The slippery slope argument is really just the inverse of a question—
If you use this line of thinking to support x, what stops you from using that same line of thinking to support y?
For instance, in the case of abortion—
If the “product of conception” is just a “blob of cells,” that can be removed because it’s not the right time, wasn’t actually intended, or even (in terms pro-abortion folks actually use) a “parasite,” then what’s the problem with selectively removing these blobs of cells based on something like the projected sex of the “product of conception?”
In other words, what’s wrong with sex selective abortions? How can you defend women aborting children because they’re not ready for a child, and not defend women aborting children between they’re the wrong sex? There is no “bright line” you can go to that will say one is wrong, and the other right.
I wrestle with gender-based abortion more than any other reason [for having an abortion]…From a macro perspective, I don’t think it is a good idea for us to be eliminating women. But if you look at it at the individual level, which is what we do, I don’t have any right to say that one person’s reason is better or worse than another’s. -Angie Murie, executive director of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region in Canada, quoted at Suzy B
Saying, “that’s horrible” is not enough. Moral outrage won’t support a country or a culture. There must be a “stopping point,” some logically defensible reason why you should do this, and you shouldn’t do that. The modern state based religion doesn’t provide such a line, nor can it.
And that, in the end, means that abortion is a “slippery slope down to a culture of death.”
