Monday, July 7, 2008
From "pro-choice atheist to pro-life Catholic"
An interesting story, in America magazine:
When I would come across Catholic Web sites or books that asserted “Life begins at conception,” I would scoff, as was my habit, yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense. I realized that my criteria for determining when human life begins were distressingly vague. I was putting the burden of proof on the fetuses to demonstrate to me that they were human, and I was a tough judge. I found myself looking the other way when I heard about things like the 3-D ultrasounds that showed fetuses touching their faces, smiling and opening their eyes at ages at which I still considered abortion acceptable. As modern technology revealed more and more evidence that fetuses were humans too, I would simply move the bar for what I considered human.
At some point I started to feel I was more determined to remain pro-choice than to analyze honestly who was and was not human.
This post of mine, at Prawfsblawg -- and the comments -- connects pretty well with the America story, by the way.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2008/07/from-pro-choice.html