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Get an answer directly from the source. Why don't you take that question up with the formerly pregnant women who got abortions? Since it's none of my business and not my baby, I don't agonize much over it.
Right, it's killing a BABY.
Do you tell people to get opinions about rape from rapists?
Correct. An embryo, fetus, etc., are all parts of the human life cycle. It's a human life.
Which are all different from born babies in various ways.
That said, I do think the pro-choice community sometimes imagines the differences between born babies and fetuses in later stages of development as being greater than they actually are.
That said again, my proposed solution to those similarities would be to legalize the euthanization of born babies up to about a year...for the exact same reasons, and in pretty much the exact same circumstances, as when I'd get an abortion, were I female, if my fetus had severe genetic disorders or birth defects or other medical conditions that would put it through a lot of suffering.
I tend to view the "We need abortion in any circumstance" as excessively conservative, as opposed to excessively liberal.
Now...I have a challenge for you. What is the difference between ending the life of a born baby, and eating meat from a factory farm? The primary differences I can think of all involve the fact that ending the lives of born babies make parents uncomfortable. We don't want a society in which the beings we care about more than just about anything else can have their lives ended casually...for our benefit as adults, often moreso than theirs'.
That's the primary difference between abortion and euthanizing an infant. You can just give a baby up for adoption if you don't want a kid. A fetus, on the other hand, is still part of your body and legally mandating that you carry that being to term implies that, if we're to be consistent, we should probably be legally mandating all sorts of other invasive things that help society as a whole. I don't know why people who want the strongest limits on abortion are often so right-wing, as opposed to wanting powerful central governments that mandate vaccines, mandate blood donations, and mandate that everyone donate organs after death.
Best pro-life argument: the US is an international outlier with how permissive its abortion laws are. Curtailing abortion access would put the US more in line with international norms.
Best pro-choice argument: abortion should always be legal when the fetus cannot feel pain and is not viable.
Really I think the flaw in the OP's premise is that the abortion issue has to be a national issue. I would prefer a state-level solution.
Do you tell people to get opinions about rape from rapists?
Opinions about child abuse from child abusers?
Opinions about car theft from thieves?
Opinions about murder from murderers?
Pretty skewed perspective, don't you think?
What about getting opinions from people who want the government to legally mandate injecting genetic disorders into children? That's what a large percentage of the pro-life community want. They just don't know it. Abortion is a miracle cure for any ailment with a potential side-effect of pain, and zero side-effects during the early stages of pregnancy before pain can be experienced. Therefore, people who want the right to that removed are advocating that the government inject diseases into children...at best, because they're concerned about pain as a side-effect of not injecting those diseases into children. At worst, for no reason at all...if we're talking about the people who want limits on abortion before pain can be experienced.
Which are all different from born babies in various ways.
Abortion kills a human LIFE. That's the point of informing everyone that an embryo, fetus, etc., are parts of the human life cycle. If killing a human life is legal, why isn't murder legal? Why can't we just legally kill others who are an inconvenience in our lives?
Best pro-life argument: the US is an international outlier with how permissive its abortion laws are. Curtailing abortion access would put the US more in line with international norms.
Best pro-choice argument: abortion should always be legal when the fetus cannot feel pain and is not viable.
Really I think the flaw in the OP's premise is that the abortion issue has to be a national issue. I would prefer a state-level solution.
One of my problems with that is that in some ways, there is just a flat out right and wrong, regarding this issue. I would feel considerably more comfortable with your proposed solution if not for states like Texas existing. If a group of people are going to be that out of touch with reality...I think we have a ethical obligation not to let that particular group of monkeys in charge of things hurt themselves, as well as the non-monkeys in the state.
Also, I live in a state that's only a little less monkey-ish than Texas. I don't want the monkeys to take control here. I want the feds to save me from the monkeys.
Abortion kills a human LIFE. That's the point of informing everyone that an embryo, fetus, etc., are parts of the human life cycle. If killing a human life is legal, why isn't murder legal? Why can't we just legally kill others who are an inconvenience in our lives?
Abortion ends a human life that may or may not possess any of the qualities that typically make the ending of human lives a bad thing.
You ask why we can't just legally kill others who are an inconvenience in our lives. Well, I think I can answer your question by asking you a question. Imagine yourself as having zero comprehension of death. It doesn't exist for you. There is zero difference between death and going into a deep sleep. Would you mind death at that point? Assuming you would not, now you know what a fetus feels like.
Now, go back to just thinking about yourself as the person you are. Would you want to be murdered now? I suspect you would not, for similar reasons as most of us would not. That's the primary difference. You care about being murdered in ways fetuses don't care about having their lives ended.
Furthermore, the differences between the reasons you can be harmed by being potentially being murdered and how fetuses can experience harm through having their lives ended are pretty much the exact same differences as the differences between a self-aware person experiencing harm through potentially being murdered and a deer having its life ended, from the perspective of the organism that's potentially having its life ended...so even if I agreed with your perspective about how we should do things, I'd think our society would have much more important priorities than abortion.
So really, the focus of this discussion should not be about death. That doesn't even exist for fetuses. It should be about whether or not it's acceptable to cause organisms pain, and in what circumstances, and we should all, unanimously agree that painless abortions cause no harm. That's noting that it appears that there's a very good chance the vast majority of abortions are painless for the fetus.
From that point, I would argue that pain is often an acceptable treatment for medical conditions in our society, which abortion often functions as. (It is, after all, a miracle cure for any ailment with a potential side-effect of pain) but I would acknowledge that there will be circumstances in which abortion will, arguably, be a negative thing for the fetus after it can experience pain...and that's when I would finally bring up a woman's right of control over her own body, and that I don't know why we should have many, if any restrictions on abortion if we're not also banning factory farming and mandating vaccines and mandating blood donations and mandating that people donate their organs after they die and being accepting of other invasive changes to our government that also push for a sort of greater good, in a manner that lots of people disagree about the benefits of.
There is no argument over when life begins, and there never has been...period...at least none having to do with abortion.
I actually would guess some people would say life begins before conception, if we view sex cells as alive (which at least some people seem too...although I'm not sure how scientifically valid that is).
What you're perhaps talking about is the argument about when personhood begins. That's more relevant.
No one cares whether or not we define life as beginning at conception or not though.
That's an important difference, because "life" is a scientific term with a more specific meaning than what a "person" is, which is merely a social term.
Everyone on Earth agrees that life either begins at, or before conception...or somewhere around that time though.
It is my recollection that the argument was often framed as determining when life begins. I understand the concept but I am not sure that personhood is an actual thing. How would you define it?
One of my problems with that is that in some ways, there is just a flat out right and wrong, regarding this issue. I would feel considerably more comfortable with your proposed solution if not for states like Texas existing. If a group of people are going to be that out of touch with reality...I think we have a ethical obligation not to let that particular group of monkeys in charge of things hurt themselves, as well as the non-monkeys in the state.
Also, I live in a state that's only a little less monkey-ish than Texas. I don't want the monkeys to take control here. I want the feds to save me from the monkeys.
I disagree that there's a flat out right and wrong. It's a very complicated issue as evidenced by the longevity of the controversy.
When there isn't as much moral certainty, I defer to local control. This allows different preferences to be expressed, and maybe eventually more moral certainty will be gained by observing the effects of the differing policy choices.
Abortion ends a human life that may or may not possess any of the qualities that typically make the ending of human lives a bad thing.
98.3% of all abortions are performed solely for the sake of convenience. The human life is killed because it's an inconvenience to the person deciding to kill it. Why doesn't the same apply to murder? Why can't we legally kill another human who is an inconvenience to us just as is legally allowed via abortion?
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