Michael and I just dis­cussed this last week and he sorta mocked me for think­ing there were any Democ­rats with your
view­point.

The exchange in question was hardly mocking. I hadn’t run into anyone who believed as PNE does. I’m still surprised that this opinion exists. I hadn’t bothered to look up data on the subject. And now I’ve been made aware that it’s more common a position than I had previously believed. Hey, I learn stuff here, too.

No one believes that life begins five years after birth.

Prior to today, I would have said no one believed that life begins at birth, either. Something to consider.

Perhaps if we had consciously and deliberately created those blood cells, we might care about them a little more.  

Actually, Michael’s question isn’t as much of a strawman as you might think. There have been societies that did not consider a child to be alive–did not consider it to be a person worthy of a name–until some age after birth, periods of eight days, one year, and five! years have been used by societies in the past to define the beginning of life for a child. If someone were to still hold to that conservative estimate of when life begins, should we allow “abortions” up until the child’s first or fifth birthday? Admittedly, this view would be very rare in today’s society, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There are some religious groups that delay naming a baby, for example, because it isn’t really “alive” until it survives for a time. Not that I ascribe to any of those views, just pointing out that they do exist.

As for the rest of it, I think I’ve spilled enough digital ink on this subject, at least for today… If you still want me to address something specifically, just ask and I’ll do my best to explain my views.

You also address the omniscience vs. Free Will question well — that an omniscient being would know all possible decisions, and all possible courses and universes that result from those decisions. In such a multiverse, the question of “Which way will I decide?” is meaningless, because “I” decide in every possible way. Each of those decisions is as real as every other one. There is an “I”, just as conscious as I am, who has taken each of those other paths, and who wonders why he isn’t aware of this version of the multiverse that I inhabit.

It is hard for me to imagine a Universal Creator who cares about individual lives. The Universe is so incredibly vast, and we are so small in comparison, it would be like a human becoming aware of — and caring deeply about — each individual subatomic particle that makes up our bodies. It would seem to me, rather, that any Universal God would care about individual humans no more than we care about individual blood cells. As far as we know, they might each be conscious. We’ll never communicate with them, nor they with us — and if we could communicate with them, neither we nor they could possibly relate to each other. (I once wrote a novelette on precisely this theme — so far unpublished, though a sequel has seen print.)

That doesn’t mean there aren’t smaller gods. Most mature polytheist systems have “ranks” of gods. The High Gods don’t care much about human matters, but there are also much more human-like gods who do. That’s a much larger topic for another time, however.

““joined soci­ety” in a sense…and soci­ety then also has some input into what hap­pens to it.”

How is an unborn fetus, regardless of age, part of society? Being a part of society generally requires some kind of interaction with other people, or animals, or even objects. I think it’s pretty self-evident that a fetus can’t do that until it is born.

“Once the fetus crosses that mile­stone where it is more likely than not to sur­vive if born early, it ceases to be solely the mother’s deci­sion; she’s no longer the only one at stake.”

I disagree with this. Why should society have any say whatsoever about whether a fetus is aborted or not? This statement means that you’re basically pro-life half the time. And as for your last comment, who else besides the mother is at stake? I could maybe see the father, or maybe the prospective grandparents having a stake in the decision, but not anyone else. Society does not have the right to force a woman to carry their fetus to term, regardless of how long the fetus has been inside the mother.

“This via­bil­ity is a some­what arbi­trary des­ig­na­tion.“
I agree with this, and that’s why the concept of viability should not be used as the basis for any laws.

Michael: No one believes that life begins five years after birth. Your question is a ridiculous straw man argument, and I suspect that you know that. But here’s another reason why I believe that life begins at birth. Most people equate their age with the length of time they have been living. When do their ages begin? At birth. No one counts their age from the moment of conception, or from the (unknowable) moment of viability. People count their ages from birth. Your age is equal to the amount of time that you have been living. Therefore, life begins at birth.

If you and I got together, I think that between us we could work out some rea­son­able com­pro­mises that every­one else should agree with, right?

No doubt. Especially since we tend to have very little daylight between our political views.

What I don’t under­stand (and what nobody has explained so far) is that if you believe that life begins at birth (as I do), then why is there any­thing wrong with abor­tion at any age?

A nonrhetorical question in response: what about one who believes that life begins five years after birth? Or 17?

And the answer is, of course, me. I just don’t under­stand why that’s so dif­fi­cult to comprehend.

If you and I got together, I think that between us we could work out some reasonable compromises that everyone else should agree with, right?