So...abortion. Everyone's favorite topic in 2024. I just sat through a thread where a bunch of pro lifers were discussing the topic, and a lot of them had...shall we say, overly simplistic views. Basically, they'd say stuff like they don't believe in exceptions because it's philosophically inconsistent. This isn't the first time I've heard such things so I kind of wanted to debunk this nonsense mindset. I notice right wingers do this a lot. They care so much about "philosophy" that they will adopt the most extreme possible perspective on things, even if it isn't in touch with reality like...at all. I like my views to be in touch with reality. I like them to actually correspond with the world around me. So I find this to be the most nonsense perspective I've seen.
So, before I get into my own possible philosophical conflicts, I do want to address this as an ex right winger who used to be very pro life.
Why there should be abortion exceptions, even if you're pro life
So, as I see it, abortion has always been a conflict of two priorities, the life of the fetus, and the freedom and well being of the mother. Even if I were to believe life begins at conception, blah blah blah, I would still be for abortion in cases in which the life of the mother is at stake. Why should the mother die because fetus? This is a trolley problem with life against life, and if I prioritize the life of born persons over unborn persons, what's wrong with that?
Likewise, stuff like exceptions for birth defects and severe diseases, if the fetus is gonna die or suffer from some incurable illness, why not just abort it? Why force the mother to carry it to term, even if it's unhealthy for her? As you can tell a lot of it simply prioritizes the life of the mother, but if the life of the fetus is forfeit or compromised in some way, obviously that lowers its value too, does it not? Why shouldn't we prioritize other concerns? This philosophical perspective that a life is a life and the life of the fetus trumps all is not only irrationally extreme, it's dangerous. It ignores the complexities of the situation and condemns people to intense suffering and possibly unnecessary death because you decided to get self righteous over babies. It's a dumb perspective, sorry, not sorry.
Even as a pro lifer when I was young, I recognized there should be exceptions. I was even for exceptions for rape and stuff like that. I recognized that abortion for funsies was probably wrong, but there are obviously exceptions where it should be allowed. This take has aged badly for me, as shifting away from my Christian perspective, I significantly downgraded the value of fetal life in my calculus to the point that I'm now unapologetically pro choice, but yeah, I never adopted the extreme perspective pro lifers hold today, and I find it increasingly insane as I get older. Even back in high school I recognized nuance existed.
How secularism shifts the moral calculations of fetal life
So, when I was a christian, I highly valued life in my moral calculation. I believed God made all of us for a reason, that we had to obey his will, and that abortion was violating his will. I believed fetuses had souls, and that killing them was functionally equivalent of killing people. I believed that all life was functionally equal, although i did prioritize the life of the mother for pragmatic reasons.
But....secularism changes a MFer, and going into a more naturalistic idea of what fetal life is, the calculations changed. I started recognizing life existed on a spectrum from simple cellular life to conscious, sentient beings. And that abortion was a question of where on the fetal development scale the prohibition should be. The value of the parents' liberties, bodily autonomy, etc, were far more important for me, and the value of fetal life became almost nonexistent in the early stages. I put the cutoff point around 24 weeks. I did this based on viability, as well as fetal development regarding consciousness and the nervous system. All of this stuff came together around 20-28 weeks, where beyond that point, i would morally treat the fetus as a premature baby, and before it, I would treat it as a clump of cells. The 24th week marks the 50% mark for fetal viability, and also marks the date range the brain and nervous system start to form what I would say is the first real inkling of consciousness.
In my perspective, no consciousness, no problem. The parents' choices trump ALL other concerns, period. Abortion on demand, for any reason. Post that point, the fetus starts being conscious and viable, and I tend to support more restrictions, in theory at least (see next section). However, I'd still allow exceptions for all of the reasons I always have. Which brings me to the pesky issue that is the GOP.
My moral vs legal position on abortion
So, morally, 24 weeks with exceptions for birth defects and the mother's health. Legally...legal until birth. Why? Because GOP.
The fact is, the extreme pro lifers I mentioned above can't support exceptions to the rule for some reason, and insist on pushing these, quite frankly, batcrap insane laws that push the issue in the most extreme direction possible. This leads to women not being able to get abortions even when they should, putting them at risk of sepsis and crap. It leads to non viable fetuses being forced to come to term because...reasons. Again, these dunder heads dont have views nuanced enough to allow for reasonable exceptions, so I end up countering this by moving in the most extreme position possible; pro choice, no exceptions. Because quite frankly, I still prioritize late term fetal life lower than born persons, and believe given how rare late term abortion is, that the harm of allowing it is minimal. Very few people would get abortions that late along. Many do for medical reasons. Others may not know they're pregnant, but even then I don't particularly care. I would still rather see someone who isnt worthy get an abortion than someone who is worthy be denied one. Just how I view things.
So...yeah. Even though I'd morally be opposed to late term abortion, unless you craft a bill to address my very obvious objections, I'm gonna be against all regulation on this topic.
How my spiritualism changes the calculus (again)
So...even though I am spiritual, and even though I have views related to souls again, I dont believe this is relevant to the question. Because we should base policies on the evidence we have, and because I can't prove that this stuff is real, I can't very well make rules based around it, right? As such, in my views, I have a perspective in which unless I can justify an idea secularly, I'm not gonna use it as part of my moral calculus on this issue. I think that's fair. Separation of church and state, having rational, evidence based policies, blah blah blah. Practicing what I preach.
However, even if the legal position doesnt change, how does the moral position change? Well, here's the thing. It's hard to say for sure what's the truth here. However, I have consulted several sources related to my exact spiritually (including the afterlife 101 book, as well as michael newton's books on life between lives) and largely, abortion is not considered a crime. Michael Newton describes a process in which the soul attaches itself to a fetus later in the pregnancy, between the 4th and 9th month (with 5th-6th being average, that aligning with the 20--26th week or so to my knowledge), and that if the fetus is aborted, oh well, soul goes back to heaven, tries again with another body.
I have seen a story in which a young child remembered being aborted in a previous life (children sometimes do remember past lives, apparently...), and was sad over that, but yeah. I generally don't see a ton of reason to consider abortion some sort of grand moral transgression, the bulk of the evidence seems to at least align with my secular moral views.
Even then, did I mention that we shouldnt legislate things based on spirituality which isn't proven? Yeah. So my spiritual views actually change remarkably little. It was really only my original christian framing of the issue that highly prioritized life.
Conclusion
So...as we can tell, I dont like simplistic moral perspectives. I believe pro lifers and conservatives in general have this perspective where rather than crafting rules and morals around life as we understand it, they have these strict and unbreakable moral codes and they expect human behavior to bend around them. God said, therefore, X. You cant argue with X. If you argue with X, you're wrong and immoral by definition, that's just how the world works, and this is objective fact.
I dont see morality that way. Morality is complex, it arises from human interactions, and it tends to be of human origin. So I dont value the concept of objective morality at christians and other right wing moralists frame them. Second of all, I see the abortion issue as a debate of conflicting priorities. We value the life of the fetus, we value the life of the mother, the freedom of the mother, etc. And as I see it, pro lifers value the "life" of the fetus, and the pro choicers value the "choice" of the mother. That's just how the debate is.
On a personal level, people are free to believe what they want. I dont believe theres a singular right answer. I came to mine through logic, and I feel comfortable defending it. But that's just my truth and people are free to do as they want.
On a legal level, the level that concerns all of us, nah, I believe the pro life perspective needs to be justified, and it just isn't. It mostly comes from unnuanced perspectives of philosophy that arise from religion and authoritarianism. And I would go further even than my personal moral limits allow on the subject, simply to counter the extremists running in the other direction. I'd rather err on the side of "choice" than life. Sorry. Not sorry. How I see it. I know some pro lifers will think that I'm a terrible person for that, but bite me, and praise abort.
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