Conservative Middle America and its Absurdist Abortion Laws: a Critical Assessment
In this piece, I will test the first of the two premises that underpin the wave of restrictive abortion legislative currently proliferating conservative America. The first premise is that a fetus is a person, which leads to the second premise that killing a person is wrong. If legislation is built on premise one, it relies on the following being true: that fertilistion is the point at which a ‘person’ comes into being (in a legal sense), and this is the only morally relevant consideration across all possible circumstances that a person could seek an abortion. So, all cases of abortion are murder and the rights of a mass of cells trump those of the person who keeps them viable, even in cases of rape or incest. Good health and social policy should first do no harm and then preserve the freedoms of those the policy affects. Where restriction of freedoms is deemed necessary, a pragmatic approach is always best where freedoms are limited o...