If I don't agree with pro-lifers - abortion kills a person - then I should be free to act accordingly.
Every once in a while you hear about someone killing their own children. What if such a person were to defend their actions as saying that it's their personal belief that children under the age of five aren't people, so they weren't comitting murder? This isn't a purely speculative question - many cultures have held that infanticide is as acceptable as abortion. Would you be comfortable leaving that decision to the individual parent? I wouldn't, and I think the pro-lifers see the situations as differing only in the age of the child, so while I don't agree with them I can see where they're coming from.
Or to go back to the slavery example, many slave holders didn't believe blacks were people. Should they have been free to act on that belief? Many really looked at themselves as the ones being oppressed, since they saw it as their property rights as being under attack. How is that different?
(answer to rhetorical question: the difference is that we're right and slavers are wrong)
Every once in a while you hear about someone killing their own children. What if such a person were to defend their actions as saying that it's their personal belief that children under the age of five aren't people, so they weren't comitting murder? This isn't a purely speculative question - many cultures have held that infanticide is as acceptable as abortion. Would you be comfortable leaving that decision to the individual parent? I wouldn't, and I think the pro-lifers see the situations as differing only in the age of the child, so while I don't agree with them I can see where they're coming from.
Or to go back to the slavery example, many slave holders didn't believe blacks were people. Should they have been free to act on that belief? Many really looked at themselves as the ones being oppressed, since they saw it as their property rights as being under attack. How is that different?
(answer to rhetorical question: the difference is that we're right and slavers are wrong)
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