@Bucklion - Your remark regarding the soul is interesting to me. I am not sure I see the issue the same way you do. We have two possibilities; A) Humans have a soul or, B) Humans do not have a soul.
Addressing B is simple - if there's no soul, then the consequences of aborting a child is irrelevant - at least in terms of the issue of killing a soul (which, I'll get to shortly)
With respect to A, you note that we sure don't know when the soul enters the body. Is it conception? Is it some time later? I have no idea. I doubt anyone can posit an opinion on this that is little more than that person's opinion. But, for me, I don't think it matters if the soul is there from the beginning or if it arrives at some later point (again, for purposes of possibility A, we assume the soul exists).
Killing a soul.... I am not sure how this is even possible. If our souls exist beyond our physical life, then there is really no damage done to the soul whatsoever, I'd think. Obviously we can only speculate on this issue, but if a soul wants to live a physical life that bad, I don't see any reason it would be prevented from entering the form of some other fetus and "trying again" as it were. Indeed, it would have an eternity to do so, assuming we agree the soul is timeless and eternal life is an actual thing in the metaphysical world.
So, I guess for me, the religious objection to abortion gains little to no traction in this instance.
That's not to say a great many don't feel strongly to the contrary, of course. I would be interested, however, in what their answer to the "soul" question(s) is/are and how they differ from the conclusions I've drawn, as I truly can't really contemplate an alternative answer using the terms as I've used them. Which is to say, if the soul is not eternal, then my remarks aren't quite as forceful as they may otherwise seem, for example.
Addressing B is simple - if there's no soul, then the consequences of aborting a child is irrelevant - at least in terms of the issue of killing a soul (which, I'll get to shortly)
With respect to A, you note that we sure don't know when the soul enters the body. Is it conception? Is it some time later? I have no idea. I doubt anyone can posit an opinion on this that is little more than that person's opinion. But, for me, I don't think it matters if the soul is there from the beginning or if it arrives at some later point (again, for purposes of possibility A, we assume the soul exists).
Killing a soul.... I am not sure how this is even possible. If our souls exist beyond our physical life, then there is really no damage done to the soul whatsoever, I'd think. Obviously we can only speculate on this issue, but if a soul wants to live a physical life that bad, I don't see any reason it would be prevented from entering the form of some other fetus and "trying again" as it were. Indeed, it would have an eternity to do so, assuming we agree the soul is timeless and eternal life is an actual thing in the metaphysical world.
So, I guess for me, the religious objection to abortion gains little to no traction in this instance.
That's not to say a great many don't feel strongly to the contrary, of course. I would be interested, however, in what their answer to the "soul" question(s) is/are and how they differ from the conclusions I've drawn, as I truly can't really contemplate an alternative answer using the terms as I've used them. Which is to say, if the soul is not eternal, then my remarks aren't quite as forceful as they may otherwise seem, for example.
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