Pro-Life vs. Anti-Abortion
- description: Advocating fewer abortions through fairness and support, this view rejects bans and burdens on women while championing life with pragmatic ethics.
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- author: Michael LaBossiere
Like almost everyone, I would prefer that there were far fewer abortions. While this might seem like a problematic claim, it is obviously true. People who oppose abortion obviously want there to be fewer abortions. However, those who are pro-choice are not pro-abortion. That is, they do not want abortions to occur as they would prefer that women did not end up in situations where they see abortion as the best or only option.和几乎所有人一样，我更希望堕胎少得多。虽然这似乎是一个有问题的说法，但显然是正确的。反对堕胎的人显然希望减少堕胎。然而，那些支持堕胎的人并不支持堕胎。也就是说，他们不希望堕胎发生，因为她们希望妇女最终不会陷入她们认为堕胎是最好或唯一选择的境地。
While I do not fall into the pro-life camp in terms of political labelling, I do take a position in favor of life. To be specific, I prefer to avoid killing whenever possible and I accept that killing anything is an act of some moral significance. In some case, the ethics of killing are easy: I have no issue with killing bacteria if they are working hard to kill me and I accept the need to kill other living things to use them as food. Meat and salad are both murder.虽然在政治标签方面我不属于支持堕胎的阵营，但我确实采取了支持生命的立场。具体来说，我宁愿尽可能避免杀戮，并且我接受杀戮任何东西都是一种具有某种道德意义的行为。在某些情况下，杀戮的伦理很容易：如果细菌努力杀死我，我对杀死细菌没有意见，并且我接受杀死其他生物以将它们用作食物的必要性。肉和沙拉都是谋杀。
In other cases, like abortion, the ethics are more complicated. After all, abortion involves killing a potential human being and this is clearly an act with great moral significance. Because I have a general opposition to killing, I have the obvious general opposition to abortion. However, I do accept that killing can be morally justified and believe this does apply to certain cases of abortion. As such, I favor reducing the number of abortions and support certain means of doing so. I do not, however, favor it being banned.在其他情况下，例如堕胎，道德规范更为复杂。毕竟，堕胎涉及杀死一个潜在的人，这显然是一种具有重大道德意义的行为。因为我普遍反对杀戮，所以我显然普遍反对堕胎。然而，我确实接受杀戮在道德上是合理的，并相信这确实适用于某些堕胎案件。因此，我赞成减少堕胎数量，并支持某些这样做的手段。然而，我不赞成它被禁止。
For those who follow abortion in American politics, the usual means of reducing abortions are aimed at making it harder for women to get abortions. Numerous states have passed laws requiring waiting periods and have imposed medically unwarranted restrictions on abortion clinics aimed at closing them. I am completely opposed to these means of reducing the number of abortions. While I have various reasons supporting my view, my main reason is that these approaches put the burden almost entirely on the woman. Roughly put, it is the woman who bears most of the cost of the moral and religious views of those who impose such restrictions. These costs can be extremely high and not only in terms of financial cost.对于那些在美国政治中关注堕胎的人来说，减少堕胎的常用手段旨在让女性更难堕胎。许多州已经通过了要求等待期的法律，并对旨在关闭堕胎诊所的堕胎诊所施加了医学上毫无根据的限制。我完全反对这些减少堕胎数量的手段。虽然我有各种理由支持我的观点，但我的主要原因是这些方法几乎完全将负担放在了女性身上。粗略地说，是女性承担了那些施加这种限制的人的道德和宗教观点的大部分代价。这些成本可能非常高，而不仅仅是在财务成本方面。
The moral foundation for my opposition to this method of reducing abortions is based on the fact that such imposition is unfair and the fact that this method imposes an extremely high cost on women and society. It is the wrong way to reduce the number of abortions. As such, I favor approaches that would reduce the number of abortions while distributing the cost more fairly and reducing the cost to women and society as a whole. To this end, I offer the following general proposals.我反对这种减少堕胎的方法的道德基础是，这种强加是不公平的，而且这种方法给妇女和社会带来了极高的成本。这是减少堕胎次数的错误方法。因此，我赞成减少堕胎数量的方法，同时更公平地分配成本并降低妇女和整个社会的成本。为此，我提出以下一般性建议。
The first is doing what is required to reduce sexual violence against women as this would reduce the number of abortions and, rather importantly, make the world safer for women.首先是采取必要措施减少对妇女的性暴力，因为这将减少堕胎的数量，更重要的是，使世界对妇女来说更安全。
The second is to mandate effective and realistic sex education for the youth and make effective contraception readily accessible. If people have a better understanding of sex and have access to the means to prevent pregnancy, there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies and hence fewer abortions. This has other obvious benefits, although some people do oppose birth control for usually unexplained “religious” reasons.第二是强制对青年进行有效和现实的性教育，并使有效的避孕措施易于获得。如果人们对性有更好的了解并能够获得预防怀孕的手段，那么意外怀孕就会减少，因此堕胎也会减少。这还有其他明显的好处，尽管有些人确实出于通常无法解释的“宗教”原因反对节育。
The third is to provide greater social support for mothers and children. This would include such things as affordable day car for all working mothers, financial support for lower income mothers, and other support that would make raising a child less of a financial burden. This would reduce the number of abortions by making the choice to have the child more viable.三是为母子提供更大的社会支持。这将包括为所有职业母亲提供负担得起的日间汽车、为低收入母亲提供经济支持以及其他可以减轻抚养孩子的经济负担的支持。这将通过使选择让孩子更有活力来减少堕胎的数量。
The third is to address the gender inequalities that burden women. These include wage inequality, the glass ceiling, and other such things that contribute to making it difficult for women to have a family and a career. This would lower the number of abortions by making being a woman and a mother less of a career handicap, thus giving women a greater opportunity to choose to continue an unplanned pregnancy.第三是解决给妇女带来负担的性别不平等问题。其中包括工资不平等、玻璃天花板以及其他导致女性难以拥有家庭和事业的事情。这将减少堕胎的数量，减少作为女性和母亲的职业障碍，从而使女性有更多机会选择继续意外怀孕。
There are, of course, some obvious objections against these proposals. The first is that doing so would require the use of public money. The “advantage” of the usual approaches is that they are initially free for the state and the cost is imposed upon the women. Such cost shifting is beloved by the morally shifty. As such, it comes down to the ethics of deciding who should bear the burden and cost. Being pro-life rather than anti-abortion, I hold that the cost should be shared and I am willing to pay a price for my principles rather than expecting others to bear that cost.当然，有一些明显的反对意见反对这些建议。首先是这样做需要使用公共资金。通常方法的“优点”是，它们最初对国家是免费的，而费用是强加给妇女的。这种成本转移受到道德上狡猾的人的喜爱。因此，它归结为决定谁应该承担负担和成本的道德规范。作为支持堕胎而不是反对堕胎的人，我认为应该分担成本，我愿意为我的原则付出代价，而不是期望其他人承担这个成本。
The second objection is that these approaches require some radical changes to society. Those who oppose fairness and prefer the “traditional” approach of oppressing and burdening women will find this problematic. However, they would be wrong about this and morally defending unfairness is rather challenging.第二个反对意见是，这些方法需要对社会进行一些根本性的改变。那些反对公平、喜欢压迫和加重妇女负担的“传统”方法的人会发现这是有问题的。然而，他们对此是错误的，从道德上为不公平辩护是相当具有挑战性的。
The third objection is that this approach will still allow abortions to occur as there is no proposal to impose new restrictions or ban abortion. My reply is that I do acknowledge that it would be preferable to have no abortions, just as it would be preferable to never have to harm anyone or anything ever. However, if it is accepted that a person’s interests can warrant harming another living being, then there are clear grounds for warranting abortion in many cases. As such, while I favor reducing the need for abortion, I cannot favor eliminating it, any more than I can support a total rejection of ever doing harm. I do, of course, recognize that such complete pacifism could be morally commendable and someone could consistently oppose all abortion if they embraced it.第三个反对意见是，这种方法仍然允许堕胎发生，因为没有提出施加新的限制或禁止堕胎的提议。我的回答是，我确实承认最好不要堕胎，就像永远不必伤害任何人或任何事情一样。然而，如果人们认为一个人的利益可以保证伤害另一个生物，那么在许多情况下就有明确的理由支持堕胎。因此，虽然我赞成减少堕胎的需要，但我不能赞成消除堕胎，就像我不能支持完全拒绝伤害一样。当然，我确实认识到，这种完全的和平主义在道德上是值得称赞的，如果有人接受它，他们可能会始终反对所有堕胎。