Amba & abortion on Althouse

One of my favorite bloggers, Ann Althouse, is bringing to the forefront something from her meta. Amba, one of her frequent commentors, apparantly had an abortion sometime in the past and came to regret it. The most interesting thing she said about it is this:

The nonreligious conclusion I came to as the result of lasting (lifelong) regret of an abortion is that if an embryo or fetus is regarded as disposable, then you are, too. I guess it's a version of what Mother Theresa was saying. An individual either is unique and uniquely valuable or isn't. All are or none are. If your existence had happened at the wrong time (I won't use the demeaning word "inconvenient" because sometimes it's little more than that, but sometimes it's a lot worse), you could have been disposed of. Your existence is accidental and contingent.

For me, this is where the whole argument for abortion hinges upon - how you view humanity. Is humanity unique and special in this universe, made by an allmighty Creator? Or, is humanity merely the subject of evolutionary forces without any sense of an omnipotent being, and we're in a real sense "lucky" to be around and not be eaten by velociraptors?

People with prolife positions believe that an abortion is equal to a murder. People with pro-choice positions don't. It seems to me that it's just a matter of location, then. If you're four months in your mother's womb and the doctor performs a dilation and evacuation, that isn't murdering you. If you're bashed in the head five seconds after you've been born, you've been murdered. For the pro-choice person, location - in the mother's body or out of the mother's body - is the only thing that matters.

RELATED: Read Dan Phillips' essay about abortion here.