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News or Popular Topic Commentary

Abortion

Introduction:

Abortion, the 'terminating of a pregnancy' (in simple reality the killing of a developing human being), is a controversial topic for many.  However, just because something is controversial does not mean that some aspects of the issue are not clear - it only means that people are divided over it.  The division does not necessarily mean that the issue is complicated or difficult to understand, but rather that there is something about the issue that rises above or beyond the mere physical plane of existence, which many people will refuse to see or accede due to self-pride or fear or selfishness.  Just like the young man blinded by self-pride will fight a much larger and more capable fighter, so many will defend their point of view even if they need to put reason aside to do so.

Here are the main issues in the abortion debate:

The two sides in the issue focus on very different things - as is reflected in the names they use - and this is a big part of the reason it is difficult to have productive conversations between the two views.  To use an illustration, one side insists in talking about the rights of the space agency to stop providing oxygen to the astronauts (pro-choice), while the other side insists in talking about the value of the astronauts (pro-life).

Let's start by taking a look at some contrasts between the two sides of the issue.

Pro-Life advocates focus on the value of the developing human being inside the mother’s womb.  They believe that human life should be protected from unjust harm or killing for the full continuum of human development – from conception to natural death.

Pro-Choice advocates focus on what they believe is the mother’s right to choose to do whatever she likes including killing the developing human being in the mother’s womb.  (They ignore the other relevant choices that the woman could have responsibly made in order to avoid getting pregnant or avoid unwanted pregnancies.)

Pro-Life advocates are often willing to use their time and resources to help pregnant mother’s carry their babies to term and to care for the babies born to mothers who don’t want them or to find adoptive parents for those babies.

Pro-Choice advocates pay money to physicians and other medical staff who make lots of money profiting off of the killing of developing human beings.

It seems that most Pro-Life advocates have the high moral ground as well as the best arguments as to why human life is worthy of protection, and how it is reasonable to focus on responsible behavior and living up to the consequences of our choices.

It seems that most Pro-Choice advocates are looking for the easiest way to sweep the consequence of irresponsible behavior under the rug, so to speak.  Their position devalues human life and makes an argument for terminating all human life they deem inconvenient or not worthy of living and they justify this under the guise of "woman's rights".

So, let's look at some facts about abortion and use some simple reason to arrive at some sound conclusions.

When a man and a woman come together sexually and the woman's egg is successfully fertilized, a new life begins.

In general, there are two sets of vocabulary used when talking about this issue.  Medical terminology is preferred by pro-choice people since it is very impersonal in nature and describes low-level developmental physical aspects rather a higher-view of what they are describing.  Prenatal is the medical terminology used to refer to the development of the baby in the mother’s womb before birth.  Here are the other medical terms used to describe stages of development of human beings:

Many different non-medical terms are used to describe this new life like "immature baby", "developing human", "pre-born baby" or "young infant", but there are some things that cannot reasonably be denied about this new life.  Let's look at some of those undeniable facts.

A primary thrust of the pro-abortion argument is that a 'fetus' is not a human being until it is born...until he/she leaves his/her mom's life support system.  This argument is clearly very weak, since the age of survival of a new person has been pushed back all the way to 21 weeks with the birth of Amellia Taylor, born at 21 weeks, six days after conception.  Clearly 'the fetus' is a human being at 21 weeks according to that way of defining a person (survivability outside the womb), and as has been noted, the age will continue to drop as medical technology advances.  However, that test of humanness - survivability outside the womb or survivability without a certain kind of life support - is fallacious.  The thrust of the argument is that if a 'fetus' cannot live outside the womb, then it is not human.  However, the issue is simply one of life support.  The baby is provided life support by his/her mom while in the womb, but being dependent on life support is not what makes one human.

The Continuum of Development Argument

Is a newly conceived human less of a human being - or less valuable - than a 90 year old human being who will die within 24 hours?

As we have observed, the people who want to justify killing the new person developing in the womb say is that "it" (the 'fetus') is not human until some later stage of development.  Among those who hold that view, there is disagreement regarding exactly when 'the fetus' becomes a human being.  The simple fact is that a newly conceived human being is just as much a human being as a 90 year old human being who is just about to die.  Let's take a closer look at the notion that a level of maturity - or a point in development - is what determines whether he/she is human or not.

For example, let's say a child was born with a lung disease that required that they receive pure oxygen treatments in order to continue to live.  The child needed the treatments once a day, or without them, the child would die.  Therefore, the child was dependent upon an important form of life support in order to continue living and maturing.  According to the 'if it needs live support, it is not human' argument, this child is not human until he/she can survive without that life support.  But according to that argument, any person who needs some type of life-support in order to continue living is not a human being and that would include millions of adult people all over the earth who either temporarily or more permanently depend upon some life support to live.

Let's use an astronaut analogy.  An astronaut is completely dependent upon the ship for shelter, the food stored in it as well as the oxygen and temperature control it provides.  If the astronaut loses any of those things, she will die.  She is dependent on those things to live, and yet she is still a human being even though she is dependent on the shelter, food and oxygen the ship/life support module provides.  Therefore, an argument that she is not human due to his dependence upon the ship's life support should be recognized as false.  The same could be said for deep sea divers or people in hospitals who need an IV to survive.

Obviously, the 'because a person needs life support to live makes them non-human', is an erroneous argument and a wrong belief.

Some will argue that the organic and natural life support of the mother's womb is somehow different than artificial or machine life support systems and thus the analogies are not applicable. 

The new life in the mother's womb is no less a human being due to his/her dependence upon the mother's body's life support systems than a person who has left the mother's natural life support systems.

A slightly different version of the argument is this - 'the fetus is not like an adult human being therefore it is not human'.  It is equally erroneous as is illustrated with the following.

If you saw an infant, say a one year old baby, do you think if you never saw them again until they were ninety years old, you would recognize them or say they were the same person?  No, you would not.  The young human being is very different and unrecognizable from the subsequent older and mature human being.  In fact, the same could be said for a 20 year old to a 90 year old.  Thus, according to the 'the fetus is not like an adult human being therefore it is not human' view, no one is a human being until an arbitrary and subjective age that someone picks.  This seems to me to be a very dangerous belief since there is no objective natural standard on which to make that determination, but rather only the whims of an individual or those in power.

The simple truth is that human maturity and development is a life long process, and it starts the moment the new life is created.  Just because the new life has a different form early in his/her development does not mean he/she is not human or is a less intrinsically valuable human being, just as the new life as a one year old is radically different than his/her form as a 20 year old or 50 year old or 90 year old, does not mean that they are not human or not a person or not valuable.  Furthermore, and as we have seen, just because a person needs some form of life support to continue to live and develop does not mean they are not human beings.

If you Google "best arguments for abortion" you might come up with an article by Seth Millstein entitled, "How To Argue Pro Choice: 11 Arguments Against Abortion Access, Debunked".  Here is part of the article by Seth, and my response.  I will examine his first argument because it is key to the entire issue of abortion...the argument/belief that the person in the mother's womb is not a person.

"Common Argument #1: A fetus is a human being, and human beings have the right to life, so abortion is murder.

Seth's Comment: I’m probably not going to convince you that a fetus isn’t a life, as that’s basically the most intractable part of this whole debate, so I’ll be brief:

Seth's Rebuttal A:  A fetus can’t survive on its own. It is fully dependent on its mother’s body, unlike born human beings.

My Response:

  • The survival rate of premature infants is increasing as each year passes for younger and younger infants as medical technology improves. Amelia Taylor, was born only 21 weeks, six days after conception. In this case, U.S. law allows abortions up until 22 weeks, so Amelia could have been legally killed. Is that morally right?
  • While improving technology does not change the fact that the infant is a human being, it does allow people to see that believing that an unborn infant is not a human being when they are surviving outside the womb life-support system at earlier and earlier stages of development, is unreasonable.
  • Calling a developing person a “fetus” is an excellent way to de-humanize him/her.
  • There are many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are dependent on some kind of life support device in order to live. Does this make them non-human beings? According to this argument, yes.
  • An astronaut in a space capsule is totally dependent upon artificial life support systems…does that make them non-human?
Conclusion: The argument that a human being which cannot survive without life-support systems is non-human and therefore can be killed, is both a false argument as well as immoral.

Seth's Rebuttal B: Even if a fetus was alive, the "right to life" doesn’t imply a right to use somebody else’s body. People have the right to refuse to donate their organs, for example, even if doing so would save somebody else’s life.

  • In non-rape cases, the woman made a conscious decision – a choice - to engage in behavior that she knew would likely result in the creation of another human being - a baby.  She is morally obligated to be responsible for the consequences of that decision, and therefore needs to allow the baby to develop in her womb if her choice resulted in conception. Abortion is also not morally right in cases of rape, but the mother who acts out of love will not kill the innocent baby.
  • Trying to equate an organ to a developing human being is a fallacious argument. A person’s organ is PART of THEIR body.  A developing human being in the womb is NOT PART of that woman’s body, rather, he/she is temporarily using the mother’s body for life support. The proof that the baby is not part of the woman’s body is provided when - given normal and natural development - a new human being will be the result of a full term pregnancy 100% of the time.
  • People are free to wrongly kill or murder when laws don’t exist or there are loop-holes in existing laws that don’t describe the action as illegal. For example, for some time in American history, people of African descent were taken as slaves by people of European descent and treated legally as non-human property including being able to kill them under certain circumstances. Because existing law allowed that does not mean that the ‘slaves’ (‘fetus’) were not human beings. In the same way, because current abortion law allows for the killing of immature human beings does it mean the pre-born infant is not a human being.

Seth's Rebuttal C: The "right to life" also doesn’t imply a right to live by threatening somebody else's life. Bearing children is always a threat to the life of the mother.

  • The woman should not have willingly engaged in behavior that she believed would ultimately threaten her life. If a person believes, for example, that sky diving is a threat to one’s life, they should not engage in it. If a woman is truly afraid that giving birth to a baby is a threat to her life, then she has many alternatives to avoid getting pregnant. Once she is irresponsible and gets pregnant, she does not have a ‘right’ to kill the person who resulted from her irresponsible behavior.  That is analogous to this argument: 'I knew that Russian Roulette was a dangerous game, but I played it anyway and I am really upset that I ended up dead'.
  • To imply that an infant in the womb is “threatening” the life of his/her mom is a very convoluted view of human reproduction, pregnancy and carrying a baby. The author purposely choose the term “threatening” instead of “risking”, which would have been the more objective term of choice. The baby just exists and develops, it does not “threaten” anyone. The only reasonable “threat” is of the mother killing the baby. Many behaviors and acts in life carry risk. According to this person’s ethic, every person who ever died to save another person was a fool (think of jumping on a grenade to save your friend's life), and most people should not drive since driving "threatens" the driver's life.

Seth's Rebuttal D:  A “right to life” is, at the end of the day, a right to not have somebody else’s will imposed upon your body. Do women not have this right as well?

  • Women have a right to control THEIR body, not someone else’s. The woman who had unprotected sexual intercourse had the opportunity to control her body all the way up to the time she choose to engage in sexual intercourse. Once she choose to have unprotected sexual intercourse, she also became morally obligated to be responsible for the likely outcome.
  • Women are given a special privilege of getting to choose whether to be the bearer of a new human being or not. This is “the choice” that well reasoning people should focus on.  Not the choice to kill a new human being who is viewed as inconvenient after the adult behaves irresponsibly.
  • To state that an innocent new human is ‘imposing their will’ upon the woman who choose to engage in behavior that would likely result in the creation of that new human, is erroneous from two perspectives. First, the baby in the womb cannot yet exercise their will, since they are in a sleep like state. (Please try and remember that sleeping or unconscious people are still human.) Secondly, it is the adult woman’s and her choices that were responsible for the creation of the baby whether she denies that FACT or not.
  • At the end of the day, people who make such arguments are hypocrites since they would defend to the death their mother’s choice to not have had THEM killed out of convenience.
  • Women have a “right” to do with THEIR BODIES, what they want – they do not have a “right” to kill other innocent lives who are dependent upon them for a short time.
  • No, a “right to life” is a right to life – to EXIST - not a right to some perceived quality of life.  A human should have a right to not be killed by another human for unjust reasons and we generally do due to murder laws.  The mother of a developing baby has all the same rights and abilities as the non-pregnant woman she was before she choose to have unprotected sexual intercourse.  No one is threatening her life, and she is merely living with a consequence of her choices, and a temporary consequence at that since many people would be willing to adopt and care for the baby.
  • Some Siamese twins share body parts.  Those two people have a choice to make.  Either work together or not…either love one another, or be in selfish conflict with one another.  According to this argument, if one twin chooses to go right, and the other chooses to go left, then one of them has the “right” to kill the other, since one is choosing to impose her will upon the other.

Seth continues with other common rebuttals to simple truths and his further rebuttals are just a flawed as the one's above.

Ultimately, this discussion is one of love versus one of selfishness, but that simple truth is avoided by those who try and keep the discussion in a legal framework of “rights”. Abortion advocates try very hard to keep their arguments in a legal context or frame work of “rights”, and stay away from obvious moral truths. They do this because they don’t have a defensible moral basis to justify their wrong belief and behavior. Simply put, a woman who has a baby developing in her will either choose the way of love and life for both her and her baby, or the way of selfishness and death for both her and her baby.  Making the choice of having unprotected sexual intercourse does not carry with it the "right" to kill an innocent human being who resulted from that choice.

Perhaps you are a woman who has believed all the wrong arguments of the pro-abortion people in order to justify an abortion you had performed on your baby. The good news is that it is never too late to be forgiven and get a new heart and life!  And no, you don't have to join some religious organization or adopt christian beliefs in order to have your life renewed.  Please read this web site to find the love that you - and we all - need : )