yonmei

Previous Entry Add to Memories Tell a Friend Next Entry
09:42 am: I know where my moral compass points
I've been having a discussion with someone over somewhere else about abortion, and we've been having the usual back-and-forth over details and such, and he (I'm fairly sure it's a he) added in passing to a much longer comment:

But I seriously and sincerely believe that you are grievously in error, and I don't find that state of affairs to be good--not only because it leads you to empower and enable the culture of death in our nation/world (and enable the toleration of mass murder on a mind-boggling scale), but because it threatens your own immortal soul... and I really don't want to see you lost.

As it happened, in 20 minutes from when I read that comment I was about to go out to my local pro-choice activist group where we were to discuss Alex Salmond's recent assertion that he's got a moral compass and he knows how to use it, and I didn't have time to follow my usual strategy of responding calmly point by point.

I wanted to assert my moral compass, so I did, writing:

I am an atheist, and normally I take "concern for my immortal soul" as a kindness - an expression of warmth, despite the fact that I don't believe in either an immortal God or immortal souls.

But in this instance, you see, you are advocating support for a mass movement to treat women as slaves, animals, or incubators - to regard human beings as creatures to be bred by force, or machines that can be used to produce babies without regard for any harm done. This "pro-life" movement that advocates dehumanising women, that murders doctors, attacks clinics and health care - I would no more support it, ever, than I would support a pro-slavery movement, or a pro-death penalty movement, or a pro-war movement.

Treating other human beings as lesser creatures, to be used and destroyed, is to me a sin. Cruelty and dehumanisation such as you advocate are, to me, the ugliest of sins - and I would fear for the best part of me, for whatever integrity and kindess I possess, if I were ever brought low enough not to opppose* such ugliness whenever I see it.

To me, your advocacy of forcing women through pregnancy and childbirth, no matter what high-sounding excuses you make to yourself, is as ugly as slavery and rape. There is no excuse for it.

I support a woman's right to safe, legal access to abortion, because I believe: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." And, so we include sisters in "brotherhood", I would never turn away from that to the horrors of the "pro-life" movement.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!

---
*Okay, given "oppose" may include anything from going to a demo to writing a brief to just a moment of sheer rage: but I'm always in the opposition to this.

Current Mood: tired
Tags: , ,
Purr at me

Comments

[User Picture]
From:[info]melancharisbron
Date:dayordJuly 2009 12:07 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Another case of religious and/or nationalistic exceptionalism, I guess. *sigh* I wonder how he'd react to someone else ending your analysis of the power/disempowering relationships above with more or less the same gambit he tried to use on you: that in his failure to extricate himself from this enforcement of biological, social and economic slavery, his participation in this reduction of human beings to mere baby-machines, he's cause you (or someone else, since you already said you don't believe in immortal souls) to conceive (*wink*) of a dire worry for his immortal soul...

Sorry, I'm being facetious when I should just be saying, "You rock, again." I have no energy or patience for the kind of utterances that pass out as "communication" from large swathes of the forced-birthers camp. That you do is a cause of admiration in me.
[User Picture]
From:[info]tigresslilly
Date:dayordJuly 2009 02:26 pm (UTC)
(Link)
I love how calmly you can create a point by point response instead of getting angry or flustered or hostile. I always try for the same, but often I just lose some rational part and become a little bit mean and petty and personal when there is no need. Abortion might be distinctly a personal topic for me but for others (those others usually including who I'm talking to) it's an abstract. They have little or no understanding of what they are asking or demanding. It's good to see that others can tell them off without getting personal and in there face.
[User Picture]
From:[info]ruthi
Date:dayordJuly 2009 03:25 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Thank you for saying it.
[User Picture]
From:[info]dglenn
Date:dayordJuly 2009 03:25 pm (UTC)

Completely tangential

(Link)
Everything else you wrote here makes perfect sense to me (and is well put), but I found one distraction. After mentioning your atheism, you wrote, "Treating other human beings as lesser creatures, to be used and destroyed, is to me a sin. Cruelty and dehumanisation such as you advocate are, to me, the ugliest of sins ..."

To me (and to the dictionaries I just consulted (which don't include the OED, so I've not been completely thorough)), 'sin' is a specifically religious concept. My first impression was that you were using the term sincerely and have a slighly different sense of the word than I do, but I'll back up a step and first ask whether that's the case, or if you were merely using it as a rhetorical device because you were writing to a person of faith who had already raised a religious context?

If 'sin' is a meaningful concept to you, would it be possible to give some insight onto the difference, for you, between a sin and other types of wrongs, briefly enough that it won't be a huge derail from discussion of the moral correctness (in your opinion and mine) of the pro-abortion-rights position? I've been thinking a lot lately about sin, and which religions appear to have 'sin' as a meaningful concept and which don't, so it was a little startling to hear an atheist invoke the concept. Learning more about the differences between how others use the word and how I do would be useful to me.
[User Picture]
From:[info]mllesatine
Date:dayordJuly 2009 04:11 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Well said. I would really like to know how the person will react/answer.
Powered by InsaneJournal