ParanoidObsessive posted... Keep in mind, I'm all for scooping the little shit out before it's time to start picking names or buying baby shoes. So it's not as if I'm on the pro-life side.
But there IS still a difference between the natural failure rate of the body for healthy conception and development (factoring in things like the body self-aborting unhealthy growth), and actively going in to deliberately wipe out something that would probably survive to term and through birth without your direct medical intervention. With eating natural abortifactants falling somewhere in a grey area in the middle (at least if we can find any good ones the Romans didn't harvest to the point of extinction).
(And for even more nuance, I could even point out that if I was personally inclined to let nature take its course I'd have been dead at age 21 when my gall bladder exploded. Medical science, invasive surgery, and spitting in the eye of God/Fate's will is what kept me alive. So it's not like I'm a proponent of the idea of letting bodily processes solely succeed or fail on their own and let fate or the gods decide the outcome.)
Slavery, military rape, beating homosexuals to death, human sacrifice, and murdering the fuck out of people who annoy you/have things you want/are living somewhere you feel like moving to are also things that go back into the depths of time, though. And plenty of people would suggest those are terrible things as well, and should also be banned by any enlightened and moral society.
The "Appeal to Tradition/Appeal to Antiquity" is a logical fallacy for a reason. Just because things have been done in the past doesn't necessarily mean they should be done in the future.
If anything, most liberal/progressive arguments boil down to "we have to be better than the past". It doesn't matter what people in the past did if we in the present consider what they did wrong. We have a moral obligation to do the right thing as we currently see it.
The real problem is that people today disagree over which part of the issue is the "wrong" we should be fixing.
Fair enough, I do enjoy the analysis of my argument tactics. You a Destiny fan?