Adam I’m glad that we can have a civilized dialogue about this, and I’m also genuinely complimented that you actually took the time to write out a reasoned response to my post. Let me preface any further remarks by saying that I am open to the idea that I may be wrong on this issue. In fact, both of us may be wrong to a certain extent-however I believe that as thinking citizens it’s good for us to have this discussion and come closer to what the real truth of this issue is.

I think the fundamental difference in our positions comes from a difference in moral philosophy. I, (again this apart from my religious convictions-I’m trying to keep that aloof for the sake of this discussion) subscribe primarily to the deontologist school of thought, which holds that the morality of an action is governed more by the morality of that action and the intentions thereof rather than the consequences. The reasoning for this is that you can’t predict the outcome of any action-you don’t know all of the potential unforseeable consequences of what you’re planning on doing. This means the only concrete moral course of action is undertaking the moral action without knowing for certainty the results.

You seem to be coming from the consequentialist/utilitarian perspective (not a negative connotation btw, just trying to ascertain our respective situations). The problem with this position is that if you say an action is justified based on what you believe the consequences of that action will be, then you’re basing your moral judgements off of an uncertainty-in other words you’re trying to base what you should do now in the present off of your predictions of the future. And this becomes problematic, when morality isn’t based off of absolutes. For instance.

Say I’m considering giving money to a charity to help starving kids in Africa. However the area that I’m sending the money to, where the organization to help the kids is, is known to be a haven for drug cartels and corrupt government officials/warlords. There’s a chance the money I send might get seized and used for criminal purposes instead. Does this mean I shouldn’t give to charity, because something bad might happen? What if there is only a small chance it might be seized by criminals-what if we don’t know what the organization is or anything about the area? We can what if ourselves to death-but we can’t know for sure. We can only make certain moral judgements based off of our actions, not off unforseeable outcomes.

To conclude, I believe abortion is immoral because the act of murdering an innocent human being is wrong. Now the consequence or outcome of abortion may or may not end up being good-women’s quality of life may be improved or it might not be, the economy might be benefited, etc. It’s tough to say for sure. But the only moral certainty that exists tells us abortion is wrong. I’m not saying imprison women who do it, or anything of the kind. I’m not speculating as to how we’d go about outlawing abortion, or if it should be outlawed. But morally, I don’t think it can be justified.