JT Eberhard on abortion: "Even human life has varying values..."

Atheist JT Eberhard discusses abortion on Patheos.

Eberhard:

My position is that the destruction of a zygote is little more worrisome that the destruction of a dandelion. Richard Carrier, I think, said it best:

“From a point of view outside of this affair, the killing of a neurologically inactive fetus is no greater a harm than the killing of a mouse, and in fact decidedly less–a mouse is neurologically active, and though it lacks a complex cerebral cortex, it has a brain of suitable complexity to perceive pain.” 

Things that cannot suffer their own loss, though alive, have never really concerned us, whether they are trees, insects, mice, etc. I see no reason to believe a zygote or a fetus is different in any meaningful way up until they reach that point.

Any human being who dies unaware of the fact that they are dying "cannot suffer their own loss". A person in a coma who dies does not suffer their own loss. They suffer nothing at all by dying, because being in a coma is to be, by definition, incapable of suffering. When your wife is sleeping beside you, she would not "suffer her own loss" if you reached over and shot her in the head. She wouldn't know anything, including her own loss. If you drop your newborn off a cliff, your child wouldn't "suffer her own loss".

Eberhard asserts that it is morally licit to kill people who are unaware that they are being killed, whether they are zygotes, or people in coma, or sleeping wives, or unwanted newborns.

He certainly deserves credit for candor.

The reason it is wrong to kill human beings is not because they will suffer if you kill them. The reason that it is wrong to kill human beings is that they are human beings.

Eberhard:

An argument that inevitably comes up in the abortion debate is that a zygote will one day become a child (perhaps the next Beethoven!) if left unchecked. ... do you not realize that every sperm in the male body is a potential human being (it just needs the female egg, itself a potential unique, glorious human being). Yet the prospect of this lost potential does not seem to frighten you into promiscuity... Don’t you worry that that particular sperm might have cured cancer one day, and you just let it slip away?

The abortion debate has nothing to do with "potential" human beings. It has to do with the protection of actual human beings.

Human life begins at conception, and at every stage thereafter-- zygote, embryo, fetus, child, adult-- this individual is a human being.

Each stage of human life has actuality and potentiality. An embryo is actually a human being with three germ layers, etc, and is potentially a fetus, child and adult. A child is actually a human being who is immature, learning to walk and read and write, etc, and is potentially an adult.

An individual is a human being at every stage of life, from conception to death.

Eberhard:

Don’t you worry that that particular sperm might have cured cancer one day, and you just let it slip away?... Why then do we care about a particular set of cells in the female because they share a similar potential?

An unborn child in the womb isn't a potential human being. He or she is an actual human being-- just as actual as his/her mother.

Instead of hating this lost potential, which could never even come close to being realized in reality, why not love the fact that an unwilling mother was not burdened with an expensive and lifelong roll of the dice she didn’t want, with equally small chances of making the next Richard Dawkins or the next Torquemada?

No human being should be killed because he/she is a "burden". The mother's reluctance to carry the child to term is regrettable, and in some situations understandable (e.g. after rape), but that is not a justification for killing a human being.

I can be happy for the women who experience tremendous relief that they were not saddled with the responsibility for a child they did not want or for which they were unprepared. Could you look me in the eye and tell me that you hate the ruining of somebody’s life less than you hate the loss of a some incognizant cells? Would you even want to? That would tell me all I need to know about the compassion of Christianity.

No woman is forced to raise a child. She simply has no right to kill her child.  Adoption is always an option.

The whole idea of post-abortion trauma is mostly fabricated anyway.

What a callous ignorant thing to say. Millions of women (and men) suffer horribly after abortion, often for the rest of their lives.

The average cost of raising a child is almost $227,000. And that’s just the money, this is not including the time you spend raising a child. In this case, for women who do not wish to raise a child, the convenience of getting an abortion is similar to the convenience of not losing all your worldly possessions in a fire several times over. At what point does “Holy fucking shit this is potentially life-destroying!!!” become differentiated from “convenience?” Why would destroying a wad of unthinking cells for the “convenience” of not incurring these costs not be ok? 

And even if it was just a matter of convenience, why wouldn’t it be ok then? Potential? That argument sucks. God? That argument also sucks.

Not even worth a comment. Just depraved.

You do not get to dictate what other people do with their bodies unless you’re protecting a conscious being from harm. Often, it doesn’t even matter that the life form is conscious (this is why you can kill mice).

Killing unconscious human beings, or even insufficiently conscious human beings, is fine with Eberhard. It's like killing mice.

Look, lots of things are alive that we do not give the first damn about. Even human life has varying values (if you doubt this, imagine you had to direct a missile to either a kindergarten or a prison).

That is precisely the difference between the pro-life view and the pro-abortion view on the sanctity of life. In the pro-life view, slaughtering prisoners is every bit as immoral as slaughtering children.

It is immoral to kill human beings. Period.

I admit that a zygote has some worth (I think dandelions do too), but I think that worth is obviously negligible. And if you’re going to suggest that the value of those unthinking, unfeeling cells is worth more than that of the conscious mother who has memories, a life she has built, love, and the ability to suffer the loss of all of it, as well as the ability to feel resentment at being forced to raise an unwanted child, you need to get a new definition of “twisted.”

The mother and the child have exactly the same "value". Both have an inviolable right to life. Both lack the right to kill others.

You know what I hate? I hate that there are some people who think they have enough ownership over someone else’s life to dictate that they bear a child. And I hate the religion that hands them that privilege as though it’s god’s will.

The basis for a lawful society is protection of innocent life. No one has a right to kill.

Eberhard expresses the depravity of the pro-abortion movement with uncommon clarity.