Sunday, May 30, 2010

Argumentum ad populum



There are many problems with your theory. Here are just the main ones.

First, it makes an uneducated guess about what makes women turn away
from abortions. Ask anyone working at a pregnancy resource center and
they'll tell you 9 out of 10 women will decide against abortion after
viewing their ultrasound. Women are not operating off of some sort of
moral yardstick of the mental capabilities of their offspring; they're
going off of subjective asthetic traits that trigger the natural
evolutionary instinct to protect, especially to protect our offspring.

Secondly, it misinterprets the statistics of when abortions are
performed. Late-term abortions are rare because women typcally
discover they're pregnant pretty early on. This is further
demonstrated by the statistic about women who were not able to abort
earlier. Of course, if they WERE able to abort earlier, I could see no
reason why they would opt to wait. Especially seeing as earlier-term
abortions are safer for her and less expensive.

Thirdly, it portrays a gross lack of understanding of the process of
sexual reproduction. The sperm cell and the egg cell will never
develop into anything. The sperm is part of the male and the egg is
part of the female. But when fertilization occurs, they fuse to form a
new single-celled organism called a zygote. This new organism belongs
to the same species as his or her parents, marked by the DNA that will
guide lifelong development; in human reproduction, for example,
fertlilization brings about a new human. The zygote is neither sperm
nor egg, but a new entity altogether, the first band on the
developmental continuum of life. The sperm and egg are "alive" in the
same sense that the cells in your eyeballs are alive, but they are part of
a larger organism (the man or woman, respectively. The zygote,
however, is an organism (in the case of human reproduction, a human)
of his or her own right.

Fourthly, you offer no justification for why these seemingly
arbitrary and vague psychological criteria should be used to deny any
human being his or her most basic human right: the right to live.

Fifthly, you call on people who already disagree with your basic
premise (which you make no attempt to argue for) to solve the problem
of late-term abortions by making early-term abortions more accessible.
To us, this is like saying we can stop the murder of ten-year-olds by
allowing, promoting, and "being okay with" the murder of nine-year-olds.

Sixthly, the embryo does not go through "transformations" at all;
fertilization marks the beginning of the process of human development,
a process that continues until death.

Seventhly, I disagree that abortion is a state's issue, but I see where
Republicans are coming from: violence of all sorts is handled on a state-
by-state basis.

Eighthly, there is no such thing as a "fertilized egg". After fertilization,
the sperm and egg unite to form a zygote. "Fertilized egg" is about as
meaningful as "melted ice cube".

If you're a pregnant woman, I'm sorry, and it's sad, but your son or
daughter's body is not yours.

Also, more Americans are pro-life than are pro-choice: