ABORTION DEBATE FOLLY

I was reading a blog (Pharyngula) when I came across a presentation of a debate concerning abortion. The debate was the same old tired stuff; a baby is alive and if you have an abortion, you are killing it verses a fetus is part of the mother’s body and she can do what she wants with it. I walked into a hornets’ nest when I commented something along the line that if you accept the idea that it is OK to abort a baby to save the life of the mother, you have opened yourself up for frank discussion. The blog lighted up with invectives and screams; A fetus is not a baby!!! You are stupid, don’t know what you are saying, you are a hidden pro lifer, your use of the term baby is a “tell”, etc. Among other things, I was told that I do not know what goes on inside of a human body and that English must not be my native language. Fascinating.

As a person interested in evolutionary psychology (social biology), the subject of group dynamics interests me; why and how they form, how they are maintained, etc. It is now clear to me that this particular blog is no more than a group that maintains itself through a severe form of moralistic punishment. The members were punishing me for freely substituting the term ‘baby’ for fetus, which turned out to be their only argument apparently used to deflect the terms ‘murder’ and ‘killing’. I know it is an inane argument but that apparently is what they believe. Their objective was not to convince me to change my evil ways but to punish me, to drive me out of the group—and allow them to perpetuate their folly.  I kept prodding them with statements about quality of life issues in abortion situations and “moral groups”, among other things. After the responses dribbled down to near nothing, I stopped.  I had accumulated enough to print out for study. After I post this on Firetreeblogspot I am going to go back to the blog in question and read what’s new, after all, I agree with most of what PZ has to say including his position on abortion, I just abhor the short shortsightedness of his followers.