Your unwillingness to think beyond your own point of view detracts from your credibility, Mike. Not to mention your apparent unfamiliarity with the science of embryology. You seem to believe it’s okay for a pregnant woman to kill her unborn child because she doesn’t want it despite it being a unique and genetically distinct human being from the moment of conception.

Do you even know what the procedure involves? I doubt you have much, if any, firsthand experience with it and are only coming to your views from a position of idealism which conveniently ignores the brutal reality of the practice. And yes, dismemberment is brutal.

You also don’t seem to realize that there are other options for women who don’t feel they can care for their babies besides killing them. Why do you and others keep insisting that abortion is the only way? Especially when they get almost no support?

The pro-“choice” movement is really about abortion industry profits and nothing else. The alleged choice and freedom are just catchwords used to snare the gullible. I thought you knew better than that. Yet you conveniently fail to apply the same standards of examination and careful thought to them as you do to other things. As if you don’t want to examine the issue too closely.

You don’t have to be religious to be against abortion – that’s a myth perpetuated by supporters of the practice. The reality is that many people, both secular and those of faith, are against it. And rightfully so.

I think you’d agree that the government has a duty to protect the innocent, to prevent such lives from being taken, yes? So, then, by extension, you should also accept that the innocent in question must by definition also include unborn children, who by their very nature cannot defend themselves.

The real question is, Mike, do you believe that an unborn child is human? Yes or no? And if yes, then supporting the murder of such a child (abortion) is wrong no matter the supposed reason for it. Ending a life simply because the mother finds it inconvenient is the height of callousness.

Also, personal freedom ends when it endangers the life and health of another. I think you would agree with this. So why do you apply it elsewhere and yet conveniently not here?

Nearly 80% of women who see an ultrasound of their baby don’t go through with an abortion, did you know that? Because it shows the truth of what they’re contemplating, that what’s inside them is not some clump of cells but rather a living, developing human baby.

You talk often about seeing through propaganda and bias yet fail to apply that principle to the abortion industry and how you view it. I suggest you change that, take a long, hard look at yourself, and ask yourself why you rail against some forms of propaganda while conveniently ignoring others (like those of the abortion industry) when they conform to your biases.

You are human, therefore you can be wrong. Thus, logically, this means that you can be wrong in your position on abortion. If you have any honesty in you at all, you’ll seriously and publicly consider that possibility.

We don’t have the right to choose to harm people or violate their human rights. We don’t have the right to kill innocent human beings. And if that’s what abortion does (which, whether you want to admit it or not, it does), then there is no right to abortion. Abortion is not freedom.

Some people say that the practice frees women to do what they want. But the reality is quite different. And the desire for that “freedom” doesn’t justify taking an innocent life.

We don’t think that infanticide should be legal in order to free parents to live the way they want to live. Human infants have human rights. That’s why infanticide is unjust. If human embryos and fetuses have rights too, then so is abortion.

Nor does abortion provide the liberation some might imagine. A meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry concludes that abortion increases the risk of mental health problems—including anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and suicidal behavior—by 81 percent.

“There is a tremendous sadness and loneliness in the cry ‘A woman’s right to choose,'” author Frederica Mathewes-Green once wrote. “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

That’s not freedom. Freedom is found when—through practical support and positive alternatives—a woman never feels like abortion is her only choice.

Defenders of abortion often appeal to a more specific kind of freedom—bodily freedom. Pregnant women, they say, have a right to decide what happens inside their own bodies.

Bodily autonomy is important, but that autonomy must also respect the bodies of others. That’s why we don’t think pregnant women should take substances that cause birth defects. Someone else’s body is at stake.

If unborn children are valuable human beings, then harming them by causing birth defects is wrong. And killing them through abortion is even worse.

Another autonomy argument contends that pregnant women should have the freedom to decline to provide bodily support to their unborn children. After all, we typically aren’t required to provide assistance to anyone else.

But parents do seem to bear responsibility for supporting their own children. And, in any case, abortion isn’t like declining to provide help. Abortion is intentional killing, and it’s usually an active attack on the bodily integrity of that human being, often through a brutal process of dismemberment.

If unborn children have human rights, then killing and dismembering them via abortion is a serious human rights violation.

Whether every human being matters is what the abortion debate is really about.

So again, Mike. Do you believe that an unborn child is human? Yes or no? And if yes, then you must accept that such a child has human rights that must be respected. This isn’t a matter of religion. It’s a matter of principle and humanity. So let’s hear your answer. No caveats, no qualifications. Simply yes or no.

https://www.mccl.org/post/abortion-isn-t-freedom-why-autonomy-arguments-for-abortion-dodge-the-real-issue