhain's legions of the dead were supposed to arrive on Earth. These people believed in this stuff, again, often more passionately than any atheist has ever believed in anything. The Celts looked to Tara, and saw that circle of fire blazing, surrounded by utter darkness throughout Ireland, and believed that this was the only way to seal the gate through which an army of the dead would march. How can any atheist challenge this belief without first understanding it?
When people, usually atheists, reject anti-abortion views as religious mumbo-jumbo, I just laugh at them. What gives these people the right to commit murder? Even if there is no god (as there may well be) how can an atheist justify murder? If it is alright to kill an unborn child because of the supposed 'right to choose', is it alright to kill an atheist, because of my right to choose? If so, I declare hunting season open. There is no difference between an atheist, pro-abortionist claiming the mythological 'right to choose', and a female suicide bomber claiming her 'right to choose' what happens her body. In fact, why should the woman be the one to choose? At the most, only one woman has ever, if ever, managed to become pregnant without sex (and that is disputed), so isn't there usually a man involved in all this? What if he wants a child? I doubt it is fair to say that women should get to decide on the fate of unborn children, without input into the decision from the men involved. I think this decision has less to to do with the child, and the father, than it has to do with what the woman wants. Well ladies, if you have sex, you have to allow for the possibility of pregnancy. I for one, have strong views on this topic. About eight years ago I wrote a play in which a man crucifies his pro-abortionist girlfriend, after she has an abortion. Now, nobody understood it, but I got a best-actor award for an Irish inter-colleges festival, because the judges couldn't tell if I was acting or not. I doubt I was acting. I would still prosecute any child-murdering woman who killed an unborn child of mine. Murder is murder, and abortion is murder. Mind you, I would never have sex with a woman who is pro-abortion, so I doubt there is any room for saying I'm hypocritical over sex.
Recently, I had a wee dispute with someone I used to know, over unrelated issues. One of the things that annoyed me about this person was her argument that abortion is justified because it reduces the population of the world. This argument was news to me. There is a certain logic to it. The world has so many resources, and only that many, which can support only so many people, and no more. The Earth has more people that that number that can be supported by these resources. Thus, starvation is inevitable. If one allows abortion to take place, then the population of the Earth can be reduced, and there are more resources for each person. Halve the population, and have twice as many resources per person, as it were. People are going to starve to death anyway, so at least abortion keeps this from happening. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Well, it took me about five seconds to blow this argument to shreds, and the (liberal, sadly) woman in question replied by ignoring my arguments, and discussing in detail how she was going to give her third boyfriend in a month a blowjob the night after. Now, maybe it was just me, but if it's a given point that her pro-abortion views ruled out the possibility of sex, shouldn't she have at least acknowledged my rather more high-brow part of the conversation, especially as she had started the conversation? Does this strike anyone else as being a case of talking at me, rather than with me? Sadly, most pro-abortionists are like that. Maybe not sadly, as it reaffirms my belief that there is no rational argument for abortion-on-demand.
My points against this abortion-as-a-method-of-reducing-population argument: low birth rates decrease economic performance, as in the case of Japan and its four recessions in the 1990s; the only country to actually use abortion to control population growth was China, and its long-term future is rather dim; the world's most productive economies, which produce the most resources, have high birth rates, as in the case of the USA; low birth rates will hinder the European economies over the next 50 years or so, due to a shortage of young people to work in jobs that generate money that can be spent, and so help the economy.
By the way, the world has enough resources to give everyone a reasonable standard of living. Corruption, greed, stupidity, and communism have prevented the dissemination of these resources. Also, to reduce the population by use of abortion would mean a near-permanent abortion rate of at least 10 percent of all pregnancies. Those women who have abortions, globally, do not number 10 percent of world population. Thus, many women who do not want abortions may have to have them, in order to reduce the population. So much for a woman's right to choose. By the way, I'm aware of the flaws in this argument, and that it is valid in a general sense.
Some people say that an unborn child is not a 'valid' human being. They argue that chronological awareness, or a sense of time, is needed to constitute intelligence, or human life. A child does not develop an awareness of self, or of time, until after birth, ergo abortion is fine. Right. If unhindered, the unborn child will be born, and will develop a sense of self, and of time, and so will become a quote-unquote 'valid' human being. Thus, abortion interferes in the pre-destined certainty of chronological awareness, and as those who believe in chronological awareness believe that pre-destination is inalienable, an abortion due to a lack of awareness of time is itself a lack of awareness of time, given that time, by definition, means that, given time, a child will become aware of time.
Okay, figure that one out. Killing an unborn child because it doesn't know what time is, is stupid, as most people have only the barest vision of time anyway. Why time? It takes time to become aware of time. Thus, pro-abortionists who kill a child that doesn't know what time is, are in fact rejecting time, as a child today will, tomorrow, know what time is. Thus, awareness of time is pre-destined, and the only way life can stay permanently unaware of time is if it dies today, rather than tomorrow.
Back to the population argument, which is seemingly popular in the USA. Why kill unborn babies? If these people really want to reduce the population 'for the good of the planet', should they not have been dancing as the twin towers fell onto the devastated streets of New York? World war two reduced the population of the world by so many that it surely had to be good. In fact, all wars tend to kill people. Aren't all wars good? I think so if you believe that abortion is justified by the supposed need to reduce the world's population. Mind you, most of the people who support abortion oppose war. Tsk tsk... an internal inconsistency in a plethora of such inconsistencies.
A woman has the right to choose.... Okay. Let's say she has. Well, some people once went on strike at Lidl, a German supermarket chain, because they wanted a union and the supermarket banned membership of a union. Now, Lidl insisted that all potential employees agreed to not join a union if they were offered a job, so can these people really complain about not being in a nion, when they, in fact, signed legally-binding contracts saying they would not join a union? Sex is like this. If choice justifies abortion, then the best choice is to not have sex. If one has sex, and gets pregnant, then there is not choice, as it is common sense that any woman who has sex must allow for the possibility of pregnancy.
So many pro-abortionists have so many inconsistencies in their arguments that I think they only want abortions for their selfish reasons, and that this litany of reasons and justifications is only so much wishy-washy stalling, denial, and rationalisation of a truth these people don't want to see. Abortion is murder, and there is no justification for it. I have debated this, at length, at at the cost of various mindless insults, and still believe it.