When I was 5 years old, there was a big wind storm that scattered little branches all over my front yard. At that age I didn’t understand exactly what life was and I viewed each stick as an individual life form that was dying on the lawn.
I was hysterical.
I grabbed a bucket of water on proceeded to cram as many sticks as I could and place them in the water in hopes of sustaining them until I could properly plant them all in the soil.
This bizarre level of esteem for life hasn’t changed much. I can’t kill anything. Bugs, ants, spiders, you name it. I still feel horrified when I watch someone step on a spider, despite the fact that I am terrified by them. (I am not a vegetarian so others can do the dirty work for me)
My point is that I appreciate it when anyone respects life. I feel it in my bones. I didn’t decide to be this way, it is just who I am.
As an adult, however, I understand that the definition of life is very complicated. At least in terms of when we have the right to end it. If we can’t terminate a human embryo then why can we terminate a chicken that has significantly more sentience? Should we all be vegetarians? Should the government force vegetarianism on us if it can force us to not terminate life forms with lower levels of sentience than a 6 week embryo? If we embrace that for some reason, human life is more important than other life, exactly at what point? Do the leftover fertilized embryos that we have in a lab need to be placed inside a woman’s womb and can the government make this a law? Is a non-sentient embryo more important than a teenage rape victim who will have to deal with the emotional and physical effects of carrying a baby to term? If abortion is illegal, is there even a noticeable effect on the amount of abortions happening or would this be just another failure like the war on drugs?
I could go on and on with these questions. It is an incredibly vexed issue. While I can find a satisfactory answer for most of these questions, the point is that this is very complicated. When an issue is this complicated, I think it is very important to err on the side of civil liberties when we are trying to determine how to form our laws. At least if we are all committed to living in a non-homogeneous, non-theocratic, diverse state where we accept that we can live together with differences. The government apparatus required to enforce those laws is too much to justify enforcing moral issues that are this complex.
Morally, feel free to err on the side of life if you are trying to determine whether or not you should kill anything. I think that is beautiful. That feeling is deep in my/our DNA. It just seems that in this country, we have a very hard time separating what we think is moral and good and what we think we should force other people to do.
Never mind the morals and the legislation, socially we would all be better off not to be whipped into a frenzy over how people determine what life is, particularly if they aren’t committed to throwing you in prison for it. Recognizing that something is very complicated can go a long way in creating a space for empathy. While I clearly don’t think that abortion should be illegal, I absolutely think that we don’t have enough respect for life as a people. It goes way beyond this specific issue but I would love to see abortion wrapped up in a holistic conversation about life in general, human or otherwise. Unfortunately, nearly everyone I meet who is stridently anti-abortion seems to be the worst offenders of a pro-life philosophy. I feel sad for how bamboozled they have been by religious and media leaders who feed them their ideas.
How beautiful would it be if we were collectively committed to respecting both life and our civil liberties? Liberal and conservative minds can come together on this.