I am not emotional about it or illogical. I consider it murder because I consider every individual human life, even one that is poorly developed, to be as worthy of protection under the law as my own.
I don't.
If a zygote has personhood then a skin cell on my arm has personhood. They are at the same level of development. You offer nothing that makes me believe that some cells in the womb (which could easily miscarry) deserve personhood, only your say so.
Like I said in the other thread look at how often the pro-choice side intersects with the assisted suicide and euthanasia crowd.
Euthanasia and abortion are hardly the same thing. If you can't tell the difference then there really is no hope for you in this debate.
When someone declares a certain level of human life acceptable to kill it opens up the flood gates by making the developmental state of life a factor.
As I mentioned previously and in other threads, the level of development is not as relevant as the subjective importance that the woman places on her fetus. It is the difference between being a woman with an unwanted life growing in her, and a mother. The woman decides the importance of her pregnancy, not you.
Eugenics has always been a rationally compelling idea and the practice of killing off the feeble and diseased makes good sense from all practical perspectives. You subject the right to life to qualitative evaluations and you end up with mass democide.
This is well beyond the scope of the abortion debate. Eugenics has little to do with what we're talking about, since genetically healthy pregnant women abort their fetuses all the time. There is no selection bias in abortion, though I do believe that on a societal level abortion has benefits. If all women who conceive are forced into remaining pregnant, they will either abort through unsafe means or they will be unprepared mothers, both of which are a danger to the integrity of society. I am not willing to sacrifice that integrity for your hysteria over "personhood", especially given how non-compelling the arguments of pro-life people are.
This last part highlights the danger legalized abortion poses.
Abortion in an illegal setting is
far more dangerous, given the threat it poses to the woman in addition to the fetus which will be aborted regardless. Planned parenthood has the greatest benefit to society and abortion is a tool in that.
There are many lives that definitely provide no long-term benefit to society, are you going to say it is ok to kill all of them?
No not really... but that is quite another debate, isn't it. Which people - those that are born, mind you - are worthy or survival and which aren't? Well, luckily we have constitutions to protect those people. But fetuses need not apply, because birth is the first criteria of personhood under law, and it should remain that way. Fetuses die every day for many, many reasons. I think it's a solid eugenics argument that if a fetus spontaneously aborts, it is better off dead. It probably had something wrong with it in the first place.
Nature makes no distinctions about personhood. If you are weak, you die. If you are strong, you live. Women aborting has been a natural process for all time, in practically all epochs of human history, even the most conservative ones. They always have and always will abort if they want to. It is nature which transcends this trivial debate.
Hell, why should it even matter if a woman wants the child or not? It is better that certain unborn children are killed so that we might decrease the surplus population.
It's not really about quantity, but quality. I'm in favor of family planning which ensures the highest level of success for the next generation, as opposed to wanton abortion laws that force people into parenthood. The latter degrades the quality of our society. Actually, I think forced parenthood is probably one of the most detrimental things you could do to a flourishing civilization. And anyway, it's not up to me, it's up to pregnant women everywhere.
If one takes the position that there is no rational basis for morality and therefore it should not be a factor then it is an embrace of nihilism. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" would become the law of the land.
That's a tad bit of a strawman there. I am not applying the same rules for irrationality across the board. Some things have rationales that we can all for the most part agree on. Arbitrary labels like "personhood" placed on fetuses is not one of those things. Even the pro-life sect cannot agree on the sanctity of life. Some of you are for abortion in the case of rape or incest. So it seems that some of you even have a cozy little view on eugenics and morality that transcends "personhood".
I frankly find you all hypocritical and emotionally hysterical. The only way your morality can ever become law is through popular vote, manipulation of people's emotions, and selective infiltration into seats of government power. You will never win this debate on reason because that is the one thing you lack and it's why the courts sided against you in Roe v Wade.