Abortion: Does The End Justify The Means?

Dear Fred,

Thanks for your email.

Your argument -- which is emotionally appealing -- unleashes this huge philosophical question: "Does the end justify the means?"

It is remarkably easy to posit "ends" that seem to "justify the means."

But once we open this door, it gets damn difficult to defend against all the zomboid monsters soon to exit the closet.

Consider the unstoppability of ubiquitous torture to extract information from proven (or suspected) evil-doers. 

God knows we Catholics are already predisposed to approve torture. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/04/americans-especially-catholics-approve.html  

Once we posit "the end justifies the means," hell breaks loose.  

My initial proposal for limiting abortion (a practice I find abhorrent as soon as the "rounded embryo" assumes "limbed" form) would be the following political trade-off. 

Leftists would agree that abortion shall be limited to the first trimester (or in pregnancies where the mother's life is jeopardized), and right-wingers would approve readily-available contraception, early sex education and single-payer health care. 

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/cardinal-basil-hume-on-obvious.html

As it is, right-wing refusal to approve single-payer healthcare results in more abortion than otherwise. Make no mistake: Right and Left are both complicit. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/cardinal-basil-hume-on-obvious.html

Across Western Europe contraception is universally accessible and universal healthcare is in fact universal. 

Notably, the abortion rate in Western Europe is about half what it is in the States. (The Canadian abortion rate is a third lower.)

I also note that the U.S. abortion rate has been declining precipitously. Soon, there will be less per capita abortion in America than (there seems to have been) before Roe v. Wade. (Lamentably, abortion statistics prior to Roe v. Wade are inferred rather than demonstrably factual.)

Pax tecum

Alan

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

The simplest pro-legal abortion argument to make, with regard to the Pennsylania trial of the evil doctor, is "if abortion was illegal this would happen more often."

Do you think that is true?

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Fred Owens
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