Here's a reality-check thought experiment for pro-lifers that helps explain their disconnect in a way that hadn't occured to me. There is plenty of room for compromise on the pro-choice side, but you can hardly argue with this fundamental difficulty of the absolutist pro-life position.
Edited for clarification. This only applies to pro-lifers who won't budge under any condition.
D. Bones
7 comments:
Now that it sank in, I'm bankin' this here gedanken is rankin' pretty high with pro-choicers, who should be thankin' Bones for posting this!
And I ain't yankin' your chain!
Here's me thankin' you for a frank n' thoughful comment.
time for a spankin' of said post.
in all seriousness, first-off, i'm not pro-life. but i'm sorry, that situation was pretty superficial.
can't one be pro-life and still value different types of lives differently? since when did pro-life mean you value every life exactly equal?
you can't tell me someone can be pro-life, but if faced with the same situation, only it's a child versus two 90-year old men side by side in comas, that by making the choice to save the child, that disqualifies them from being pro-life from there on.
that doesn't make any sense.
i see nothing wrong with a pro-lifer making the choice to save the child over the tray, and thereafter still sticking to their pro-life stance. isn't the basic stance that "all forms of life (including embryos) are worth saving"? i never heard the additional premise that "worth saving" implied "on equal terms, all the time, no exceptions". it seems completely reasonable to me that a pro-lifer can value "all life", yet still with some sort of heirarchy to it.
- chief
Of course you can be pro-life and reasonable, Chief. But the thought experiment is only designed to make absolutist pro-lifers consider the full scope of their argument.
If someone can insist all life is equally precious, they should be able to answer the question. It's not supposed to be a realistic situation. But it's not superficial because it gets at the deep disconnect in the thinking of a pro-lifer with an absolutist's certainty.
So you are absolutely right that it's completely reasonable for a pro-lifer to value life and still attach some sort of hierarchy to it. The question posed in this post only addresses the unreasonable ones. And they tend to be the loudest, the one's driving the debate, and the one's who make compromise impossible.
Same can be said of the absolutists on the pro-choice side, by the way.
I'm with Chief, whoever Chief is.
I can see your point, Bones, but don't you tend to argue that we should be gearing our discussions toward the reasonable types, not the wacko extremists? In which case, isn't this thought experiment (I'm sorry, gedanken is just a dumbass word) just feel-good extremist bailt?
It's really only useful when dealing with someone who purports to hold the absolutist line on abortion. There are many of these people. It's the kind of argument that will either force them to moderate their view or stonewall any kind of logic or compromise. Either way, it helps to find out who we can exclude from rational debate.
And then the rest of the country can try to have a real discussion about the fertile (pun!) middle ground.
thanks for the clarification. now i'm with you.
- chief
Post a Comment