man-man Posted:

Not good enough. It might not be possible to prove to a 100% gold-plated standard of certainty either way, but that doesn’t make the odds even, or anywhere close to.

Asking someone to prove a negative is a dirty tactic anyway; can’t unequivocally prove there aren’t unicorns hiding in the depths of Antarctica, or that somewhere on one of the moons of Neptune there isn’t a blob of jam that speaks French. Can’t prove unequivocally that you don’t have an invisible, intangible goblin in your room right now. But, and here’s the funny thing, in every case besides the magical man in the sky, no sensible person believes in those unprovable things.

The proper response to “We can’t prove that either way” is “It’s probably not sensible to believe it until we get some better evidence to say we should”. Plus, even if you could prove the existence of god, what’s to say it’d be against abortion?

As far as I’m concerned, an early stage embryo/foetus is a cluster of cells, no more. Where the line should be drawn between ‘early stage’ and ‘not legal to abort’ can be a bit of a crapshoot, but the point where the brain wires up and starts to be conscious would be a decent divider, or the point at which the foetus can survive independently of the mother given proper medical care (whichever is the earlier). Within those bounds, we have no right to force anyone to carry a child they don’t want.

So,that is a no then.