Planned Parenthood President: When Life Begins Not ‘Really Relevant’ in Abortion Deba

[Gingersnap]

Planned Parenthood President: When Life Begins Not ‘Really Relevant’ in Abortion Debate

By Andrew Johnson
February 28, 2014 10:55 AM

The president of the country’s largest abortion provider said she didn’t think the matter of when life begins is pertinent to the issue.

“It is not something that I feel is really part of this conversation,” Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos on Thursday. “I don’t know if it’s really relevant to the conversation.”

When pressed, Richards said that in her view life began for her three children when she delivered them.

She explained that the purpose of her organization is not to answer a question that “will be debated through the centuries,” but to provide options for pregnant women.

Via Twitchy.

Well, at least they're getting closer to honesty: abortion is a female unilateral decision to kill someone they don't even know.

NRO

[scott]

So if the point at which life begins is irrelevant, what's to stop them from advocating for post-birth abortions?

[Gingersnap]

So if the point at which life begins is irrelevant, what's to stop them from advocating for post-birth abortions?

Gosh, not one thing. Just like academics are "talking" about consensual sex for the 10-year old crowd, they are "talking" about post-birth abortions. Don't worry, it's just a 'thought exercise' - like sterilizing uppity black women and over-sexualized middle-class girls in the 1930s.

Nothing to see here. It's not like real people are involved.

[Billy Jingo]

Well, at least they're getting closer to honesty: abortion is a female unilateral decision to kill someone they don't even know.

NRO

For a supposed libertarian you sure missed a libertine argument.

[Gingersnap]

For a supposed libertarian you sure missed a libertine argument.

No, I can and often do make an entirely libertararin argument on this issue. The fact that the political party has rejected that position in favor of an illogical, hedonistic plank isn't my doing. The principle involved is entirely grounded in libertarian philosophy.

You'd know what those arguments are if your Centristism hadn't distracted you.

[Novaheart]

So if the point at which life begins is irrelevant, what's to stop them from advocating for post-birth abortions?

Well, common sense. But conversely if personhood (cells are alive) begins at conception, then there is no point in dealing with the anti-abortion folks.

[Novaheart]

Gosh, not one thing. Just like academics are "talking" about consensual sex for the 10-year old crowd, they are "talking" about post-birth abortions. Don't worry, it's just a 'thought exercise' - like sterilizing uppity black women and over-sexualized middle-class girls in the 1930s.

Nothing to see here. It's not like real people are involved.

You can always find someone talking about something. It's not evidence of a movement, a shift, or even an inclination to move or shift. But since you mentioned it, what the hell are you talking about?

[Norm dePlume]

You can always find someone talking about something. It's not evidence of a movement, a shift, or even an inclination to move or shift. But since you mentioned it, what the hell are you talking about?

I think she's referring to this recent rehash of a two-year-old controversy. You can see how significant it has turned out to be, two years on.

[Lanie]

So if the point at which life begins is irrelevant, what's to stop them from advocating for post-birth abortions?

It's already happened.

http://www.catholicvote.org/journal-of-medical-ethics-authors-advocate-after-birth-abortion/

It wasn’t until after I read it that I noticed the publication date: March 12, 2012. The story is two years old, yet somehow, I’ve never come across it before. Saletan’s piece is an examination, from a pro-abortion perspective, of the implications of an argument made by “philosophers” Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva in favor of “after-birth abortion” — what you and I would call infanticide. The article in which these arguments appeared was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in February, 2012.

The case that Giubilini and Minerva make is absolutely chilling:

[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.

[...]

[I]n order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm. If a potential person, like a fetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all. … In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions. … Indeed, however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero.

I think this was one of the things that made me finally go to the other side. That and Gramps reminding me that abortion is happening way too often (over a million a year in our country alone, maybe hundreds of thousands depending on which source you read). I started realizing that people don't know where to stop.