The “Worship of Retardation” or the Obligation to Abort?

[UPDATE]
Now the guy’s gonna profit from a silly one-liner uttered on Ingraham’s show. Ahh, capitalism. Probably the only thing (generally) where we can find common ground, although I wouldn’t choose to make a profit on something like that…

Yesterday while settling in for the commute home, I tuned in to an interview that astounded me. Nicholas Provenzo, who authors on the blog “The Rule of Reason” was being interviewed on the Laura Ingraham show about an entry where he, in essence advocates the abortion of those fetuses who are known to have Down’s Syndrome. While not being totally explicit, you can read the blog entry and use your own “rule of reason” to infer that the belief is that a mother should abort, especially if “they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others.”

Aside from the moral incoherency of the blog entry itself (the fact that the author calls on his readers to agree with his morality), it astounded me how hostile the commentators were toward those who disagreed with the author. Yet, not once did they ever offer an alternative as to when human life actually begins. Instead some ad hominem attacks against the religious and patting of their own backs to how intelligent and “objective” they are. A few examples:

These guys have been sniffing Ron Paul’s anti-abortion codpiece for so long they actually have the audacity to oppose abortion in circumstances where over 90% of the women choose to have an abortion. Disgusting.

You Yahwidiots need to come up with some new one-liners.

A quote in the comments section from the post from supposedly objective Provenzo where he really does show his true colors (emphasis mine):

Now if a woman chooses to be part of the 10% and knowingly give birth to a retarded child, that’s her choice (and her responsibility), wicked as it may be.

In the interview, Provenzo finally admitted that he believed that human life did not begin until you are “out the hatch”. Interesting how all scientific criteria identifies a fetus as life at conception, and how the DNA fingerprint is not only human (and nothing else), it is separate and distinct from the mother, and that biologically it does one thing since conception: grow. Not to mention that the charge for killing a fetus in many states is homicide (murder, manslaughter, etc.).

From Merriam-Webster online:
Main Entry:
ho·mi·cide Pronunciation: \ˈhä-mə-ˌsīd, ˈhō-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
in sense 1, from Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin homicida, from homo human being + -cida -cide; in sense 2, from Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin homicidium, from homo + -cidium -cide
Date:
14th century

1 : a person who kills another 2 : a killing of one human being by another

No matter how you slice it, that is what abortion is. No amount of saying that a fetus is a “potential human being” will make it so. It already is. There are no changes in the type of structure, genetic information, or anything else that changes it from one kind of being into another at any process between conception and death. Provenzo’s only criteria for when life begins is a completely arbitrary one, an event which does not in any way whatsoever change the type of being we’re talking about.

Instead the tired old “part of the mother’s body” argument is trotted out there time and time again, despite the obvious mountain of scientific evidence that the fetus is its own. The sad truth is that arbitrary declarations of when life begins leads us down the path of eugenics and down a path where some pro-choice advocates have to support this kind of thing in order to be consistent in their positions. While supposedly claiming to not advocate eugenics, he does exactly that by positing that it is wicked to give birth to babies with Down’s Syndrome. The very act of aborting these babies would obviously reduce their genetic influence and thereby simply be eugenics through the back door.

It’s hard to think of anything more ridiculous than a group like this attempting to take the moral high ground.

And once again, the argument against pro-lifers always turns to ad-hominem attacks based on religion regardless of whether religion is used in defense of the position. The abortion argument is coherent without it. Christianity and Judaism only serve to bolster the position and if either happens to be true about how the world really is, you would expect them to logically support that position.

Ugh. I am always a bit sick to my stomach after trying to wade through “reasoning” like that.