Are they seriously saying "no abortion, even if the pregnancy is killing her"?
I think the operative principle is that it's never okay to intentionally kill one person in order to save another -- even when the likely outcome of letting nature take its course is that both will die. A non-pregnancy-related analogy: You're stranded at sea, and starving, but by killing and eating the guy with whom you're stranded, you can probably hold out long enough to get to shore. This actually happened, several hundred years ago under the jurisdiction of the British Crown, and the verdict of the resulting murder trial still gets debated in US law-school classes.
Having said all that, I am myself strongly pro-choice -- but the argument doesn't strike me as crazy, so much as I just disagree with some of its premises.
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Date: 2008-09-06 02:02 am (UTC)I think the operative principle is that it's never okay to intentionally kill one person in order to save another -- even when the likely outcome of letting nature take its course is that both will die. A non-pregnancy-related analogy: You're stranded at sea, and starving, but by killing and eating the guy with whom you're stranded, you can probably hold out long enough to get to shore. This actually happened, several hundred years ago under the jurisdiction of the British Crown, and the verdict of the resulting murder trial still gets debated in US law-school classes.
Having said all that, I am myself strongly pro-choice -- but the argument doesn't strike me as crazy, so much as I just disagree with some of its premises.