Hi! Welcome to The Fetal Position, Episode 14. If you want to listen to the show in a new window, click the following link: http://traffic.libsyn.com/thefetalposition/ep_14.mp3
Resources mentioned in the show:
Common Ground Without Compromise, Free EBook
Clinton Wilcox’s blog, ProLifePhilosophy.Blogspot.com
Debunking Planned Parenthood’s 3% Abortion Myth
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Too Long Didn’t Listen (TLDL)?:
– ZEF stands for zygote/embryo/fetus. It seems dehumanizing to me, but if both parties understand that ZEF stands for an unborn human being, I have little problem with the usage.
– 40 Days for Life is starting soon! If you have any ideas about what we could do as a podcast group, let me know!
Claim:
Consent to sex is not consenting to pregnancy.
- This is a variant of the bodily autonomy argument.
– Originally by Eileen McDonough, and she wants to shift the focus from what the ZEF is and focus on what the ZEF does. On this view, the ZEF causes pregnancy, and if the woman did not consent to pregnancy, then she has the right to say “no.” It’s her body, it’s her choice.
– The entire argument hinges upon the ZEF being an invader, against her consent.
– If you have the right to protect yourself against someone attacking you (even if they do not have malicious intent), then you have the right to protect yourself against the unborn invader.
– On this view, consent must be ongoing. The woman reserves the right to revoke consent, even if consent was given at the beginning. - Response:
– Sex is tacit consent to pregnancy, because sex is a behavior that is intrinsically ordered towards procreation. When your sexual organs are functioning properly, sex results in pregnancy. Pregnancy cannot be seen as an accidental feature of sexual intercourse. Procreation is the designed (even if it is not the desired) function of sex.
– The embryo does not cause pregnancy. The embryo is an effect. There is a correlation, but not a causation. A new human being is caused by sex.
– The car accident analogy does not work because driving a car is not intrinsically ordered towards an accident. When someone hits you, that’s because they’re not functioning properly.
– When someone requires your consent to live, the consent need not be ongoing. Especially if you are responsible for placing the person in that dependent state. If I consent to you riding on my airplane, I cannot revoke consent mid-flight. This is because revoking consent causes you to die.
– Trotting Out The Toddler: You cannot revoke consent to your toddler living in your house, and in response, throw him outside in the snow.
– I am not suggesting that it is immoral to revoke consent in the middle of an act. If a woman consents to sex and finds it to be painful, mid-coitus, she is well within her rights to revoke consent.
– Yes, I understand that there are other ways to make babies outside of sexual intercourse.
– Men are expected to support their children, either with a job, staying at home, or child support. If they refuse to do that, they are shamed and forced to pay. Yet, if a woman chooses to kill her child because she doesn’t consent… apparently, she is a champion of woman’s rights?
Donald Trump on abortion
- Stop pointing to THIS VIDEO from 1999 as a view that he currently holds.
- Donald Trump says that he is pro-life with exceptions; the exceptions being rape, incest, and life of the mother (not health of the mother, life), and the reason he is pro-life is because he heard a story about a woman who was going to abort, didn’t, and the child is awesome.
If the child wasn’t awesome, would Trump have been pro-choice? - If a woman is pregnant and his exceptions don’t apply, Trump says “it depends when.” This video also makes it clear that Trump doesn’t like answering basic questions about his pro-life views, and he is clearly uncomfortable when people prod him on his consistency.
- Trump on Planned Parenthood says that they do good work, but he doesn’t like that they perform abortions. See below links for the response to PPhood’s 3% figure.
- I didn’t include this audio in the episode, but here’s the conversation between Anderson Cooper and Donald Trump on whether or not women should be punished for abortions, if they are made illegal.
- Here is the letter to ProLife Leaders from the Trump Campaign, published on the Susan B Anthony List website.
Ultimately, my conclusion is that Trump is not a principled pro-lifer. I am skeptical of him because he became pro-life after hearing a story and when it was politically convenient. If you trust Trump to stick to his word, then the stuff he has said might good news for you. But because I remember that Trump has flip flopped on issues like our involvement in Iraq and Libya, how much he likes Hillary Clinton, on universal, government-run health care, on throwing illegal aliens out of the country, on nuclear weapons, on the minimum wage, on gun control, on free speech, and even on the importance of political correctness…
That’s why I don’t trust him.
And that’s why I can’t vote for him.
If he is elected, I am confident that he will do nothing to help the pro-life movement.
However, if he is elected and ends up doing good for the pro-life movement, I will publicly admit that I was wrong. But I don’t think I’m going to be wrong.
EDIT:
I wish I seen this interview before recording the episode, because this interview solidifies my position on Donald Trump and abortion. When asked, “There are a lot of laws you want to change, you’ve talked about them on everything from libel to torture. Anything you would want to change on abortion?” Trump says, “At this moment the laws are set, and I think we have to leave it that way.”
In case you had a tiny glimmer of hope… I can assure you that Trump has no plans to change the laws on abortion.
- Believe It or Not, Atheists Need Hermeneutics Too! - August 10, 2017
- How to Dismantle Christianity - June 12, 2017
- Ep 34 – The Top 10 Worst Pro-Life Arguments - June 2, 2017
