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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

I'd be very surprised if there were zero atheists that were anti-abortion.

Albania has been officially atheist since 1967. But abortion was not legalized until 1995.

The idea that American “evangelical Christians” invented opposition to abortion is typical American ignorance and myopia. Various levels of opposition to abortion is the norm across the world—for pretty obvious reasons. The rights-based view of abortion is what’s actually unusual and unique to Christian and post-Christian societies.

Who are the loudest voices advocating for abortion bans, though? Of the legislators who write and vote for abortion ban bills, what is their reasoning and background? At least in the US, it sounds like the loudest of those voices are coming from a religious place, mostly from a Christian perspective. I'll grant you that it's certainly more than just "evangelical" Christians, but I consider that an irrelevant distinction. (Note that I'm not arguing that there are no non-Christians who are anti-abortion, just that they don't seem to be the ones pushing these laws through.)

Either way, I think if you're going to engage in some American-bashing, you should probably cite some sources to back up your claims.

>I'd be very surprised if there were zero atheists that were anti-abortion.

Well, sure, there were _some_, eg both Hitler and Stalin have delegalised abortion in their countries. But I'm not sure if that's the kind of moral oracle that todays christian fundamentalists would like to remember.

Nat Hentoff was a more interesting and less inflammatory example of an anti-abortion atheist.

"Non-inflammatory" ways of fighting religious fundamentalism and fringe theories don't work.

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