from Hacker News

States Abortion Restrictions Reach a Record in 2021

by Black101 on 7/9/21, 6:26 PM with 4 comments

• by WillDaSilva on 7/9/21, 7:20 PM

  It will never cease to amaze me how absurd anti-abortion rhetoric is. There are no strong cases against allowing abortions from a secular perspective. The ethics surrounding the issue are still up for debate - certainly there are interesting questions about moral status / personhood, and how we assign worth to that - but without the introduction of concepts like a highly valuable immutable soul you can't reasonable make a case for banning access to abortions. At best you can make a case for promoting measures that have been shown to reduce abortions like comprehensive sex-ed and access to contraceptives.

  So if secular people can't make a case for abortion, that leaves us with religious people. Predominately Christians in this context. But their texts don't have anything to suggest that life begins before the first breath taken by an infant. The bible even contains instructions to carry out abortions in some cases [Numbers 5:11–31]. So why would religious people so overwhelmingly be against allowing abortions?

  Well there we get into the true reasons behind the modern anti-abortion movement. It's a purely political matter designed to secure a voter base. And secure one it has. The religious right is willing to put up with - even celebrate - practically any number of abhorrent things from politicians so long as the politicians claim to be against abortions.

  Even if the religious people did have legitimate religious objections to abortion, as opposed to it being a political matter that was sold to them, we shouldn't allow something like that to affect the government. Governments ought to be purely secular institutions, and so without a compelling case against abortion from a secular perspective governments should not take any measures to limit access to them. It's unfortunate that those in charge don't care much for topics like bioethics, and will instead enact policies that lack secular justification as a means to secure power.

• by ThePlugJumbo on 7/9/21, 8:59 PM

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