Although I may not agree with everything he says here....I love the comment about denying the humanity of the unborn or as I prefer to say the preborn is like denying that the beef on your plate is a cow because you cannot hear the moo.
By Ed West Culture Wars
I was at a dinner party on Saturday when a friend brought up something I'd written about not funding abortion on demand through the NHS. You would have thought I'd said I didn't agree with mixed-race marriages or that date rape was OK, such was the reaction.
I'm not a hard-line anti-abortion campaigner. Given the state of public opinion, the best we can hope for at the moment is a compromise - but unrestricted access up to 24 weeks, paid for by the taxpayer, is not a compromise, it's a law drawn up by an ideologically-driven minority. Denying the humanity of a 20-week foetus is as unscientific and irrational as denying the beef on your plate is a cow because you can't hear it moo.
I also believe our abortion laws lead to increasing numbers of unwanted children, because it takes away responsibility from the father, and the 60,000 children now in care is almost as sad a figure as the 200,000 a year who don't make it that far.
Still, my friend argued: "You would say that, you're a Catholic". This is an old friend of mine, who knows that I stopped going to church when I was nine, and for 10 years after leaving school had absolutely no contact with religion whatsoever, and that during most of my adult life I've paid less attention to the Cardinal than I have to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and that's saying something.
Even now that I've come back, I still disagree with the Church's view on homosexuality, which is nonsensical, unworkable and causes unnecessary hurt (although I can see why it can't change its mind); I disagree with its Baldwinesque policy towards third world dictatorship and its opposition to war at any cost; perhaps most of all I don't follow the English Catholic Church's lame concept of economics, which is slightly to the left of Jeremy Corbyn.
In fact, the reason I object to abortion is not because I've been indoctrinated by Christianity but because I fear that this life is all there is, in which case that's a pretty rotten deal for the unborn. Abortion is presented in this country as an issue only of interest to Catholics to Muslims, the most despised and most hated minorities in the country respectively – but the atheist and humanist argument is even stronger.
So why don't atheists give a damn for the unborn?
I'm not a hard-line anti-abortion campaigner. Given the state of public opinion, the best we can hope for at the moment is a compromise - but unrestricted access up to 24 weeks, paid for by the taxpayer, is not a compromise, it's a law drawn up by an ideologically-driven minority. Denying the humanity of a 20-week foetus is as unscientific and irrational as denying the beef on your plate is a cow because you can't hear it moo.
I also believe our abortion laws lead to increasing numbers of unwanted children, because it takes away responsibility from the father, and the 60,000 children now in care is almost as sad a figure as the 200,000 a year who don't make it that far.
Still, my friend argued: "You would say that, you're a Catholic". This is an old friend of mine, who knows that I stopped going to church when I was nine, and for 10 years after leaving school had absolutely no contact with religion whatsoever, and that during most of my adult life I've paid less attention to the Cardinal than I have to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and that's saying something.
Even now that I've come back, I still disagree with the Church's view on homosexuality, which is nonsensical, unworkable and causes unnecessary hurt (although I can see why it can't change its mind); I disagree with its Baldwinesque policy towards third world dictatorship and its opposition to war at any cost; perhaps most of all I don't follow the English Catholic Church's lame concept of economics, which is slightly to the left of Jeremy Corbyn.
In fact, the reason I object to abortion is not because I've been indoctrinated by Christianity but because I fear that this life is all there is, in which case that's a pretty rotten deal for the unborn. Abortion is presented in this country as an issue only of interest to Catholics to Muslims, the most despised and most hated minorities in the country respectively – but the atheist and humanist argument is even stronger.
So why don't atheists give a damn for the unborn?
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