this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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If I had to steelman their argument I'd wonder if they are properly informed about the very real, well documented physical risks to children from getting pregnant and carrying to term. Death is one option, but long term physical disability due to spinal and hip fractures aren't unheard of. As well as a long list of other physical and psychological effects I'm not gonna put here.
So what I'm gathering is that this person is either very, VERY uneducated about the physical consequences of childbirth, both for adults and children, and just how frequently children are sexually assaulted.
Either they're very ignorant, possibly willfully, or they are straight up a troll. Poe's law makes it increasingly difficult to tell these days. Ignorance can be a temporary state of being, but would they care about medical data? Who knows.
I think the point here is that they’re willing to “sacrifice” a few 10-year-olds if it means saving tens of thousands of other children aborted yearly for what they see as lesser reasons.
Though I don’t agree with their view, if a religious person genuinely believes that life begins at conception and sees no difference between ending the life of a 10-day-old embryo and a 10-year-old child - because they believe both lives are equally valuable - then I can’t entirely fault their reasoning. In this case, the issue lies with their false, unscientific religious beliefs, not necessarily their stance on abortion. If you truly believe that life starts at conception, being against abortion is a perfectly logical position to take.
Eh, not really. In a vacuum, sure, but if a 10-year-old becomes pregnant, then that life is surely suffering, and probably also in danger from the pregnancy. If the pregnancy were to go awry, that could end both lives. If the pregnancy went off without a hitch, then another life has been introduced into a place of suffering.
But the wellbeing of this particular 10-year-old or their child isn’t the point here. If someone believes that life begins at conception and that all life is sacred, then being anti-abortion is a perfectly logical stance. Otherwise, they’d effectively be okay with the act of murdering unwanted children.
A person with this belief might still acknowledge that there are situations where abortion could be justified. However, they may fear that allowing it, even in narrow cases, creates a slippery slope that could lead to thousands of unnecessary abortions.
Religious people literally worship suffering, you won't convince them with this argument.
Specifically, Christians. There are plenty of religions that have no problem with abortion (and are against suffering).
Yes, I suppose I should have been specific...
Even ignorong all those risks there's also simply not being into having children and wanting to live without them.
But you need to understand that to a religious person this is a completely insane thing to say. You can't simply kill a person just because you don't want to be inconvenienced by having to take care of them. They see abortion as an equivalent to killing a 3-year-old who refuses to eat their vegetables.
Except these same people very often don't believe in welfare, socialised medicine, believe in overseas military intervention, etc.
Not that such views are expressed in OP, maybe they're actually very principled on this matter (e.g. 1 fetus aborted is equal to one Palestinian kid being blown up, or one homeless person dying to exposure). But I've pretty much always found these things are a package deal.
I think this also ignores the history of anti-abortion politics. Even for Catholics it's a relatively recent invention, let alone american protestants, and it always seems to rear its head during fears of demographic decline. The individual (stated) belief follows the political and material circumstances before it.