Abortion is Legal

In most cases, it is also morally valid.

Yeah, I said it.

I've been thinking about this because of recent anti-abortion activities, like the trial of Scott Roeder, like the commercial in the Superbowl, and other things.  I've done my research, soul searching, and thinking.  I have some things to say.

I do have issues with late term abortions as a class.  I would hope that decision would not be put off until that point and then carried through.  That said, I am pro-choice.  I have more to say, too.


I've studied the arguments by the anti-abortionists.  Their arguments are largely religious and have no place in a secular discourse. 

What I mean is that their religion and mine are not the same, the only common ground is secular law and philosophy.  What is moral and right in their religion (such as killing your neighbor to steal, I mean acquire their (promised) land), is not moral and right in mine.  The laws that your god prescribes are not the laws I must abide.  The laws of the United States say abortion is legal.  While that doesn't make it moral, it does protect the women seeking abortion from prosecution.

When I say the arguments are against abortion are religious, I have a few observations about that and about the religion people pushing their agendas.  They are evil (just like Scott Roeder).

1. Taking away the choice of abortion by definition relegates women to second class status (men don't face carrying a bowling ball in their belly and passing it to the world through their vagina at the end, so don't need the choice to abort).
2. Forcing a woman to carry the fetus to term will sometimes catastrophically affect her career and other life choices.
3. The anti-abortionists claim that the woman could always give the child up for adoption.  Meanwhile, roughly a year of the woman's life is gone, her body will never be the same.
4. They generally equate all abortions to the late term abortion, as if humans acquire a soul at conception.

From these observations, I realize that the religious do not think of women as human, at least not fully.  They consider women as property, chattel, possessions of men.  They should walk two steps behind, obey and worship the men in their lives, shut up and walk barefoot through the world, faces covered in veils, bearing as many children as possible.  Yes, I honestly believe the religious of the world see women this way, even if they no longer say so out loud (actually some of them do still say so out loud).

Here's some further thoughts, the majority of conception ends in spontaneous abortion, perhaps more than 60 percent of conceptions end before week twelve, naturally.  By comparison, induced abortion ends perhaps 20 to 25 percent of conceptions.  Nature (some might say god) leads by a large margin.

Getting an abortion is already a difficult choice.  The religious want to make it an impossible choice.  They apparently prefer the days of the back-alley abortion.  The rate of abortion hasn't really increased since it became legal in the USA, it just became safer (and more widely reported - you don't typically report doing something illegal, do you).

Final thought, these same people that oppose abortion typically also oppose contraception.  Still don't believe the religious consider women less than human?  People wonder why I abandoned Christianity - this is one reason.