Monday, October 26, 2015

Are fetuses the enemy?

Ben Carson, potential Republican party nominee, is extremely anti-choice and loves to pontificate on it.  He recently opined on how pregnant people should feel about their fetuses:


"“In the ideal situation,” Carson said, the Blaze reported, “the mother should not believe that the baby is her enemy and should not be looking to terminate the baby.”
He then spoke of mothers’ protective instincts and the line pregnant women are being fed to believe – “that the baby is their enemy and that they have the right to kill it,” he said."

Why shouldn't a woman think of a fetus as an enemy? It can kill her, it can maim her, it can make her sick, it can stop her from pursuing her dreams even in more supportive societies. 


What Carson and others miss here is CONSENT. 

Think about a penis penetrating a vagina. What is the moral significance of this act? Is it a heinous and violating act or is it an act of intimate and beautiful love? The presence or absence of CONSENT define the act. 

A fetus in a uterus can be an enemy, it can be a treasured baby and that hinges on the CONSENT of the person who owns the uterus. A lot of people are deeply uncomfortable with the fact that women's consent has the power to transform the moral significance of something.

One may argue that fetuses don't have intent. So? Cancer doesn't either, but yet we can call it an enemy.

If you recoil at any comparison between an unwanted fetus and a disease, you might be a little infected with the naturalistic fallacy, you might not appreciate the gravity of the health risks of pregnancy, and you might not be valuing consent as much as you should. 

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