A recent commentary argued that pro-choice advocates and pro-life advocates should carefully consider the strengths in each other’s arguments, and work out a compromise. No doubt, there was practical wisdom in her recommendation, and perhaps the most America can hope for. But her advice included a dismissiveness about the idea that science shows that life begins at conception. I wish she would have explained how she came to that conclusion, since it is a profound sticking point. If life begins at conception, then pro-choice is a no choice.
Perhaps her doubts derived from those who argue that there is a difference between a human and a person. Such arguments can be used to justify the elimination of the unborn, who may be human but, because of their underdeveloped consciousness, have not attained personhood. Writer, Nancy Pearcey counters, “Most bioethicists agree that life begins at conception – that the fetus is human. But they say it’s not a person until it achieves a certain level of cognitive functioning. The implication is that as long as the fetus is ‘merely’ human, it has no rights. It can be killed for any reason or no reason. It can be used for research and experiments, tinkered with genetically, picked through for sellable body parts (as Planned Parenthood does), then tossed out with the other medical waste. In other words, being human is no longer the basis for human rights. This is a very negative view of what it means to be human.”
Human development is a continuum. Language and understanding are at a much higher level in the 25-year-old than in the 5-year-old. In practical terms, a 25-year old is more valuable than a 5-year-old, but the 25-year-old is not intrinsically more valuable. The 5-year-old is fully a person. If there is a point at which humans become persons, that point a mystery. Various opinions have been put forth, based on certain physiological, but the selections are arbitrary and illogical. It may make sense to measure brain activity in a vegetative adult, in an attempt to understand whether he is alive. However, measuring brain activity in an unborn child at a point when no brain activity would be expected to be found—this clearly is nonsense. Such a measurement speaks only to the stage of development, and says nothing whatever about the health of the unborn child. The argument of human vs. person is pure sophistry; it is the proverbial distinction without a difference.
The Roe v. Wade decision has been overruled. To be kind to the Justice Harry Blackburn-led court decision on Roe v. Wade, it seems to have been an attempt to provide for a national political compromise. It put some limits on abortion, restricting it in the final trimester, which was a bone tossed to conservatives, while also making abortion readily available in the early stages of pregnancy, which was a bone tossed to liberals. But this well-intended decision made Roe v. Wade a piece of legislation based on temperature-taking of the general populace, which is the job of Congress, not the Supreme Court.
What Roe v. Wade inexplicably did not address was the question of the humanity of the unborn. In fact, I would contend that the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade also kicked the question down the road, acting as if it were not the responsibility of the Supreme Court to judge the meaning of the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution reads: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. You have to determine that unborn humans are not persons in order to accept that they may be deprived of their lives.
Instead, Roe v. Wade formed a discussion and a “solution” on the basis of “viability”, i.e., the likelihood of survival of the unborn when they are removed from the womb. But the utilization of viability was a case of blowing fog into the darkness.
First of all, the very term, “viability” recognizes that the pre-born are alive. (Can this live being survive outside the womb?) To admit that the unborn are alive is to bring into question whether it is legitimate to even begin a discussion about determining their fate.
Secondly, if it is legitimate to judge whether a child should live or die, viability is certainly not a legitimate measure for making the decision. Viability tells us nothing about the unborn. It is a measure of the progress that science has made in re-creating a womb-like environment. A hundred years ago, viability was (guessing) seven months. When Roe v. Wade was decided, viability was about 28 weeks. Today it is 23-24 weeks. Presumably this figure will continue to drop as scientific research guides new practices. If viability is to be used as a standard for determining life and death, it would be more logical to apply it to slow-moving scientific researchers than to the unborn.
Thirdly, what sense does it make to recognize that removing a child from its nurturing environment would kill it, and then use that information as justification for the removal? Try applying that principle to adults: If I take away your means of getting food, water & shelter, and you die, I therefore have the right to take away your means of getting food, water & shelter.
It would be a challenge to string together any thought progression that would be less logical than what is found in the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade majority opinion.
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“I wanted to cite the standard texts on when the life of a human being begins, and I found that the scientific community is rather clear on the matter when political debates aren’t involved; the life of a new human organism—a human being—begins at conception, when sperm and egg fuse to form a single-cell embryo, a zygote.” – Ryan Anderson, author.
The single-celled zygote contains all the information necessary to differentiate and develop into a mature human. Inorganic material cannot develop into organic material. Organic material, without organizing functionality, rots and decays. Human science remains far from capable of replicating the reproduction process. This means a zygote is smarter than all the biologists of human history (though the zygote is not aware of how smart it is, of course. In this sense, we all exist in bodies that are much smarter than we are).
There are some who recognize that abortion is a kind of killing but who still believe it falls into a category of killing that is acceptable. But do the moral dilemmas about other types of killing really inform abortion? Euthanasia is complicated by many factors but, in theory, both sides of the question are acting in the best interest of someone who is profoundly ill. Self-defense doesn’t argue for killing as much as it argues that a person has the right to avoid being killed. War is always a bad idea but there do seem to be times when going to war is a better bad idea than the alternative. The Nazis had to be stopped, but it was because they were ruthless, genocidal killers. Capital punishment seems like a good candidate for abolishment. But maybe it should be preserved for mass murderers, serial killers, and those who leave bombs in marketplaces. The dilemmas about killing take place in contexts in which killing is used to prevent killing, or to relieve those who are suffering horribly.
The moral “dilemma” of abortion stacks up the life of children against the rights of their mothers. (The rights of fathers have strangely and wrongly been driven out of the conversation.) Yes, there are real dilemmas in the abortion question, such as when the mother’s life is in danger, or when the mother is ten years old, or when the mother is raped. But these exceptions should amend the rule, not form its core.
No one argues that mothers should have the right to terminate their one-year-olds. There is unquestionably a difference on the personal level between an unborn child and a post-birth child. The birth of a child is a dramatic, miraculous experience that brings instant joy and love to parents (usually). But this psychological response, however good and valuable, has no bearing on the intrinsic value of the child, nor on its right to life. It is good when our loves are deeply personal but we cannot fail to also have our love informed by principles. We are capable of showing compassion to people we have never met, and so it should be.
The unborn are as innocent as humans can be. They don’t ask to be conceived. Their conception is sometimes inconvenient, sometimes deeply embarrassing, sometimes an overwhelming problem, but the difficulties are not the fault of the unborn. They should not have to pay with their lives for the carelessness of their parents. Human life is the fundamental issue of abortion and it must take precedence over the other issues. This does not mean there are no other issues. Women should have the right to not get pregnant. Men should be held equally responsible for the financial support and nurture of any child that is theirs. It may be wise public policy to provide financial and medical support to parents of young children. These are the battle lines women (and men) should be fighting over—not for the right to end pregnancies.
Abortion rights, long a hot issue in America, are now boiling in fifty different ways as the State level. At this point it is difficult to say whether the overruling of Roe v. Wade is even a victory for pro-lifers. But even as the pots boil, there are other trending realities in the U.S. Females make up about 60% of college students, and have been making up an increasing percentage for decades. Women will continue to have a greater say in economics, education, and politics in the U.S. Roughly two-thirds of women in the U.S. are in favor of abortion rights. These facts suggest that the Roe v. Wade overruling is merely a set-back to the pro-choice movement rather than a serious defeat.
Throughout human history women have sacrificially cared for their children, to the great benefit of those children, their families, and society at large. But the idol of “equality” has spawned a kind of social stupor that confuses equality with equivalence. It is no advance for women to aspire to be men. It is no advance for women (or men) to disassociate sexual activity from committed relationships. It is no advance for women to become accustomed to the practice of eliminating their own children.
The popularity of abortion is not exactly a mystery. Most women, at least in the West, have come to see it as a necessary tool that supports their quest for independence and flourishing. I suspect the men who support abortion do so, partly out of a desire to support women, but more so out of a desire to enjoy sex whenever and with whomever they wish, without worry about the consequences.
There are positives in these motives, but the negatives are weighty. For one, men are diminished by the narrative that abortion is a woman’s right and that men have nothing to say in the matter. Not only have men been relieved of responsibility for their children, they are being denied the right to have their own children.
Women, too, are being diminished in the sense that pregnancy was once considered a great privilege (however potentially dangerous and/or inconvenient). Women are uniquely designed to bear and nurture children, both in the womb and after. Somehow this gift has been construed as a disadvantage instead of being recognized as an amazing and critical contribution to individual lives and to society as a whole. It is as if women have decided that to be equal to men they must live their lives the way men live theirs. The irony in this is that it implies women are not equal until they become like men. But this is not the truth. The truth is that women are equal and they are different.
But the greatest losers in all this are the unborn, who are being denied their right to life. But they do have the right to live, both as given in the U.S. Constitution, and by the God who created the heavens, the earth and its inhabitants.
If we are unwilling to defend the rights of the unborn, we prove ourselves unworthy of being defended in our times of vulnerability. Furthermore, our treatment of our most vulnerable serves as a kind of canary-in-the-coal-mine, revealing the health and stability of our entire society.
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