An Erroneous Argument For Abortion

There is a reason why I have never directly written about abortion until now.  I prefer to elaborate upon extremely precise or controversial truths that most people either 1) rarely or never bring up or 2) are ignorant of.  Abortion is an issue that many people in my society have considered at some point, so there is little to say about the subject that falls into the two aforementioned categories.  However, the fact that abortion is a topic of high significance compels me to write about it.  As with every other component of reality, there are some asinine claims about the matter!

One argument in favor of abortion that is among these asinine claims posits that abortion does not have to be the active killing of an unborn baby, but that it can instead be nothing more than the discontinuation of providing the baby with the resources it needs to survive via gestation.  The assertion holds that there is no moral obligation to keep the baby alive because gestation is an act of supererogatory (morally good but not obligatory) nature.  As such, it represents abortion, or at least abortion using certain methods, as a passive refraining from giving the baby what it needs to stay alive.

This is simply a misleading use of language, since allowing a baby to die by intentionally withholding what it needs to survive is itself a method of killing it.  Even if this was not killing of an indirect manner, it would follow that parents could starve their children, regardless of how young or old the children are, without moral ramifications, since they would only be withholding what their kids need to survive.  Any person who argues for the former while regarding the latter as heinous is merely a fallacious hypocrite who understands little to nothing about consistency.

Here, pro-abortionists find themselves addressing the issue of arbitrary lines.  If an unborn baby can be legitimately killed by the withholding of resources, then there is no reason to think that one cannot legitimately kill infants, toddlers, or even teenagers by similarly refraining from providing them with the resources necessary for survival.  Unless all of one's children are to be kept alive, there is no such thing as any fixed moral obligation in this area.

Furthermore, many people, including those who condone abortion rights, have no epistemological or metaphysical basis for their moral beliefs.  They operate on the basis of conscience, consensus, legality, or tradition.  As such, they can only appeal to feelings, preferences, and social mores, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with whether a moral claim is either true or verifiable.

As a concluding aside, since many supporters of abortion rights are politically liberal, they should be asked if it would be morally legitimate for people to simply neglect the poor until they die of starvation, dehydration, or disease.  I doubt that they would be consistent with their own premises when confronted with the obvious ramifications of them.  When someone is inconsistent, they either have not contemplated an issue thoroughly or they are only pretending to have a concern for truth, if not both.