That doesn’t follow. The law applies differing treatment at different stages of life in many contexts. We have different social programs that kick in for young people versus old people, for example. And we do have social programs specifically for pregnant women.
As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive? Because it makes no sense to me. Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else. What they reject is the premise that destroying a human life must be legal to maintain the fiction that sex is without consequences. (Note that the vast majority of republicans support legalized contraception, at about the same rate as democrats: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-most-americans-will-balk-if-cons...)
> As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive?
The argument is of course completely bonkers, but this is the thinking behind it — and I grew up in a deeply catholic area: You just need to talk to those people and ask them "Why" a few times and you will end up there. The church seeing itself as a torch of morality in questions like:
- when do people have sex?
- what do women wear?
This is nothing new and not limited to catholics. If they control your private life they control your life.
IMO church should limit itself to questions of spirituality and be kept out of the state, law and private lives of the rest of us at all cost.
> Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else.
They view it as both depending on what suits them. They view it as a punishment for promiscuous sex, and a reward for people trying to have children. More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
My favorite thought experiment is to follow the belief in the soul of the hypothetical person in the womb into the hypothetical afterlife to explore the consequences of abortion (and miscarriage, which is when the supreme deity performs the abortion). Do these hypothetical people go to heaven? If so, heaven is full of souls who never experienced life at all, they just woke up in heaven. There are millions upon millions of happy souls in heaven who never had to endure a single trial or make a conscious choice to get there. This seems like an amazing hack! Indeed, you could operate a fertility clinic and singlehandedly dominate the demographics of the afterlife. Furthermore, if hypothetical people who never become real automatically go to heaven, abortion would seem like the best thing you can do for them. There's no chance they'll ever be tempted into sin and end up in hell.
However, some Calvinists will tell you that predestination means that the terminated pregnancy (which, remember, the divine hand has personally performed in majority of cases) has derailed the divine plan, and some of the hypothetical people were going to make choices that landed them in hell. So they arbitrarily come into existence and spend eternity in endless, vicious torment, placed there by the deity who allegedly is a being of pure love. This is even more dark and mind-twisting! It means that there are millions upon millions of souls in hell, suffering eternal torment and they have no idea why they're there.
> They view it as a punishment for promiscuous sex, and a reward for people trying to have children.
Why don't you try to steel-man the opposing view? E.g. (a) children are a blessing; and (b) the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given (a).
This formulation explains the opposition to abortion, and is internally consistent.
> More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
If you aren't aware that religious conservatives (like nearly everyone else) view children and motherhood as a blessing for women, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe spend some time in Africa or Asia and you might realize that it's not just something the GOP made up to piss off Democrats.
> If you aren't aware that religious conservatives (like nearly everyone else) view children and motherhood as a blessing for women, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't think it's safe to conflate religious fundamentalists with 'everyone else.' For everyone else, a wanted child is a blessing. An unplanned pregnancy ranges from a major misfortune to a potentially fatal crisis. Furthermore:
> the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given
Pregnancy isn't really a natural and predictable consequence of sex, in fact it's a pretty unusual outcome of intercourse. Humans, compared to other primates, must engage in a relatively huge amount of intercourse to end up with a pregnancy. There's also the minor detail of those being most opposed to abortion also being the most opposed to birth control. You'd think if reducing abortion was the goal, birth control would be foremost on everyone's mind. So no, it's not internally consistent in this framework. It is internally consistent with a framework where women are chattel and their autonomy over their bodies to decide the outcome of their pregnancy is viewed as theft from their owners.
As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive? Because it makes no sense to me. Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else. What they reject is the premise that destroying a human life must be legal to maintain the fiction that sex is without consequences. (Note that the vast majority of republicans support legalized contraception, at about the same rate as democrats: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-most-americans-will-balk-if-cons...)