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Wednesday 20 May 2009

abortion, the moral choice.

i've always held that the only positions worth holding are those of the extreme. the (very good) reason for this is that by taking the extreme position you change the terms of the debate. take the issue of drug legislation. simply calling for cannabis to be decriminalised will do you very little good (if that's what you want) saying, on the other hand "legalize all drugs" and suddenly decriminalising a little bit o' weed becomes almost reasonable by comparison.

the same is true of abortion. it's no good framing the debate in terms of pro-choice vs. pro-life. this just means your middle ground (i.e. the consensus view) is highly-controlled access to abortion that your doctor can refuse to perform. if, on the other hand, you come out actively in favour of abortion (say pro-death?) the terms of the debate shift without anyone noticing, like the rocks beneath our feet, and the pro-choice view (easy access to abortions, when and where you want it) becomes the reasonable consensus choice. for those who like to have a half-baked argument to back up their views (useful for dinner-parties, bar-fights etc) please, dear reader, read on.

let's look at the evidence shall we? in the blue corner we have life, in all it's technicolour (and yes colour does have a 'u' in it, you yankee language manglers) glory and in the red corner death, the grim reaper. now it's not often that those nominally on the side of life (i.e. the living) support death, but thinking outside the box is my kinda thinking, so let's see where it takes us...

first up: life, & what can we say about this little experiment in self-replication? survival of the fittest, winner takes all, red in tooth and claw, nasty, brutish and short. not exactly what one could call good, beneficent or something one could ascribe any of the positive adjectives to. still we persevere. but why? maybe it's time to say "no more!", "not in my name" or any other sundry hippyism. suffice to say life just ain't all it's cracked up to be.

now death, what do we usually say about those of us lucky enough to achieve the nirvanic state of no longer living? they are "at peace", "resting in peace" or "sleeping with the angels/fishes". you may have noticed a theme here. that theme (for the less astute amongst you) is peace, no longer struggling, finally able to relax and let go. so why, i ask, are we inflicting this torture on successive generations? what, i ask, is the point?

the answer is that there isn't one. so let us all join together in an effort to stamp out life altogether, even the bacteria, although in lacking a central nervous system they can't technically suffer. they will though, no doubt, get together again to form multi-cellular life (they've done it the once and i, for one, don't trust 'em not to do it again) so let us all firstly, focus on eliminating life on this planet before building an intergalactic star-ship, donning feathery masks (fake feathers, obviously) and ensuring that life is eliminated throughout the universe!!! bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!

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