We are evolved creatures; there are many examples in the animal kingdom of one member of a species killing the offspring of another member of the same species. I suspect we have some of that left in us, and are only seeing the application in a new context and on an industrialized scale.[1]
However, we rely on ethical frameworks to manage our health and safety, individually and corporately. The same sensibility that gives me a free flu shot each year also establishes laws against jay walking. I am given opportunities every day to protect myself and others by adjusting my behavior. Guidelines around these opportunities are based on a set of shared values regarding human life, safety, privacy, decency, etc. (Eg, we don't we sell liquor and XXX materials near schools and churches.)
That is only prologue to this: Deciding what is alive and not, and who lives or not (sterilization, abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, etc), are moral and ethical discussions. And if you're going to have these discussions, you have to listen to religious perspectives you may not agree with.
The presence of a deity in a perspective doesn't invalidate it any more than an absence legitimizes it.
An evolutionary perspective doesn't explain why some mothers are not repulsed at aborting their own babies. I believe that is a modern psychological phenomenon that's grown out of refusal to fully acknowledge that conditions have obligations and actions have consequences (so sex is divorced from procreation, procreation from parenthood, parenthood from nurturing, family from community, etc.).[2]
(Many who've had an abortion are actually terribly distressed; I think the public anger from some women may in part be an attempt to mask that. The anger from men I've addressed elsewhere - "Why Some Men Support a Woman's Right to Abortion" .)
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[1]
I.e, indifference may be programmed into us. I've not seen this idea anywhere else, but it seems too obvious not to have been observed before. Of course, you certainly wouldn't find it used as a defense of abortion, since most on that side of the debate wish to retain other moral standards that a purely evolutionary defense would remove.
I find it personally reassuring to believe aborted children have a life elsewhere that they were denied on earth.
[2]
How do conditions have obligations? Good Samaritan laws, for example, or being charged with accessory even if you didn't commit a crime. Communities recognize that we have some responsibilities when we find ourselves in some situations; ignoring that can range from rudeness to criminality.
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Started: 2012-10-21
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