In my opinion, bodily integrity—the idea that no person has the right to use another person’s body against their will–is the strongest pro-choice argument. Consider the court case McFall v Shimp: McFall suffered from a life-threatening bone marrow disease and his cousin, Shimp, was a compatible bone marrow donor. Shimp refused to donate bone marrow. […]
I am against the death penalty. Inspired largely by the work of the Innocence Project, I believe our system is too fallible to justly implement the death penalty. I’m certainly not alone in my stance; there are many people against both abortion and capital punishment. That being said, I can understand how a person could work to end […]
Last Saturday (January 21st) was the Walk for Life West Coast in downtown San Francisco. Secular Pro Life representatives Neil and Ellen Snyder attended, carrying the SPL banner with the slogan: “Call me an extremist, but I think dismemberment is wrong.” (This is my personal favorite slogan. If you like it too, you can get […]
Because of Initiative 26, I’ve seen a lot of debate recently about the definition of “personhood.” Our society finds it abhorrent to deny people rights. But the personhood debate implies that fetuses, though human, aren’t people, making our denial of their rights more palatable. Truth be told, I have a difficult time feeling emotional about […]
I wish that stories like this got more coverage. “Two abortion clinic workers pleaded guilty Thursday to third-degree murder in deaths that occurred at a Philadelphia clinic where seven babies were allegedly born alive, then killed with scissors…” I think pro-choice people are more likely to dismiss such a situation as a terrible anomaly, whereas […]
So I was reading this RealChoice blog post about a woman who went into a CPC by mistake, was shown her sonogram, and now, years after her abortion, still gets upset thinking of the images from the sonogram. The RealChoice author had some insightful commentary and I recommend you read the article all the way through. (You […]
So someone somewhere in cyberspace was musing about an urban legend in which a girlfriend stole her boyfriend’s sperm without his knowledge and then sued him for child support. And then someone2 laughed it off, saying you can’t take a man’s sperm without his knowledge. Seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? But I’ve actually read about […]
Earlier this week my history class discussed the modern feminist movement. From my lecture notes: “In 1970 NOW launched major action: Women’s Strike For Equality. This was across the US and the demands were equal pay for equal work, universal child care and the legalization of abortion. ‘We are the 51% minority.’ Even this moderate agenda was polarizing. Counter protest: men […]
In my experience one of the most frequently debated subjects within the abortion debate is the accuracy of the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” labels. Instead of arguing about issues that really matter–the definition of personhood, the effects of restricting abortion–people bicker about the technicality of labels. I’d like to get this out of the way. Some […]
There’s been a lot of talk lately about legislation related to abortion and/or fetal life. Of course there is the Pence Amendment. I’ve seen people use this legislation as evidence that pro-lifers really don’t care about abortion and really do just want to control everyone’s sex lives by preventing them from accessing vital health care […]