Monday 16 December 2013

Why defend the pro-choice position?

As a pro-choice person living in Canada, I find that it can be very easy to forget about the issue of abortion.  After all, we  already won right?  Abortion is legal and that fact doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.  So why bother making a case for legalized abortion? 

One reason is pragmatic.  I know it might seem like a lot of pro-lifers are idiots, but there are a lot of very intelligent pro-lifers who are working on making a persuasive defense of the pro-life position.  They are writing blogs in order to reach people, like this secular pro-life blog.  They are going to college campuses and defending their view in debates, as well as one on one discussions.  In other words, a lot of people are spending a lot of money and resources trying to change people's views on abortion and if pro-choice people don't have good arguments to back up their position, it is very possible that abortion could be made illegal again. 

Another reason is both an intellectual and moral one.  In general, I think people want to be on the right side of history.  Pro-life people believe that abortion is morally the same as murder.  Every day hundreds of abortions take place across Canada, thousands in the United States and millions world wide.  If abortion is morally the same as murder, there is an enormous injustice occurring every day in our own back yards.  If we want to know whether we are on the right side of history we need to have good reasons to back up our beliefs and have those reasons stand up against the reasoning the other side provides.   I think, as a proud liberal who cares about human rights, it is important for me to have good reasons why I think pro-life people are wrong about there being a holocaust taking place in my own country and around the world.  Unfortunately however, I think that many pro-choice advocates have been using weak arguments to back up their view.  The purpose of this blog then, is to expose weak pro-choice arguments and try and replace them with sound arguments that can be used win hearts and minds.     

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