Comments on: Well, Consider my Jaw Dropped.

By: Iain Brassington

Iain Brassington — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Of course I understand the difference. The point is simply that being alive and human doesn’t mean an entity has much moral claim.
In the legal sense of the word, it’s impossible to murder a foetus under English law. That leaves the moral sense of the word – which amounts to something like wrongful killing – and so we have to ask whether deliberately killing a foetus is murder in that sense. Well, not all instances of killing the innocent meet that description – there’s all manner of thought experiments we could devise based around the idea of the innocent threat, for example. If the foetus is an innocent threat, killing it may not be wrong; and if it’s not wrong, then it isn’t murder in the moral sense.
And that is, of course, before we even think about bringing the mother and her desires into the equation. Once we take note of her, then it’s quite possible that the threat posed by the foetus is less central. For some, it mightn’t matter at all whether it’s a threat or not, because fully grown adults with full biographies just trump foetuses.
What the BMA said 65 years ago is neither here nor there. Indeed, when we’re talking about the morality of abortion, what the BMA says today is neither here nor there – unless you think that the moral question is settled by adverting to BMA policy. I don’t think anyone believes that.
And in what way does the willingness to abort speak volumes about the medical profession? I mean: couldn’t it speak volumes in the profession’s favour that it doesn’t try to stand in the way of a woman’s sovereignty over her own body? Or perhaps, even if doctors do think abortion wrong all else being equal, they’re willing to bite the bullet and perform them when they’d likely as not go ahead anyway in a much less safe backstreet clinic? (It’s quite coherent to dislike abortion but to think it the least-bad option in at least some cases…)

By: Peter Saunders

Peter Saunders — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:45:00 +0000

I’m surprised Iain that you don’t seem to underatnd the difference between a drop of blood and an entire living individual human organism.

Murder is the intentional killing of an innocent human being.

Whether abortion is murder depends on whether the fetus is an innocent human being or not.

I believe that it is and this was actually also the view historically of the BMA and the WMA spelt out unambiguously in the Declaration of Geneva and the Hippocratic Oath.

In 1947 the BMA called abortion ‘the greatest crime’ so in fact the position I am taking is just that historically held by the BMA.

There are 42 million abortions worldwide per year mainly performed by doctors - nobody is more innocent, more vulnerable and killed in greater numbers than the unborn baby.

The fact that this doesn’t trouble most doctors speaks volumes about today’s medical profession.

It is not the CMF which has moved its position on this issue in the last 60 years.

By: Iain Brassington

Iain Brassington — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:13:00 +0000

Maybe, but I’m not sure.
What struck me about this post in particular was the way that one thing was hitched, fairly gratuitously, to another. That kind of moral ambulance-chasing is what I find particularly infra dig.
Now, it might be that I’m more likely to pick up on that than are some others because I happen to find Saunders’ views pretty indefensible in their own right… BUT I don’t think that that’s the whole story. I can perfectly well imagine that there’re anti-abortion types who think both that a life is inviolable from the point of conception, and at the same time that using Houla and Derby as a springboard to make the point is somewhat shabby.

By: Frank Mason

Frank Mason — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Perhaps what makes Dr Saunders’ post nauseating is the fact that it forces us to confront a very uncomfortable truth. The starting point of your argument with Dr Saunders revolves around the age at which a foetus becomes an unborn child. As a society we have rejected both the objective milestones of conception and birth as guidelines to when that change takes place. Having made that choice, no matter what arguments we use in choosing an acceptable term for abortion, we remain open to the accusation (perhaps the fear?) that we are guilty of “slaughtering unborn children.” While you find it vile to compare a medical procedure to a massacre, perhaps you can understand that those who believe in the sanctity of unborn life find the medical procedure, the law’s approval of it, and ethicists’ defence of it vile.

By: Iain Brassington

Iain Brassington — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 18:15:00 +0000

Yes, they are human – but so is a drop of blood from where I cut myself earlier: merely being human doesn’t count for a whole lot, morally speaking. And abortion isn’t murder. Murder is a legal concept, and abortion doesn’t fit in there.
And, of course, women can make choices. That’s quite important. What makes you think that they can’t?

By: Cathrynnf

Cathrynnf — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:46:00 +0000

Unborn children are human. Abortion is murder no matter how you look at it. I am simply amazed that in our culture where our “choice” is treasured that women cannot make choices before they kill their own unborn babies. We know how to not conceive… Make choices at that point.