Often, only when it’s convenient for us to grant them.
That “convenience” could be based on an ideology religiously held (Deistic or secular), or on more base emotions such as fear of taking responsibility for one’s actions, or a complication of one’s own life.
Also, we tend to get very hung-up on “rights”. Actually the issue is more one of consideration; at what point we can justifiably transgress against another unto death?
Current trends of when it’s justified to extend “rights” to a child have everything to do with “familiarity” and little to do with ethics or morals or even rational thought. We feel justified to deny rights, because the form of the baby isn’t “familiar” to us, or it’s reality in the womb isn’t “familiar” to us: so we imagine it as “alien”. It’s only when it emerges into familiar surroundings in familiar form, that we feel any obligation or responsibility to consider it as deserving equal chances and rights.
But really, Human children are in a “premature” state for up to 2 years — demonstrably unaware of themselves as an entity. For the level of brain complexity, Humans should really have a gestation period of 2 years. But because our brains are so big, there would be no way for that big brain to traverse the birth canal — and God or evolution (whichever one favors) has already provided for as large a pelvic opening in women as is structurally feasible — plus a conveniently-collapsible brain-casing in the baby! But even with these, birthing is still a struggle for women.
That’s not saying that there never reasonable justification for abortion. Only that we should abandon the foolishness that tries to equate the baby to “just an infection or invading organism” as justification for exerting one’s own will over the life of another.
Indications are that many women who have had abortions — even medically or socially justified ones — struggle with the magnitude of what they’ve done, sometimes for years.
3 responses to “The Magical Birth Canel”
Often, only when it’s convenient for us to grant them.
That “convenience” could be based on an ideology religiously held (Deistic or secular), or on more base emotions such as fear of taking responsibility for one’s actions, or a complication of one’s own life.
Also, we tend to get very hung-up on “rights”. Actually the issue is more one of consideration; at what point we can justifiably transgress against another unto death?
Current trends of when it’s justified to extend “rights” to a child have everything to do with “familiarity” and little to do with ethics or morals or even rational thought. We feel justified to deny rights, because the form of the baby isn’t “familiar” to us, or it’s reality in the womb isn’t “familiar” to us: so we imagine it as “alien”. It’s only when it emerges into familiar surroundings in familiar form, that we feel any obligation or responsibility to consider it as deserving equal chances and rights.
But really, Human children are in a “premature” state for up to 2 years — demonstrably unaware of themselves as an entity. For the level of brain complexity, Humans should really have a gestation period of 2 years. But because our brains are so big, there would be no way for that big brain to traverse the birth canal — and God or evolution (whichever one favors) has already provided for as large a pelvic opening in women as is structurally feasible — plus a conveniently-collapsible brain-casing in the baby! But even with these, birthing is still a struggle for women.
That’s not saying that there never reasonable justification for abortion. Only that we should abandon the foolishness that tries to equate the baby to “just an infection or invading organism” as justification for exerting one’s own will over the life of another.
Indications are that many women who have had abortions — even medically or socially justified ones — struggle with the magnitude of what they’ve done, sometimes for years.
When other humans impose what they perceive to be their rights on the little human.
@novelist65
Agreed.