Best-Of Advice

On magical jesus baby souls

I am pro-choice. But when those pro-lifers start banging on about abortion being murder and “your choice? what about the child’s choice?”- I hesitate… maybe due to years of religious brainwashing.

Help me be smarter about this?

 

When religious wingnuts chant on about how “life begins at conception,” what they’re really expressing is their ridiculous belief that White Jesus up in sunny heaven reaches down into every woman’s uterus the very instant that a sperm fertilizes an egg and magically imbues the resulting single-celled zygote with a fully formed human soul.

They really truly believe this, and you will never convince them otherwise, and that’s why this is a dumb-fuck religious issue instead of a pragmatic scientific one.

Here’s the thing, though. There is no Jesus. There is no magic. There is no soul. THERE IS NO CHILD.

More to the point, a zygote isn’t a child. It’s just a clump of cells. Same goes for an embryo, as it’s just a slightly bigger clump. Hell, a mid-term fetus still isn’t a child, even though it kind of looks like a squishy one. Only when we start talking about later-term fetuses that are viable outside the womb can anyone start making a rational argument that it’s a child, but post-viabilty abortions aren’t even an option unless the mother’s health is at risk.

So, why is any of this still controversial? Because babies are cute and make people emotional and America is full of half-wits who believe in magical Jesus baby souls.

That’s why you hesitate, because there’s enough irrational static out there to make you feel like somehow an innocent child is involved, but there isn’t, because THERE IS NO CHILD.

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34 thoughts on “On magical jesus baby souls

  1. Marie says:

    Exactly! An actual child can live outside the woman’s body. Just because a vampire needs blood to live doesn’t make it my responsibility to be its dinner, nor does it make me a murderer to say that I don’t want to be drained of my blood.

  2. Kate says:

    And what is this pro-life and pro-choice bullshit? If you choose,you reject life? If you support life,you do not believe in free will? One doesn’t necessarily imply that you are not in favor of the other. False analogies like these always create a feigned sense of morality. It is not immoral to choose how to live your life. Or to have the power and the right to make decisions about yourself. What is immoral is to use words such as life and choice and instill them with negative connotations.

  3. “Coquette” resolves one of the great philosophical questions of our time:

    “There is no Jesus. There is no magic. There is no soul”

    Eureka.

    Next, she femsplains:

    “a zygote isn’t a child. It’s just a clump of cells. Same goes for an embryo, as it’s just a slightly bigger clump. Hell, a mid-term fetus still isn’t a child, even though it kind of looks like a squishy one. ”

    Now, Coquette, you invoked “pragmatic science” above. So let’s talk science.

    We don’t *know* when life starts. Science hasn’t figured that out. We know they start *acting* human, with pain and sensation and awareness, very early; 12-20 weeks. We know that “mid-term” “fetuses” can survive at 22 weeks, which is about as mid-term as they get, and right in the wheelhouse for abortion zealots.

    So there *is* no “pragmatic scientific” answer – and your femsplanation is, ironically, much more faith-based than the “zealots”.

    So believe what you want to believe. But that’s all it is. Faith.

    I’ll await the flood of ad-hominem and rage, followed most likely by the comment getting deleted, since that’s how these things seem to roll.

    • Dina says:

      Pain and sensation awareness are not actually what’s measured in most of the studies you’re talking about. What they usually study is response to pain stimuli – which can be achieved without awareness.

      The reason you don’t remember the womb is because your brain wasn’t yet developed enough to be conscious and retain memory.

      Viability (ability to survive outside the womb) is greatly extended by modern medicine. To say that fetuses are viable at 22 weeks is a gross misrepresentation of viability.

      What you’re doing is misciting science in order to prove a point, which is hugely ignorant and dangerous, and at which I take personal and professional offense.

    • Dina says:

      Pain and sensation awareness are not actually what’s measured in most of the studies you’re talking about. What they usually study is response to pain stimuli – which can be achieved without awareness.

      The reason you don’t remember the womb is because your brain wasn’t yet developed enough to be conscious and retain memory.

      Viability (ability to survive outside the womb) is greatly extended by modern medicine. To say that fetuses are viable at 22 weeks is a gross misrepresentation of viability.

      What you’re doing is misciting science in order to prove a point, which is hugely ignorant and dangerous, and at which I take personal and professional offense.

      Sorry to disappoint your expectations of ad hominem attacks and rage…

  4. Q.T. Getomov says:

    When Pro Lifers say “It’s not just your choice, what about the baby’s choice” they make it sound like it’s a simple option like ‘the blue ones or the green ones’. A woman doesn’t just ‘choose’ to have a termination, it’s a lot of hard work, soulsearching (you know what I mean =oP), a decision that she knows is going to have an affect on her, possibly for the rest of her life.
    When they say they think there should be a delay between your consultation and the procedure taking place ignore the fact that the woman has already had weeks of hating herself for even having to make this decision and being made to feel selfish because she wants to put her own happiness above the life of her child.
    I’m glad for the happy clappy Pro Lifers who live in such protected ivory towers untrammeled by the realities of modern life that they never have to find themselves in the position of having to make such a significant, emotionally fraught decision.

  5. FFS says:

    Well, OP, you got a great reply from Coquette, and might not need another set of words, but on the chance that you have someone – like say, your boss – bring it up in a situation where you need to go along to get along, here’s another thing to say.

    My super catholic boss: “Abortion is murder”

    Me: “No one, no matter how young, no matter how closely related, no matter how innocent, is allowed to use another person’s bodily organs without the other person’s consent. You can’t even use organs from a dead body without the consent of the person who used to live in it.”

    I still have my job, and my boss is less super inappropriate … so far.

  6. Joe Doakes says:

    If it wasn’t human, the body parts wouldn’t be useful for medical research. DNA tells us they’re human; common sense tells us some humans aren’t entitled to rights until they reach a certain age (18 to vote, 21 to drink); and the Supreme Court tells us unborn children have no right to be born until a certain stage of development. They’re humans that you can kill without penalty, like enemy soldiers in war, Blacks in the Old South, Jews in Nazi Germany.

    • Coquette says:

      Um, no. A human fetus is not a human person. It’s really that simple.

      (And WTF, dude? By your creepy logic, your fingernail trimmings should have rights, because they’re technically human too.)

        • The Coquette says:

          Yeah, dude. She was a fetus, and then she was born. That’s how it works.

          I understand how a father in your position would have some strong (perhaps overly emotional) opinions about late-term abortion, but why are you bringing videos of your extremely premature baby to the table?

          I mean, mazel-tov and all, but what’s your point?

          • Ryan says:

            Yeah, dude. She was a fetus, and then she was born. That’s how it works.

            Thanks for the “dude” qualifier.

            She wasn’t “born.” she was removed via C-section. Kinda like, you know, ABORTION. Not that I would expect you to make such a connection.

            My point? Aside from the fact you advocate convenient murder? None, really.

            Oh, and you’re a horrid twat with no moral center.

            There’s a couple other points I could go over, but that should have you grinding your teeth down to nice pointy nubs, as Satan always envisioned for you.

      • I feel validated that I have previously made this exact argument about what I like to call “bodily offal.” Being scientifically human is not the same as being a person. My shit is human. So’s my saliva. Still not a person.

  7. Joe Doakes says:

    The writer asked if abortion was murder. I answer that abortion is not murder because murder is the wrongful taking of a human life and our laws make it perfectly legal to take certain human lives, including soldiers in time of war, people trying to kill you and unborn children before a certain age.

    You implicitly concede murder is the unlawful taking of a human life but you argue “human life” is limited to human beings who have souls; an unborn child has no soul so it’s not a human life and therefore killing it is not murder.

    Your answer hinges on ensoulment (yes, it’s a word, look it up) raising the ancient question: when does God give a child its soul? That’s critical because under your definition, the instant ensoulment occurs, the fetus becomes human and killing it becomes murder.

    The problem with your answer is there’s no way to scientifically measure when a child receives a soul, that’s strictly the province of religion. You are using a religious test to complain about people using religious tests.

    That’s abysmal logic but brilliant rhetoric, which is why it fools the people who respond with emotions instead of reason. Just one question: if you can’t prove when ensoulment occurs, how do you know who has a soul, who’s human, who can’t be killed? Pro-choice advocates insist a mother must have the right to kill her own children; pro-life advocates ask when she must stop. How would you answer that question: when must we stop killing them?

    • Coquette says:

      I don’t accept the premise of your muddled, condescending question. A non-viable fetus is not a child. No one is killing children. Just because wingnuts happen to believe in something as aggressively stupid as ensoulment, that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to concede personhood to fetuses.

      Now, here’s the problem with pathetic neckbeards like you. You’re only in this argument because you’re playing the devil’s advocate, or worse, you’re legitimately an anti-abortion misogynist who wants to subjugate women.

      Either way, go jerk off into your fedora and die.

  8. Joe Doakes says:

    I didn’t bring up souls, you did, to explain why an unborn child is not a human being so it’s okay to kill it. I simply pointed out that your quick-and-easy solution has been perplexing genuine philosophers for millennia and asked you explain it. Shifting the debate into Latin won’t help: a common translation of “fetus” is “little human” or “child.” You refuted your own argument so now you’ve shifted your defense to viability.

    Okay, if a non-viable fetus is not a human life, then I ask to you answer three more questions to explain your reasoning:

    1. Is a viable fetus a human life? I ask to make sure I understand your argument to be: a fetus becomes a human life at viability, at which point taking that life is murder.

    2. Are late-term, partial-birth abortions – abortions done after the point of viability – the taking of a human life and thus, murder?

    3. Is there a scientific test which proves that a clump of cells becomes a human life at the point of viability, or is that a religious or legal decision?

    As for condescending, let me point out that I once jumped out of a perfectly good airplane 14,000 feet above Lake Superior. Does that make me smarter than you? Decidedly not. But I had an experience others have not had. I know something they don’t. I can teach them about it. Similarly, I’ve been debating abortion longer than you’ve been alive. Perhaps I have learned something you haven’t and could teach you about it?

    As for wing-nut, pathetic, neckbeard, misogynist and subjugate, those are not logical statements but rhetorical rantings. If you were to say: “It’s my opinion and it makes me feel good about myself so I don’t NEED a logical basis for it,” you’d be perfectly correct and I would bother you no more. Or if you were to say: “It’s the Supreme Court’s opinion so it’s the law of the land, like it or not,” I’d shut up and go away. Calling me names because I disagree with you is . . . .

  9. Joe Doakes says:

    I write to withdraw my earlier comments and to apologize for bothering you. I misunderstood “There is no soul. There is no child” to mean the fetus isn’t a child because it hasn’t received its soul yet, so there is no religious objection to killing the unborn child. Now that I’ve read more of your posts, I see that you meant “The unborn child has no soul because nobody has a soul because God does not exist; therefore, there is no religious objection to killing your unborn child.”

    I’ll trouble you no more. You have troubles aplenty.

  10. Ryan says:

    Oh, by the way, evil woman, the girl in those videos is now 4 years old and teaching other children the alphabet. I can send her your way so you can learn something about the value of “human fetuses.” You disgusting bitch of a woman.

    • abe says:

      Ryan,
      I was going to say something like, “I hope your daughter grows up to read Coquette,” except that the thought of her the hurt, sorrow and shame she would feel witnessing her own father spew so much misogynistic vitriol makes my heart hurt. I hope that by the time she’s old enough to read and think for herself that you –as a loving father, husband and human — can work out some of this sad hatred out against women. All of you, all of us, deserve much better.

  11. Ryan says:

    “Shady advice from a raging bitch who has no business answering any of these questions.”

    Come on, ABE. That’s her tag. Is she a misogynist against herself? Or, is she immune from the misogynst label because she has a split between her legs?

    Either way, fuck you, you Nazi, Fascist, butthole.

  12. Nathan says:

    The mismanagement of the abortion issue continues to be one of the left’s more disappointing trends. People can bluster on about how a collection of cells isn’t a person and whatnot, but when it comes down to it (and really, why NOT draw a line?), if life doesn’t begin at conception, when does it begin? No clear answer? Well, then we might as well say it begins there, since that’s kinda what the word ‘conception’ means. Convoluted sophistry compels people to define the aborted fetus as inert tissue, but c’mon, how fucking hard is it to just say (as I do): Yes, abortion is killing, but I support it unequivocally anyway because a woman’s absolute right to her body takes precedence over brute nature (which enslaves woman to their ability to control reproduction in the first place)?

    Anyway, love your writing. A few of the commenters on this page should suck a tailpipe.

    • Dina says:

      Development is complicated. It’s a process.

      Life doesn’t begin at a point and then you are alive and before that you are not. You build yourself, and that self gradually becomes aware and complex. No one can pinpoint an exact time or stage at which that occurs because it’s continual and undoubtedly differs for different people and none of us remember it anyways.

      It’s hard to draw a line across a fuzzy gradient – that’s why we shouldn’t and can’t draw a line (I have a similar issue with the term “species”, but that’s a different story).

  13. Jason says:

    Thank you. This is what I have been trying to articulate to people for years.

    Unborn child is an oxymoron. You could argue that by not having sex every second, you are killing unborn children by not allowing them a way to be born. Every menstrual cycle a woman has, she is killing a baby! Every single sperm that ends up on the sheets (or tube sock, I don’t judge) was murdered! Oh wait, these are actual reasons that people try to ban birth control, discourage masturbation, shame women, and encourage as much marital sex as possible.

    ‘Pro-lifers’ are saving not lives. They are only ruining them by denying accessibility to abortions to women in need.

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