It is Abortion, this time

I wasn’t intending this at the outset, but I had written this long comment that wasn’t accepted -for length. So I was forced, forced, I tell you, to comment on a post concerning abortion.

I was minding my own business going to the links on my blogroll. I visited Philosoraptor and since (s)he makes an excellent job of setting up the logic of the argument, it was easy to see some of the problems involved.

Here is my comment that I so wanted to append to the post:

“”It?s clear that it is wrong for terrorists to murder innocent people; it is not clear, however, whether it is wrong to abort a fetus.” -Philosoraptor

If I understand you correctly, the pivotal point of your contention is whether a human at the fetus point may be considered a person.

I think that a “philosophical person” is going to have a great deal of trouble identifying and defining that term, ‘person’. And the point of “sentience”. Even “brute biological life” at the point of a fetus is still human, biologically speaking.

Perhaps the woman, Hughes, used emotional vocabulary, … but I believe that if one digs far enough into the topic… your own stance is no more “logical” and has premises and stopping points that are emotionally based, as well.

Such as: you just don’t like some things. I would agree with you if you protest a ‘terrorism-abortion analogy’, but if it is a grouping with the similarities that life is sacrificed for another’s purpose, then maybe she wasn’t so far off as you contend.

However it works, the great philosophical question in the abortion issue is ‘what is a human?’, and the ethical one, ‘what are we allowed to do with fellow humans’?

Perhaps that is at the root of many of our issues that involve death: abortion, war, capital punishment.

Maybe we are having a hard time figuring out just what “human” is. And the what and why of “rights” that follow on the conclusion.

Addendum: I am all for cooling it on the “terrorist” appellation for every cause one may want to lambaste. It is misuse of the term as we now use it, although pre-911 I think we often used it in that manner of someone “terrorizing” us or something….

We can’t allow ourselves that leeway, linguistically, anymore. It isn’t appropriate and I think that was the contention of the original article found here.

..oh and yeah…. those comments at KOS. Like jumping to a forum FRY. -No, not a typo, I did not mean fray, I meant fry. As in troll-toasty flaming.

Ah yes, the aroma of American politics heating up in Campaign year. Whoo!

P.P.S. :
Allison Lives had some comments on this subject and after reading her post, I have to ask: now who started this analogy thing?

The war being waged is against women; as one attendee put it: “Pro-life is to Christianity as al Qaeda is to Islam.”

Say what? Now what does that mean? And who is saying it, I couldn’t quite follow that.

“is to” as in ‘fundamental as” or as in “fringe element of”? Help me, pll.

Oh bla… this is what is wrong with much of our politics- all brou-ha-ha and little sensibleness. Although, it must be said that wildfire protesting is not where you will find measured rhetoric and reason.