In the article, Michael talks about abortion and his views of the act. He uses an analogy comparing abortion to another controversial type of killing, assisted suicide. The idea of a doctor helping you remove an unborn baby and a doctor helping you not have to suffer are very similar in the fact that you are deciding when life should and should not continue. Both practices are to ease some type of pain or struggle, whether it be a suffering patient at the end of their life or a mother who doesn't want to go through the burden of raising a child.
First off, I'll say that I am for physician assisted suicide. At least in this case the person is deciding for their own life and not another's. I view it unconstitutional and unfair to tell a person they must suffer until their time comes when the next door down a doctor could be using a machine to keep a person alive who should have died long ago. This is when "Playing God" comes into question. Which of the two, if not both, described above is playing God? Killing a person is one of the furthest things from playing God, man has been doing this for ages. One benefit of assisted suicide is that it reduces the rates of actual suicide. When a doctor helps, everything can be planned and clean. Relatives can say goodbye.
As for abortion... This is an issue I struggle with. I used to be hardcore pro-life. I didn't think it was fair to let some young girl sleep around with guys having no consequences along the way. The only sufferer in this case is the unborn baby who had no say in his/her own life. He/she was basically murdered. Then I came upon questions: What if it was rape? Ok, well, then that's not the girl's fault and she shouldn't have to raise a baby that is half her half a strange guy who raped her. In this case yes, but no more. What if the mom's life is in danger? Well, either they abort the baby or they both die. Sure, let's let them have the operation too. What if the baby was a result of incest? So, this is the girl's fault but at the baby's expense. Aborting this baby is almost identical to assisted suicide. Maybe not everyone agrees, but in the three cases described above and maybe a few other weird cases, the woman should definitely have the choice.
The golden question is, what about in the everyday scenario of a girl accidentally getting pregnant? I am undecided. There are still things that I don't know about pregnancy. But I will talk about a couple arguments. When a girl has a period and didn't get pregnant, isn't this the same result as an abortion? People will say there never was life or there never was the potential to be a baby. These are both wrong. The egg alone was life that went to waste. There was a potential for that egg. At the moment of conception, though, if left alone, this will be a baby. When a sperm meets the egg, is that automatically more life than either part separate? In a way, yes. But how much more? Is this more or less life than an animal? How about an insect you are about to swat for coming in your house? At the moment of conception, it is still only one cell. From there it will be two cells. At what point is the total more than the sum of the individual parts? All cells divide so all cells will be something more. In pregnancy, the fundamental difference is that these cells are not adding to an existing organism but creating a new one.
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