Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

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If it's just a clump of cells, why the outrage?

Abortion rights proponents don't want you to think of a fetus as a baby. In fact they often argue that it's just a clump of cells or some extraneous tissue in the mother's body. Based on that argument there's nothing morally wrong with aborting a fetus, and it really is nothing more than a woman's exercising her right to choose what to do with her own body. If, on the other hand, you think of the fetus as an unborn baby as some do, or as a human being as others do, then abortion is the taking of a life without the consent of the executed, and it should be morally repugnant.

If you accept the pro-choice position, you don't believe a fetus is a human being, or a baby, so removing that unwanted tissue is the equivalent of excising a tumor. The tissue itself can be considered to be medical waste, so it sounds appropriate to dispose of it like you would dispose of any other medical waste. That's what makes this article in today's London Daily Mail rather interesting. Here are a few quotes...

One of the country's leading hospitals is throwing aborted babies into the same incinerator used for rubbish to save only £18.50 each time, it has emerged.

...they are being burnt in the hospital's main incinerator - which is normally used for rubbish and clinical waste.

The RCN's guide, Sensitive Disposal of all Foetal Remains, says disposal alongside clinical waste is 'completely unacceptable'.

"I am furious and very hurt. Imagine my horror when I discovered that my baby was incinerated in the same furnace as the hospital rubbish."

The last quote is from a woman who had an abortion and was later outraged to discover that the unwanted tissue was treated like... well... like unwanted tissue. I mean really now, if she didn't want it treated like unwanted tissue, why did she have it scraped out in the first place?

Why the outrage? And if this woman is horrified at the incineration of her "baby", why did she kill it in the first place?

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