This is a very long article and definitely one worth responding to when I have a few hours to kill. I was turned Vegan by someone calling me a hypocrite and so I know that it has power to change people. But even if Pro-Lifers were inconsistent, it still has no impact on the morality of abortion. That much I know to be true.
That's just it. If inconsistency arguments succeed, the most they do is prove inconsistency (since you were convinced of the inconsistency, you became vegan). However, they prove nothing about the morality of abortion, itself. That's the point of the article.
Yeah I know. It's a trick to destroy the reputation of Pro-Lifers. In my particular case it worked out differently than intended. I would have had to give up being Pro-Life if I wasn't also Vegan because I care about consistency. To those who don't care, it wouldn't have the same effect, but yes I get the point of the article because I understand that these claims are dishonest because they don't want people to actually be consistent. They want a strawman to knock down in order to fool them into being Pro-Choice. I will kick their asses in the least violent way possible.
That is true that they don't want people to be consistent and only want to fool them into being pro-choice. But I would also argue that many pro-life people, such as myself, are not inconsistent for not being vegans. Human life is sacred and animal life is not. So there is no inconsistency in arguing that abortion is immoral whereas eating animals is not. So inconsistency arguments don't work on me because my views are not inconsistent. And that's another point that Colgrove, et al, raised -- not all pro-life people believe the same things. Pro-life people are pro-life for different reasons, so whereas one subset of pro-life people might be inconsistent, another subset aren't being inconsistent.
I am going to respond to one point made in this post, with regards to the inconsistency in approach to abortions and miscarriages. As you write in this post:
Suppose the pro-choice advocate succeeds in convincing the pro-life advocate that her beliefs about fetal personhood require that she treat preventing miscarriage as a higher priority than preventing abortion, curing cancer, ending world hunger, etc. because preventing miscarriage will save more persons than all these other causes combined. As Colgrove et al. ask, does the pro-choice person—who thinks that the fetus is not a person—really want pro-life people to advocate for shifting resources away from all other public health issues for the sake of miscarriage prevention? Probably not.
I have read the article by Colgrove et al., and frankly I think they've missed the point. If the perspective of the pro-lifer is that a human fetus is of the same moral and legal equivalence as a fully birthed human being, then that person should advocate putting more time and resources into stopping or at least decreasing miscarriges. To understand why, let's first establish some facts about miscarriages.
For roughly the first 12 weeks, there is anywhere from a 60 to 80% chance of a pregnancy resulting in a miscarriage. [1]
After this period of time, the chance of a miscarriage does decrease, but the overall chance of a miscarriage for the entire pregnancy duration is still around 25%. [2]
Now, given these facts, lets consider the following anology:
Suppose a natural disease had spread to every human being on the planet. We establish this disease has between a 60 and 80% chance of killing the infected person for the first three months of being infected. Overall, this disease has roughly a 25% chance of killing those infected.
Now, if this situation were a reailty, wouldn't we want a substantial amount of time, resources, and money put towards finding a way to stop this? This is something I most certainly would want done, and I think most of the population would too. We would be lobbying Congress to do everything concievable to deal with this deadly threat that had infected everyone on Earth.
The problem is, if you are a pro-lifer, you already believe we are living in that reailty. That is if, again, you think fetuses are on the same moral and legal status as fully developed humans. The question raised here, "does the pro-choice person—who thinks that the fetus is not a person—really want pro-life people to advocate for shifting resources away from all other public health issues for the sake of miscarriage prevention?" is silly. Of course I don't want our resources spent on finding a solution to that, because yes, I don't consider a pre-third trimester fetus a person. If actual person's had as much a chance of dying as fetsuses do, however, that'd be a whole different question.
I think you would do well to consider the point of this "inconsistency argument" -- namely, that in practical terms, virtually no one treats fetsuses and embryos equally as humans. You also write:
to ensure that the pro-life person changes her mind in his preferred direction, the pro-choice person still needs to give the pro-life person an argument against fetal personhood.
And this has been done, and I encouarge you to read the following articles that go into this in great detail:
Ronald Lindsay, “The Christian Abuse of the Sanctity of Life,” in John W. Loftus, ed., Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014, pp. 235-40.
Richard Carrier and Jennifer Roth, "[Is There a Secular Case Against Abortion? The Carrier-Roth Debate](https://infidels.org/library/ modern/debates-secularist-abortion)," The Secular Web (2000).
Regards, --Adam
[1] Leon Kass et al., Monitoring Stem Cell Research, Washington, D.C.: President’s Council on Bioethics, 2004, p. 88.
[2] Carla Dugas and Valori H. Slane. [Miscarriage](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/ NBK532992), Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls [Internet], last updated 27 June 2022.
Suppose the pro-choice advocate succeeds in convincing the pro-life advocate that her beliefs about fetal personhood require that she treat preventing miscarriage as a higher priority than preventing abortion, curing cancer, ending world hunger, etc. because preventing miscarriage will save more persons than all these other causes combined. As Colgrove et al. ask, does the pro-choice person—who thinks that the fetus is not a person—really want pro-life people to advocate for shifting resources away from all other public health issues for the sake of miscarriage prevention? Probably not.
I have read the article by Colgrove et al., and frankly I think they've missed the point. If the perspective of the pro-lifer is that a human fetus is of the same moral and legal equivalence as a fully birthed human being, then that person should advocate putting more time and resources into stopping or at least decreasing miscarriges. To understand why, let's first establish some facts about miscarriages.
- For roughly the first 12 weeks, there is anywhere from a 60 to 80% chance of a pregnancy resulting in a miscarriage. [1]
- After this period of time, the chance of a miscarriage does decrease, but the overall chance of a miscarriage for the entire pregnancy duration is still around 25%. [2]
Now, given these facts, lets consider the following anology:Suppose a natural disease had spread to every human being on the planet. We establish this disease has between a 60 and 80% chance of killing the infected person for the first three months of being infected. Overall, this disease has roughly a 25% chance of killing those infected.
Now, if this situation were a reailty, wouldn't we want a substantial amount of time, resources, and money put towards finding a way to stop this? This is something I most certainly would want done, and I think most of the population would too. We would be lobbying Congress to do everything concievable to deal with this deadly threat that had infected everyone on Earth.
The problem is, if you are a pro-lifer, you already believe we are living in that reailty. That is if, again, you think fetuses are on the same moral and legal status as fully developed humans. The question raised here, "does the pro-choice person—who thinks that the fetus is not a person—really want pro-life people to advocate for shifting resources away from all other public health issues for the sake of miscarriage prevention?" is silly. Of course I
don't want our resources spent on finding a solution to that, because yes, I don't consider a pre-third trimester fetus a person. If actual person's had as much a chance of dying as fetsuses do, however, that'd be a whole different question.
I think you would do well to consider the point of this "inconsistency argument" -- namely, that in practical terms, virtually no one treats fetsuses and embryos equally as humans. You also write:
to ensure that the pro-life person changes her mind in his preferred direction, the pro-choice person still needs to give the pro-life person an argument against fetal personhood.
And this has been done, and I encouarge you to read the following articles that go into this in great detail:
Ronald Lindsay, “The Christian Abuse of the Sanctity of Life,” in John W. Loftus, ed., Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014, pp. 235-40.
Richard Carrier and Jennifer Roth, "[Is There a Secular Case Against Abortion? The Carrier-Roth Debate](https://infidels.org/library/ modern/debates-secularist-abortion)," The Secular Web (2000).
Regards,
--Adam
[1] Leon Kass et al., Monitoring Stem Cell Research, Washington, D.C.: President’s Council on Bioethics, 2004, p. 88.
[2] Carla Dugas and Valori H. Slane. [Miscarriage](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/ NBK532992), Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls [Internet], last updated 27 June 2022.