Like a lot of these political and cultural debates it's just people grappling with Philosophy 101 concepts without the tools or vocabulary needed to really engage beyond a surface level (maybe intentionally). In this case it's a motivated rehash of "Doing vs. Allowing Harm"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/
The classic example is:
in one [scenario], Smith drowns his young cousin in the bathtub; in the other, Jones plans to drown his young cousin, but finds the boy already unconscious under water and refrains from saving him.
The abortion case is only complicated by the question of whether or not destroying a fetus is "doing harm". If you agree that it is, then an abortion is clearly morally wrong as just about every ethical system agrees that "doing harm" is wrong.
It's practically a non sequitur to bring up "allowing harm" to try to make an accusation of hypocrisy here as it is in no way obvious that doing and allowing harm are morally equivalent. Philosophers have spilled oceans of ink debating the question, and it's extremely unlikely that people who disagree on whether an abortion is "doing harm" or not will agree on the "Doing vs. Allowing Harm" question.
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Like a lot of these political and cultural debates it's just people grappling with Philosophy 101 concepts without the tools or vocabulary needed to really engage beyond a surface level (maybe intentionally). In this case it's a motivated rehash of "Doing vs. Allowing Harm" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/
The classic example is:
The abortion case is only complicated by the question of whether or not destroying a fetus is "doing harm". If you agree that it is, then an abortion is clearly morally wrong as just about every ethical system agrees that "doing harm" is wrong.
It's practically a non sequitur to bring up "allowing harm" to try to make an accusation of hypocrisy here as it is in no way obvious that doing and allowing harm are morally equivalent. Philosophers have spilled oceans of ink debating the question, and it's extremely unlikely that people who disagree on whether an abortion is "doing harm" or not will agree on the "Doing vs. Allowing Harm" question.
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