yonmei

yonmei @ 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.



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*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.