Heads or Tails

Abortion, revisited

Killing your baby, basically, before birth.   Is it like cutting your hair?  Or, is it snuffing an innocent, heavenly being?  People may be like rocks, philosophically speaking, just objects - but a hundred years or whatever of LIFE, is certainly nothing to sneeze at.  Denying your own flesh and blood the opportunity to LIVE, in all it’s ups and downs, glory and error, seems to me to be irreconcilable with self-regard, irreversible, shameful, if not evil.   The virtue of adoption far outweighs the cons of birthing pain, in my book.   You want to prove you’re a bad ass, who killed her own child, for street cred?  Or maybe snipping a pea from the pod seems far less excruciating than pushing out a bowling ball, as it were.  Or, Nature is red in tooth and claw, and life is hell, and life isn’t worth living in the first place, so you’re doing your child a favor?  I mean, you just KNOW it’s a little piece of shit, future Hitler or something, and you’d be doing society a favor, too.  OR….  It’s not a human (yet).   It’s an inconvenience, a clump of cells, a blob of tissue, like the germs you wash off your skin every time you take a shower.  So it goes.  Whatever.   Life is meaningless, anyway.   Unless your baby is a future president, Buddha, deity, or “happily ever after” story (can you predict?).

Let’s dive into that, more.    What lives have the most merit, and deserve to live, in the first place?  People who will fall in love, and make their partner happy, is one answer.   Outstanding servants of society, like say a political leader or pope or scientist who cures cancer, or something.  I’d like to think authors and philosophers contribute to social well-being, just as scientists reveal truth.   Comedians rank up there, for me.   If you ease the pain, make life fun, you get a pass.  On the other hand, I’m not saying there are people who would’ve been better off dead, or will be detrimental to society, or too unimportant to matter (like, say, a mindless agglomeration of a few cells).   Is pruning a bush the same thing?  I like people more than bushes.  I’m not sure what to say.   A lot can influence the outcome of a blank slate like your bouncy baby boy or darling princess.  The thing is pretty much out of your control.  Flip a coin.