Protestantism

» Brian Tubbs - When does life begin?

In response to When does life begin? posted by pink101:

The point of viability...The embryo is on a life support system outside it's own ability to survive.

Careful. You are on a dangerously slippery slope here. Are we, as a society, going to embrace an ethic that allows caregivers to pull the plug by THEIR choice on those who they are caring for? If a person is on life support, does that mean he/she is no longer really a "life"?

It seems terrible to me that abortion takes place and I would not want to lightly enter into any decision making that might lead to it.

Explore that. WHY is abortion "terrible"? Why does it SEEM terrible? If the pre-born baby is NOT a living human organism, then having an abortion should present very little in the way of moral difficulty. The fact that it DOES, I think, should tell us something. We know, deep-down, that abortion typically kills a living, human organism. We know this, and it understandably bothers us. Or at least it should.
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But, I can see situations where women are pregnant in which a marriage or a family might be destroyed. Bringing such a pregnancy to an end makes sense to me.

This is rationalization. I understand that sometimes we must rationalize the taking of innocent life, as our war planners did in World War II when we bombed civilian cities. But, we should never do so to the extent that we just casually accept killing.

Of course, if the embryo is brought to term, every option is changed.

Okay, and...
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So, what changes once a live birth has been achieved? How does that first breath make such a difference?

GREAT questions!

The ONLY difference is that this dependent baby is now outside the woman's body. That's it. But this isn't a big enough difference IF you take pro-choice logic to its LOGICAL end. Nothing should change, because a brand new infant is still 100% dependent. If someone is unwilling to provide that care, the baby dies. He/she cannot sustain his/her own life without external care.