I once famously fell asleep during a screening of the iconic film “My Dinner With Andre” but what little I can remember springs to mind when I think about writing this account of a bizarre, existential conversation I had with someone on the topic of abortion. Whenever religious people want to engage me in conversations about abortion and gay marriage, I always try to warn them that I’m an atheist and a Liberal and things will not go well for them. Generally they are more forgiving of the atheist part but neither of those statements ever stops them from trying make their points with me. The abortion conversation began something like this:
Inquisitor: You were born before abortions became legal correct?
Me: Yes, back in the bad old days when women died horrible deaths from back alley abortions. Your point?
Inquisitor: If abortions had been legal, you might never have been born.
Me: So?
Inquisitor: Well, you would never have existed. Anti-abortion laws saved your life.
Me: Let’s follow your line of reasoning and say I don’t exist. If I don’t exist then I can’t care whether I might potentially exist or not because, well, I’m not here.
Inquisitor: That’s not the point.
Me: How can I have an opinion on something if I don’t exist?
Inquisitor: Let’s suppose you have an opinion. Let’s suppose you have morals, even if you don’t exist.
Me: Okay, but I get to keep the morals I have now, not the morals you want me to have. Because even as an nebulous theoretical consciousness I know that I would still be the same me. I would still be an atheist.
Inquisitor: Even an atheist should know the difference between right and wrong.
Me: In this game of theoretical existence, your world, your religious views of right and wrong do not exist for me and therefore would have no influence on my thinking. If you try to assert otherwise, then you’re cheating and it’s not a fair game. You can’t set the rules and predetermine the outcome. I reject that premise and this conversation is over now.
Inquisitor: But wouldn’t you want to be born if you had a choice?
Me: If I had a choice, if it were up to me, I’d want to be born to someone who really, really wanted to have kids and had made a choice to have a baby of their own free will. I would not want to be born to someone who did not want to have kids or who was, for any reason, being forced to have a baby against their free will.
Inquisitor: But your parents wanted you didn’t they?
Me: I thought we started this exercise under the assumption that they might have chosen abortion if it had been legal at the time I was conceived. Honestly, my parents were not given proper birth control information. The pill was not available yet and condoms were hidden away out of sight in most drug stores if they were even available at all. My parents actually tried not to have kids using the rhythm method and clearly, since we’re sitting here having this discussion, that was not a very useful method of contraception.
Inquisitor: Contraception and abortion are against God’s will.
Me: I did tell you I’m an atheist, right?
Inquisitor: Abortion is wrong…
Me: So I guess we’re not having a discussion on my theoretical existence where you try to convince me that anti-abortion laws saved my life anymore. You’re just trying to be the boss of me now?
Inquisitor: I can’t have a conversation with you. You’re completely unreasonable.
Me: You have no idea how ironic that is, do you?
