Monday, November 30, 2020

The morality of abortion has little to do with the suffering of the unborn

One argument pro-choice people sometimes bring up to defend abortion is that the unborn do not suffer since their brains aren't developed enough. Typically, pro-lifers argue that the unborn do suffer in a lot of abortions. But I don't think the morality of abortion hinges on whether the unborn suffers or not.

This argument seems to depend on the notion that it's only wrong to cause suffering, and as long as you aren't causing suffering, you aren't doing anything wrong. I disagree with that assumption because it leads to absurd results.

Consider a situation in which you shoot a sleeping adult in the head at close range with a shotgun, and their brains instantly splatter all over their pillow and bed. This person will die instantly and without any suffering.

Now, compare that to punching somebody in the nose. This person will suffer quite a bit.

Although the second person suffered far more than the first person, and the first person didn't actually suffer at all, clearly murder is still more heinous than punching somebody in the nose.

So it isn't the degree of suffering that determines whether an action is immoral (or immoral to a greater degree). It's simply the value of human life. Even if you could kill somebody painlessly who was in a coma, it would still be murder.

So the real question, as far as abortion is concerned, isn't whether the embryo suffers or not. It's whether it's a human being or not.

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