Life vs. Death

Abortion Dilemma

I am adopted.  I am glad I’m alive.  Life is good.  I’m pro-life.  Abortion is heinous.  It’s a mother killing her own baby - albeit when it’s small, and more like a clump of cells than what we think of as a human being.  But life begins at conception.  If abortion is okay, then logically, so is killing a baby, or even an adult, which no one is for, unless you’re evil.  And maybe I am.  I mean, life is just physics and logistics, we’re just moving matter around.  The line between death and life is pretty thin.  And steaks are delicious, I have no quarrel with that.  Humans are just animals, like steer.  I still think abortion is worse than eating a steak.  But the argument can be made:  nature is murderous; the whale, for example eats billions of krill, which are as small as a fetus.  Giving birth is painful, and sex is fun, maybe a greater good than a quick, medical abortion, a matter of some pills, no mess, no vacuuming brain from a fetus, with a heartbeat.  You could say life is tenuous for all of us, everybody dies, impermanence is a law of reality, and if your own mom wants to snuff you, there’s not much hope for you.   On the other hand, adoption is the moral choice, an act of love, of kindness, of generosity, of human compassion and good will.  I’m struck by the hypocrisy of pro-life carnivores, and pro-choice vegetarians, and capital punishment advocates  who are pro-life, etc.   If you are pro-NRA and pro-military, war, nukes, pentagon and other facets of the American culture of death, how can you be pro-life?   I think political viewpoints should be consistent.   It’s called a life ethic.  Maybe an abortion is no more evil than a steak.  Maybe a steak is worse.  No matter what you believe, attachment to one viewpoint, and aversion to its opposite, are recipes for suffering, if you give credence to Buddhism.  Maybe murder itself is okay, if life is just clumps of cells, and moving matter around, already dead.  Then again, maybe water has consciousness, so life is a much bigger category than conventionally understood.  But I like steaks, and giving birth is painful, Trump is an idiot, Mitch McConnell is evil, and I can’t abide being allied with them, even if the devil himself opposes them, and I shouldn’t ally myself with that bastard, either.   Honestly, it’s all good, the anti-choice, the pro-death, whatever.  God bless.  If I were on the supreme court, I would come down as pro-life.  But that’s just me.