Topics Abortion

Question Why do so many people feel that abortion is not a major issue? Regardless of what end of the field you stand on, you’re either defending human rights or you’re defending human life, based on your perspective. Both of these things are clearly important issues so why do so many people attempt to devalue the controversy of abortion?

Accepted:
February 8, 2009

Comments

I wonder what you mean when you say that "many people attempt to devalue the controversy "?

I suppose that it is true that a lot of people are not at all tempted by either "end of the field" -- if that means holding at one end that abortion is tantamount to murder, or holding at the other end that even very late abortions are morally insignificant. Many people think that the moral status of an zygote/embryo/foetus increases as time goes by -- the natural or unnatural death of the immediate product of conception is of little or no consequence, the natural or unnatural death of a foetus near term a matter of very serious concern, with a sliding scale in between. If you take this "gradualist" view -- a rather attractive one, I think -- the loud controversy between extremists at either end will indeed seem wrongheaded: it's not that the gradualist ignores the controversy, or merely ducks out from taking sides, rather she thinks that there is a third option.

I've written a bit more about that kind of gradualism in answer to an earlier question here.