Julian, responding to a post of mine, wrote:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
After Will Baude linked <\/a>to Julian’s post, several bloggers chimed in <\/a>to object to Julian’s analogy. Here’s what Matthew Stinson wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n Two comments on this.<\/p>\n First<\/b>, Matthew’s post falls into the “Woman? What woman?”<\/i> 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<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Second<\/b>, 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.”<\/p>\n 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..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Julian, responding to a post of mine, wrote: A little surprised to see Ampersand making use of the question-begging pro-life locution “unborn children.” If you don’t share their view about the moral status of the fetus, that’s like calling a … Continue reading