Friday, February 07, 2014

Miscarriages Don't Justify Abortion

A meme from Secular Pro-Life that showed up on my facebook stream:



The other objection is: if abortion is so terrible, why don't pro-lifers support medical research into miscarriage?

There is already research being done into pregnancy loss. Women with recurrent miscarriage are very anxious to prevent miscarriage.

The fact of the matter is, we will probably never be able to prevent a large number of miscarriages. Many women don't know they are pregnant so preventative measures won't be taken, and even if they do, there are so many possible causes of miscarriage that it would be impractical to try to prevent them all.

It would be akin to trying to bubble wrap our born children to stop every single injury. Just because you don't do that, or don't aim to, doesn't mean you don't care about children, or that you don't really care about them. Prevention has to follow a cost-benefit analysis.

(And I remind people that Secular Pro-Life supports a rape exception for abortion. It is not completely in favour of fetal rights.)