Julian, responding to a post of mine, wrote:
In context, I used the phrase “(unborn) children” while summing up my understanding of Eve’s point of view; because Eve is pro-life, it seemed an appropriate phrase to use in that context. In general, however, I agree with Julian that pro-choicers are wise to avoid the phrase.
After Will Baude linked to Julian’s post, several bloggers chimed in to object to Julian’s analogy. Here’s what Matthew Stinson wrote:
Two comments on this.
First, Matthew’s post falls into the “Woman? What woman?” genre of argument that’s so common among pro-lifers. He argues that human action is involved in transforming bricks to houses, in contrast to the process by which a fetus becomes an infant, which he presumably believes involves no human effort
Having recently lived nine months with a pregnant housemate – not to mention the childbirth itself, a process that was not without human effort – let me assure Matthew that an infant does not magically produce itself. There is a great deal of effort involved, much of it conscious and deliberate.
Second, it would be easy to make Julian’s point with analogies that are “a process” just as much as pregnancy is. For instance, Julian could have written that it’s as mistaken to call a zygote as an “unborn child” as it is to call an acorn an “ungrown oak tree”; or to call interstellar gas clouds “uncollapsed stars.”
An acorn is not an oak tree; a law that treated stepping on an acorn as identical to cutting down an ancient oak would be ridiculous. Just because “A” might someday develop into “B,” it does not follow that “A” is identical to “B,” and is entitled to identical moral or legal treatment. That, as I understand it, was Julian’s point – and it remains valid whether we use “static” or “in process” analogies..
Thank you, Amp, for reminding us that fertilized eggs don’t magically become infants without a woman’s physical and mental labor, desire, time, energy, and generosity. Life is a gift, in a very literal sense.
And I am an undead corpse.
Sorry, Cleis, my comment wasn’t intended to follow yours. It’s a comment about the topic that Amp is writing about. A joke, if you like.
I quite agree with what you said, Cleis.
The important point to keep in view is that the same people who are apoplectic over harming fetuses have absolutely NO reasonable solution for human overpopulation. They prefer WAR, which gratifies their sense of the Old Testament God (who was no better than Saddam Hussein in his genocidal behavior), or they prefer APOCALYPSE, the Universal Solution for the Lazy/Hateful Christian. Their war keeps trying to be the First Step to Apocalypse, rather than a horrid, occasionally necessary act to restore peace or human rights.
Tonight coming back from MY church, weekly protest (all may attend), the bus driver told me that God was handling it all, no need to worry myself one bit. Bushliar would fall on his own petard. When I politely suggested that he was hiding his head up his God’s Arse, he flipped over to the God’s Wrath part of the equation. There will never be peace on earth, taint possible, because people are sinners and God is in Charge (and going Saddam Hussein on the whole human race at any moment). Oh, and homosexuality was a disease, and an abomination. Therefore those people don’t deserve their rights. Poof! War or Apocalypse is now their fate, because they presumed to exist, and the Christians don’t allow that. Slave gays…hm, probably a market for that.
Forgive them Lord they know not what they do only works if they don’t take over the government and smash all the furniture of our (would-be) peaceful pluralistic state. No solution for overpopulation other than total genocide!
Stop killing the innocent, and then we’ll believe you know ANYTHING about Jesus.