Abortion

I've had an assignment to read the Roe vs Wade federal abortion court opinion for moral philosophy this week, and I figured what better time than now to see what I think of abortion myself.

I will begin with my usual beggining assumption, without which I could not argue anything, that to a living human being the state of himself, namely his mind and his emotions and his body (the immediate things of which people are naturally concerned), and the state of others are the most important things to him, given that he would no longer be living if he did not value life and by asserting that primacy of life by continuing to live he demotes any other possibility of importance to himself becasue he would not be able to percieve the importance of any such things were he not alive. I do hold that if a person holds his life to be of this magnitude of importance, that by nature of the assertion that he holds life in general to be important - because without the existence of life in itself, or rather without the potential that he be born a homo sapiens sapiens, as others have - that he would not be living, so with appreciation of ones own life, we take that one must appreciate all life, and neccissarily, and primarily, the potential for life.

Now the solution to the problem of abortion becomes simple. Any stage of child, any trimester, before the point of viability or after, from zygote to organism that can readily survive on it's own (with sufficient nutrients; i mean here to sight the definition of the point of viability either way) remains the potental for life, and furthermore from a pragmatic standpoint, a life that potentially could be greatly possitively influential and good for the human race. This does mean that contraceptives become disrespecting the potential for life, and at that, in modern times, great and infulential life, and therefor against what a living being naturally wants.

There is here, as is the nature with all things, seemingly an exception. What of the great women whose lives are at risk as long as they carry a child? Does the principle of appreciating life apply here. I think through reason, though it may not be a utilitarians delight to hear, even if the most dimwitted human in history is to be born, if my reason is to follow, it seems as if respecting the potential for life should take primary importance over already existing life.

I may get back to this later to examine the social and cultural reprocussions of accepting such a belief, I may not...