The Quantum fetus Pro-choice or No-choice #617390

Welcome to one of the most polarizing controversies of our times, and currently being debated within the United States of America, because you are either defined by the Pro-life anti-abortion brigade, or the Abortion-rights movement, commonly referred to as Pro-choice. The controversy has been defined by the landmark legal case in 1973, Roe versus Wade by the United States Supreme Court, in favor of legal abortion, to protect a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose.
As the United States of America becomes polarized on the human rights of women to decide their reproductive voices, there is no more appropriate time in history to break open society’s religious prejudices, and falsehoods towards what we define human life as, and who has the right to decide.
So how do we decide on the rights of an emancipated woman, to have control over her own reproductive choices? Do we allow a cabal of six Roman Catholic judges, sitting in the Supreme Court in the United States of America, to decide for the country, and if so, is the system broken?
Around 62% of the population of the USA supports legal abortion, so the numbers have it, but is it morally right or wrong to kill a zygote, embryo and fetus in line with the wishes of the woman? However, who actually decides the morality, and is morality just a purely subjective judgment, constructed by religious groupings or a secular society? And for the 30% of people who do not believe in a god or the words of the Bible, do we say your rights don’t matter at all?
So how do we define morality? Is it a line in the sand defined by agreement within a secular society, or is it as the Abrahamic religion defines, a set of unquestionable commandments from god given to Moses, a Jewish prophet, and did he copy them correctly? Well let’s look at the evidence from the bible, and then some very relevant thought experiments, before you can make up your own mind.
The big questions in the abortion debate are generally: When is a zygote, embryo or fetus, a living human being, either at birth, conception, or somewhere in between, and anyway, who has the right to make this judgement?
So let’s consider what the Abrahamic bible tells us about the ensoulment of a human being and abortion.
Although the evangelical right wing Christian brigade, has taken up the call of the Pro-life movement, it is the Roman Catholic Church who is the primary driver of the anti-abortion movement within the USA and elsewhere. Unfortunately there aggressive attitude, denying a woman’s reproductive rights were poorly decided by the sexual attitudes of Augustine of Hippo, a bishop in the fifth century. And there is strong evidence, that a failed intimate relationship with his mother, drove him to dam human sexual relations for hundreds of years, denying women control over their reproductive rights, which is a sad proposition to deliver to Catholicism.
Finally I have included an extremely poignant and extensively researched article on Christianity and Abortion rights, with the kind permission of Rohini Hensman, author, writer and independent scholar from Sri Lanka who currently lives in India.
Rohini Hensman, University of Amsterdam, Doctor of Philosophy(PhD), Sociology Doctor of philosophy (PhD), Sociology, 1996 to 2006.
University of Oxford, BA and MA, Psychology and physiology BA and MA, Psychology and Physiology, 1967 to1970.