Reply #30: a view from the pro-life but still left side

[marcapolo]

As one of about 5 pro-life democrats, I feel compelled to (respectfully) explain my views on the subject. First, pro-choicers often use the argument "It's my body." But the thing is, every cell in your body is programmed with your unique genetic code, which is what makes you you. But then you have this thing inside you-- call it a zygote, fetus, baby, whatever-- that has a totally different, unique genetic code. If a scientist performed DNA testing on it, they wouldn't say it's you, they would say it's a different person. So while it may be in your body, it is not actually your body.
Secondly, pro-choicers say "It isn't a baby, it's a fetus, zygote, blob of cells, whatever." Again I would say that if scientists examined the "tissue," they wouldn't say it came from a monkey, or a dog, or an alien, they would say it's human DNA, cells, tissue, etc. People may counter, 'even if it's human DNA, it clearly doesn't look like a human; it looks like a blob of cells' (depending on its stage of development, of course. In mid-to-later stages, the presence of a heart, brain, and even stunted little limbs seems evidence enough that it's a person). In earlier stages, it may not look human, but are we to base life on looks? There are a lot of people with severe defects that may not look like our definition of what a person looks like and no one questions whether they are human, but they have the advantage that we can actually see them. For people who remember the Milgram experiments, the subjects were much more likely to "shock people to death" (to think they were shocking them to death, that is) if they couldn't see them. The fetus is at a disadvantage because we can't see it, so we can easily dehumanize it. I'm probably going to invite an invective with this next argument, but I'll say this: throughout history, when there is a group of people that people wanted to get rid of for whatever reason, they did 3 things-- they said that the group doesn't quite look human, they gave them a new name to dehumanize them, and then they killed them. Colonists did this with the Native Americans, pointing out their physical differences, calling them "noble savages," and then slaughtering them. Same thing happened to the Aboriginies and to a certain extent the Jews in the Holocaust. This may seem like an exaggeration, but I think it's a psychological tendency at least worth noting. I'd be happy to hear any dissenting views to my arguments. Since no one will ever discuss abortion in person, I've never heard a response to my views.