Thursday, 03 September 2009

• Currently Breakthrough By Colbie Caillat see related

  The Deconstruction of Abortion (Or, This Will Never Be Seen on Revelife)

  People say that the moment in your life when you truly and genuinely feel most alive is the moment right before you’re about to die (or think you’re about to die).  Many people say that in the fleeting moments before death, your life flashes before your eyes, which gives you an invigorating and transcendent appreciation for existence.  I suppose the people who say this are those who survive near-death experiences, which is something I’ve never had.   The closest I’ve ever been to a near-death experience was when I was in the middle of a mosh pit at a Save Ferris concert in 1998, but that was about as wild as a being in a bounce castle with a bunch of eight-year-olds.  I wouldn’t say that moment made me feel alive.  But sometimes I wake up really hard from very vivid nightmares of me dying, and I suppose I do feel alive at those moments. 

  But those moments happen only sometimes.

  The discussion on what it means to FEEL alive will forever be carried on by philosophy majors, poets, and shitty bands like P.O.D.  However, the argument on what it means to BE alive is another debate entirely.  On one side of the issue are pragmatic people who subscribe to the school of thought that you have to be born to be alive.  On the other side of the issue are fantastically thinking life-lovers who believe that life begins at the zygote stage of embryology, immediately after an egg is fertilized by a sperm.   This debate has fueled the abortion discussions between Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers, and it wouldn’t be presumptuous to say that most of America is somewhere in the middle between these two extremes.

  This is the singular debate that has always attracted my attention for two reasons:  1) I find this issue completely fascinating and 2) both sides kind of piss me off.  First, defining when life begins and using those definitions to debate abortion is kind of senseless.  A definition of when something begins seems irrelevant to a discussion about the morality of a termination.  It would be more appropriate to use those definitions to debate when someone’s birthday should be.  In reality, the fundamental issue regarding abortion shouldn’t be about life, it should be about whether the termination of a life (or potential life) is okay.  Or, more plainly put, is murder ever justified?

  Mostly everyone agrees that homicide and voluntary manslaughter are vile and despicable acts (unless they are committed in a war, in which case that person is considered a hero).  Nobody who is consciously alive wants to be killed by someone else and not know about it beforehand.  Hardcore Pro-Lifers are quick to point out that abortion is the killing of life, and even the most hard-lined Pro-Choice enthusiast will agree that an abortion ends some type of organism’s existence (whether “alive” or not).  But, if Pro-Lifers are going to say that abortion is murder (which is probably true), then Pro-Choicers shouldn’t counter by saying that a young fetus isn’t alive.  They need to shift the entire paradigm of abortion thinking.  Pro-Choicers should counter by saying that murder is sometimes okay.

  And, in the case of abortion and a woman’s right to choose, murder should be okay.

  But only sometimes.

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