the incompatibility of pro-choice and anti-choice worldviews

[chimerically]

I've realized that I could never effectively argue with most anti-choice activists about birth control and abortion because we would be making completely different assumptions about the world -- different and fundamentally incompatible paradigms, in Kuhn's terms (since I've been reading lots of and about him in my philosophy of science class). Their arguments about what the Bible says about sex and other topics hold no weight for me. My arguments about problems of abused and neglected children, overpopulation, and a woman's right to control the course of her life hold little or no weight for them.

The point where we might be able to actually speak to one another, rather than past one another, is the issue of viability and when "life" starts, but even there they take what I see as ridiculously extreme views such as "life starts at conception" or sometimes with the possibility of conception (thus, the fight against birth control as a preventative measure) that I can't possibly agree with, given the messy realities of life: so many fertilized eggs don't implant, so many proto-fetuses don't last even a week, etc.

Furthermore, if they take this stance, why aren't they attacking in-vitro fertilization as vehemently as they are abortion and birth control? Multiple fetuses are grown and then one (or sometimes a few, but certainly not all) is implanted, and the rest are discarded. Isn't that murder in their eyes? Shouldn't all viable fetuses be given the chance to live in that case too? Funny how the intention of the couple seems to change the morality of the fetuses: people who are going through in-vitro fertilization want to be parents while people practicing birth control don't.

Along those same lines, it's also very strange that some anti-choice people take childlessness to be irresponsible, while from an environmental perspective, I think that having children is the more irresponsible choice (which, of course, some eco-minded parents mitigate in various ways, as I hope I would too if/when I have children -- but all things considered, that's still another person using a lifetime's-worth of resources, which is not small even when minimized). And moreover, making sure that one has children at a point in one's life when they can be best provided for seems to be, to me, a lot more responsible than risking having kids as soon as one starts having sex, which for a very large part of the population is very young (even with abstinence-only education like I grew up with, as a recent study shows). Of course, the anti-choice people would say one shouldn't be having sex until one is prepared to have children (which is the often-unsaid corollary to most of their points), but that's a whole 'nother can of worms with its own set of worldview incompatibilities, and I'll save that for another post (though you're welcome to rail in the comments if you want to).

No wonder this is such a hotly-contested debate. Except that it's not really a debate at all.

(NOTE: I don't mean to imply that one side is more "rational" than the other, even though I have made it clear which "side" I am on. These sorts of disagreements happen all the time, in many areas. My main argument is that the incommensurability of worldviews prevent the two sides from even seeing eye-to-eye.)

Comments

[caefus.livejournal.com]

If I understand the tone of your post, you seem a little frustrated with the lack of valuable dialogue between the pro- and anti-choice perspectives, and that the only viable point the two sides can argue on is the definition of when life begins. I would like to echo the same frustration and say that since I’ve moved back to the valley of Moroni, the discussions I’ve been having with conservative friends and family in regard to abortion usually wrap around the notion of individual accountability, which is of course a huge religious doctrinal point for the LDS church. Mormons don’t like people who mooch; they really don’t like people who can’t live independently, and at the core of discussions, I usually find that life conception or life quality usually has absolutely nothing to do with their argument. For them, it’s not a matter or mercy for the ‘unborn child’, it’s about justice for the mother (usually more so than the father). It’s not about the loss of human potential via abortion, it’s about a mother getting out of her literal god-given responsibility. And if you pay attention to physiological response during these discussions, I usually see the anti-choicers verge on the level of a 3rd-grade temper tantrum in the response to an injustice. I rarely see a sense of mourning or a reaction of genuine loss in their face. That’s why I have a really difficult time believing that the intentions of pro-life argument are to promote the betterment of the human condition – their most emotional points of contention are that of punishment and justice.

And on the flip side, 70-year-old grandmas and grandpas with really complicated emotional mental feelings who are surrounded by a close-nit group of grieving friends and family with equally complex and sophisticated emotional feelings suffer from the entirely unnecessary indignant mental and physiological degradation of entirely curable diseases. How do the pro-life movement help promote the cause of the suffering elderly? Yeah, they fight against funding research because they privilege the life of a microscopic spec of flesh that has less feeling than a spider about-to-be-smashed on the wall than their 70-year-old grandma with an entire family tree of individuals grieving and hurting at their suffering. I personally feel that the pro-life argument has some serious dissonance that needs to be dealt with in regard to quality of life and true humane accountability.

When life begins

[(Anonymous)]

I really enjoyed the whole discussion as I think we really need to talk about these issues. I personally consider myself as a pro-life person although I do not really like labels. Labels are made by politicians and always make extreme cases and opinions and help making statistics ...

I subscribe to what many commenter said about what is to be considered as a central issue. I agree that the point is when life begins, because depending on this we might talk about an object (a group of cells) or a human being.

I personally think that life begins when the egg is fertilized from that point on we can consider that group of cells as a human being. Then everything else follows, like who has the right to decide on that life?

I also agree to other opinions expressed in the comments like that of the 'unwanted child' but for which I think there are viable solutions (like giving the child to a couple that cannot have children).

Also I think that things are not always black and white as depicted in the original post. Although I am pro-life I also think that sex is good and should be explored freely with "the courtesy" of not implying someone else's life into play. I am in favor of anti-conception systems like condoms or women pills to avoid the union of the egg and the sperm (sorry for my poor language here but I lack some vocabulary).

As we do not want to be played in our own life, we should not do that with others' lives. Conception should be a responsible choice. People should not be forced to be parents if they do not want to but fetus should not be killed also because somebody said: "Oops!".

Then all the corollary of extreme cases like: the mother was risking her life to give birth to a sick child, I think are just rhetorical cases taken by politicians to justify their point. If we really want to look at statistics then we should consider the fact that the majority of abortions are those of healthy fetus that are simply not wanted.

My two cents.

Mauro
http://www.i-cherubini.it/mauro/blog/