Abortion

Abortion

Introduction
- The burden of proof favors the pro-life view.
- When does personhood start?
- When may one person lawfully end the life of another person?
- What obligations, if any, do parents owe their children?

FAC - Frequently Argued Contentions

The Fetus Is Not A Person
- It is a tree, toad or cow.
- It is just a clump of cells or tissue.
- It is not a life until implantation.
- It is not a life until quickening.
- It is not a life until the third trimester.
- It is not a life until viability.
- It is not a life until birth.
- It is in her body; it is a part of the mother.
- The moment of personhood is arbitrary, sociological or religious, not scientific.

Liberty
- There is a right to abandon children; a child or fetus is a parasite.
- There is a right to obtain medical procedures for oneself.
- Abortion criminalization or regulation violates doctor-patient privacy.
- It's between me, my baby and God.
- There is a right to control one’s reproduction.

Women’s Rights
- This is about women controlling their own destinies; “it’s my body.”
- A rollback here will lead to further reproductive control beyond the issue of abortion.
- This will lead to back-alley abortions with coat hangers and hurt women.
- It is cruel to force rape victims to stay pregnant; it is like a second rape.
- It is necessary for the life of the mother.
- It is necessary for the health of the mother.

Clever, irrelevant responses
- Against abortion? Don’t have one.
- Castrate men.
- The government would help women more by focusing its energies on policies that reduce the need for abortion.
- Nobody has a right to make this decision for other people; I’m against abortion but I support the right of women to make their own choices.

Ad hominem
- They’re all clinic bombers or no better than clinic bombers.
- They say they are pro-life but then they support the death penalty or war.
- They are just religious zealots; no or few rational people are pro-life.
- They use opposition to abortion as an excuse because they hate women.
- They are just uptight about sex.
- They think sperm and ova are human beings.
- Mostly men are making these laws.
- Men cannot have an opinion on abortion, only women can.
- Doctors are not making these laws; ideologues or zealots are making them.

Pragmatic
- We need abortion to control any excess population.
- Every child should be loved.
- Abortion reduces crime and poverty.
- Abortion leads to a better and smarter populace.

Fair-minded and rational debate on abortion will take several assumptions into account: 1) murder is wrong and 2) the state has a role in stopping or punishing it. After agreeing with these two positions, the debate on abortion can be reduced into a few questions.

- The burden of proof favors the pro-life view.
In America, we have the presumption of liberty, the most common usage of which is the presumption of innocence. In other words, we assume you are a free person until we have reason to believe otherwise. The impact of such a dramatically libertarian view is that we ought to start with the presumption that all humans are persons. After the male and female gametes combine, a new human is created. This is indisputable; it's science. The question is whether this human being is a person. We must give all humans the benefit of the doubt that they have liberty - therefore we must start from the presumption that personhood begins when a human begins: fertilization. The burden of proof falls upon those seeking to deprive the preborn of liberty. The default position is that all humans are persons, and refuting this idealistic, inclusive view falls squarely on the pro-choice side. The pro-choice view is that some humans aren't persons; they must show cause beyond a reasonable doubt for their belief that some humans have no liberty.

- When does personhood start?
If everyone agrees the state should stop murder, then the question must be when the protection from murder takes effect: when, in the period starting from fertilization and ending at a year after birth does personhood start? It’s not about women’s rights or about religion; it’s a scientific and moral question of when the right to life begins. This should immediately eliminate the tension on both sides and the emotion that confuses this as an issue of religion or feminism.

Scientifically, nothing changes with the child’s body during birth except for location and how chemicals and nutrients are absorbed. The brain, organs, heart, DNA, fingerprints and so forth are the same directly before and directly after birth. Therefore we should not place personhood at birth.

Some people will place personhood at other points before birth but after conception. “Consciousness” or the capacity to learn, think and dream is occasionally cited. Others argue that, since either heartbeat or brainwaves signal the death of a person, they ought to signal the start of a person. Pain is sometimes proposed as the point where personhood begins. Unfortunately, most of these points are somewhat vague and difficult to determine. Consciousness can be verified to some degree although there is no specific bright line. Heartbeat can be determined with relative ease and a fetal EKG. Brainwaves are detectable with a fetal EEG. Pain hormone production is also measurable. For those of you who are pro-choice, you should understand that the heartbeat comes somewhere between three and four weeks into pregnancy, brainwaves at three to eight weeks, and the pain hormone at around ten or eleven weeks. Prohibiting abortion following most of these points would outlaw a majority of abortions in the United States. Consciousness as the point of personhood would ban much less than a majority of US abortions.

Unfortunately, these points do not matter. Having no heartbeat, pain hormones, brainwaves or brain life do not mean someone is not alive. If someone were in an accident and lost any one of these abilities, would he no longer be a person? A brain-dead person still has a right to life, as does someone with an artificial heart or no ability to feel pain (if such a thing is really possible). None of these deprive us of what makes us human, these are physical and mental symptoms of the biological human but not the true signs of a full-fledged person.

The most common point is ‘viability.’ This is a self-fulfilling point: once an abortion becomes much less necessary, the Supreme Court decided they could be more regulated. In an internal memo to the Court members, the Justice who authored the Roe v. Wade decision admitted that viability may have been arbitrary and suggested that perhaps any point would be arbitrary. Viability was a point he chose, not based on science or legal precedence, but because it sufficiently protected abortion rights. This is illogical and deceitful. Scientifically, we should all recognize that viability does not change the child’s state of mind or body, only its ability to survive. However, ability to survive does not make one a person – coma patients, young infants, the superannuated, the extremely ill, there are plenty of people who are, for one reason or another, incapable of living without some form of support or assistance. The fetus being inside the womb is irrelevant. We would not say it’s okay to kill someone on an iron lung or a pacemaker, why does the fetus’ internal dependence on the mother make it acceptable? Simply put, it does not; viability is an irrelevant and self-fulfilling standard.

The point that makes us persons is conception. Prior to that there exists only the reproductive cells of the parents. The point where new DNA is created and cells formed is when the new person begins. Even the language –conception- derives from the meaning to start or the beginning. Conception is the point at which new DNA is created and a new code for a complete human body. Conception is measurable, defensible, logical and scientifically sound. Personhood begins at conception, and the right to life flows from that.

- When may one person lawfully end the life of another person?
Assume that we have two people: not criminals, not violent, not threatening to anyone, not retarded but not geniuses, not rich, not poor, just two average, peaceful people. They both have a right to life. What if there is some emergency situation and only by killing the first person will the second person live, even though by any other measure the first person does not deserve death? Is that murder or is that justifiable homicide? Are there any circumstances under which an innocent life can be taken? Financial gain, convenience, comfort, the health of others, the life of others, the safety of others, war, do any of these justify taking an innocent life?

I will separate out a dire emergency life-and-death situation from all other scenarios of potentially justifiable homicide. In all of these situations, there is some reason other than the immediate need to kill one person to save your own life or the life of another. If in these circumstances we can take a life then there is no true right to life, merely a benefit, a privilege, or a partial ownership. Since an individual owns his or her life, we cannot take it without consent. Ownership means very little if others can take it away in times of even mild need. This means that, if we accept that rights and personhood begin at conception, it is unacceptable to abort for these reasons.

In cases where homicide is necessary to save the life of another the same reason as above applies: one cannot own one’s life if it can be taken away by others. However, I separated this out for a reason. If you accept justifiable homicide on the grounds that it is unavoidably necessary to save the life of another, that still only justifies a tiny portion of abortions. A caesarean section can safely deliver the child without risking the mother’s life in virtually any case of dangerous pregnancy.

If personhood begins at conception, and if taking the life of innocents is wrong, then abortion is always wrong beginning from the point of conception. This leaves open one option, however: ejection. The removal of a fetus to be allowed to live or die after that point is ejection. Aborting the fetus is murder; ejecting the fetus is removing it from the body, akin to throwing your child out of your house.

- What obligations, if any, do parents owe their children?
Can a parent leave an infant to care for himself? If a father leaves his baby alone, kicks him out the house or otherwise knowingly abandons the child to its own devices has he violated any moral or ethical rule? If the answer is no then child abandonment and neglect laws are immoral. I believe the answer is yes; a parent has moral obligations to the child. Children are wards, incapable of defending themselves. Those unwilling to care for their children can give them up for adoption or to relatives if such a course seems reasonably safe for the child. However, simply abandoning a child is immoral. A baby cannot be expected to care for itself and parents are obligated to care for the baby until such time as they can safely give it up for adoption or the child grows up.

This means that ejecting the fetus is inappropriate except where its safety can be reasonably assured. The fetus cannot be discarded to the elements any more than the infant can be left to fend for itself on the streets.

Some people will argue that unintended pregnancy, especially rape-induced pregnancy, does not carry the obligation to protect the child. This is simply untrue. Assume for a moment that all abortion techniques are simply impossible or that a woman is too far away from a clinic to procure an abortion. If she gives birth to the child of a rape, can she throw that infant away? Would she be justified in throwing it in the dumpster, or leaving it in a field, in a street, or somewhere else on its own? That would not be even remotely acceptable unless someone rejects child abandonment laws for ALL children. We can safely say, then, that the unintended or unwanted nature of a child does not change the fact that it cannot be abandoned.

Parents have an obligation their children, even unintended or unwanted children, and so ejecting the fetus before it can reasonably survive the process is unacceptable.

Index

FAC - Frequently Argued Contentions
Now come all the arguments people make to defend or extend abortion. I have reproduced what I hope is a comprehensive list in order to defeat these arguments. If you have a different argument, it very likely may fall under one of these headings.

The Fetus Is Not A Person

- It is a tree, toad or cow.
It has human DNA, it will grow up to be a human, calling it equivalent to those animals is scientific garbage meant to dehumanize the fetus. This is no different from the racist argument that black people were savages who needed to be enslaved. A fetus has human DNA, human cells, and in time it has human organs, features, and fingerprints.

- It is just a clump of cells or tissue.
Technically every living thing is just a clump of cells or tissue; those are the constituent elements of every animal. However, one making this statement should realize that heartbeats have been detected as early as three weeks into a pregnancy, usually by twenty-five days. Apparently the clump of cells has a beating heart. This is an emotional argument meant to dehumanize the fetus based on its appearance. It does not matter that the fetus may be very small or that it may LOOK different from adults: it is still a person.

- It is not a life until implantation.
Implantation occurs because an egg has been fertilized, so it's only a part of the process and not the start of the process. Although implntation is a necessary condition for pregnancy to continue, it's an insufficient condition for pregnancy itself, and therefore it can't be the standard for life. The fact that the embryo is implanted is no more significant to its structure or nature than other developments in location and nutrition. It's essentially an arbitrary point, and there's no reason why the point couldn't be exiting the fallopian tube or some other point. The absence of implantation denotes a failed pregnancy and a lost embryo, but the presence of implantation is not sufficient to create life. Many pro-lifers use this argument to oppose surgical abortion but to embrace pharmaceutical abortion in the form of the morning-after pill (or in some cases birth control pills). This is a matter of convenience rather than science or reason. Implantation doesn't make an embryo a person any more than breastfeeding makes a newborn a person. Implantation is for developing a person, not for creating one.

- It is not a life until quickening.
The kicking of the baby was an easy way to recognize pregnancy when medicine was leeches and humors. We now know that the baby has a heartbeat and brainwaves well before its kicking can be felt, and technology has shown us how much happens before quickening. The quickening standard is little more than medieval superstition.

- It is not a life until the third trimester.
Pointless time distinctions have no place alongside science. A certain amount of time not having elapsed is not sufficient to justify the taking of a life.

- It is not a life until viability.
Independent living has no bearing on the personhood of a baby any more than an infant is less of a person because it needs constant care and attention. And the fact that it's dependent on only the mother before viability is also irrelevant; if for some reason a parent were the only available guardian for his newborn for nine months then it wouldn't mean he could kill it to get out of the responsibility. Nor does being biologically stuck in the body with no chance of safe escape mean anything for life. In fifty years it's possible that technology will push back viability so that children can be safely developed outside the womb, just as we can now do heart transplant and defribillator implants that were previously science fiction. In such a case, would we say that science has pushed back personhood? Or if all medical technology were hypothetically lost, would personhood then be reverted? No, that's subjective personhood. Whether or not you can live without direct nutrition is irrelevant to your personhood.

- It is not a life until birth.
That is a superficial and meaningless process as it pertains to personhood. It's a change in location and doesn't provide anything useful to becoming a person. If it did, then we're saying that a premature birth at seven months is a person, but an unborn baby at ten months isn't a person. Birth doesn't change the baby in a way that bestows personhood.

- It is in her body; it is a part of the mother.
The baby has its own DNA, blood type and develops separate organs. It is not a part of the mother, even if it is receiving nutrition through the umbilical cord or is located within the mother.

- The moment of personhood is arbitrary, sociological or religious, not scientific.
Everyone must acknowledge that at some point we all become persons, imbued with the right to life. The alternative is that murdering other people is the personal choice of the murderer. That is not a workable solution, so there must be some concrete point at which we get the right to life. There is nothing making birth any more significant in this sense than the periods prior to birth except that some people FEEL it is more important. This is emotional and irrational and it is not based on sound reasoning.

Index

Liberty

- There is a right to abandon children; a child or fetus is a parasite.
This statement negates the entire concept of parenthood and parental obligation. It would necessarily mean that abandoning a newborn or toddler would be legal and moral. Furthermore, a child or fetus is not a parasite because biologically a parasite is: a) of a different species, b) often harmful to the host beyond taking resources, c) not expected or intended by the host body, and d) not created by the host body. A child does not fit any of these requirements, is in fact the purpose behind reproductive organs, and carries on the genes of its parents. Our bodies, in the strictest and most coldly biological sense, exist to create children and pass our genes, just like all other biological entities on the Earth. A child cannot be a parasite to its mother in the biological sense.

- There is a right to obtain medical procedures for oneself.
I have no problem with this statement; in fact, I’d argue that the average person has an absolute right to obtain medical procedures on themselves. Unfortunately, abortion is a medical procedure on the body of the child. It may be inside the mother but the child’s body is still inviolate. Parents may order or authorize medical procedures for their children, but abortion does not fall under this responsibility: it kills, not helps the child. The right to obtain medical procedures does not apply to abortion, since there are at least two bodies directly involved. Caesarean sections would of course still be acceptable when there is no reasonable potential for harm to the child.

- Abortion criminalization or regulation violates doctor-patient privacy.
No, it really does not; if one accepts that abortion is murder then privacy is irrelevant. There is no doctor-patient privacy for murder. If abortion were not a violation of the child’s liberty –murder- then of course the doctor-patient privilege would apply.

- It's between me, my baby and God.
First of all, its very disturbing to think that any decision between several parties would involve the premeditated destruction of one of those parties. But more to the point, there can't be privacy to kill somebody. If you wanted to harm your child (say, abuse, rape, abandonment, whatever) then you couldn't frame it as a private decision and get away with it. Privacy stops where a crime begins.

- There is a right to control one’s reproduction.
Yes, there is. This is separate from the right to murder. If we accept that abortion is murder then, again, reproductive rights are irrelevant. There is a right to control one’s reproduction, but this right does not negate the right of the child to not be murdered.

Index

Women’s Rights

- This is about women controlling their own destinies; “it’s my body.”
No, it is not. It is the child’s body, and none of us can rightfully take it away. Women –and men- can control their destinies through avenues that do not include murder or violation of the rights and destinies of others.

- A rollback here will lead to further reproductive control beyond the issue of abortion.
There are two problems with this argument. First, it condemns the argument against abortion based on unrelated or extraneous statements, a sort of guilt by association. The argument itself is very simple: the child is a human being with rights, and abortion is the taking of life, or murder. It is not targeted at reproduction or reproductive rights, it’s targeted at stopping murder, defending the right to life, and protecting liberty. Some people who argue against abortion may have bad or even abhorrent reasons and arguments but that does not preclude the possibility that the argument presented here is not correct. People with bad reasons support a lot of political positions and one could condemn most any major political argument on this basis. Second, supporters of abortion or abortion rights are much more likely to support taking away reproductive rights and the right to life. China practically mandates abortions for reasons of population control, taking away the right to reproduce. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a supporter of legalization of Birth Control – which to her meant both women controlling their own reproduction and society controlling the reproduction of the retarded men and women to prevent them from having children. While we cannot assume that the actions of some abortion supporters necessarily reflect on the arguments in favor of abortion, certainly we must recognize that historically the threat to other reproductive rights often comes from countries where abortion is allowed.

- This will lead to back-alley abortions with coat hangers and hurt women.
Even when abortion was largely illegal there were criminal abortion service providers, almost always with trained medical professionals. Doctors did and do perform the vast majority of illegal abortions. Prior to Roe v. Wade pro-choice advocates argued this fact in an effort to prove the legitimacy of abortion as a medical procedure. The instances of coat hanger abortions were next to nonexistent. They are also irrelevant if we accept the premise that abortion is murder: why would we want to legalize murder to make it safer? Obviously we would not want to do such a thing. Back alley abortions are extremely exaggerated emotional arguments to distract from the real horror and crime of abortion.

- It is cruel to force rape victims to stay pregnant; it is like a second rape.
While the pain and anguish of rape is nearly impossible to overestimate, it does not serve as a get out of jail pass for the victim. Being raped, or robbed, or beaten or tortured or kidnapped or any other crime does not grant the ability or right to kill an innocent person. We cannot punish the child for the transgressions of the father. The father is the rapist, hunt him down, catch him, punish him, castrate and torture him, execute him; we cannot punish the child since the child did nothing wrong. After the pregnancy adoption is a perfectly available and legitimate option if the mother does not wish to keep the child. The only law we might need is to slightly modify parental rights codes so that fathers of a child conceived in rape have no legal recourse over the child. Our concern should be that the rape of a woman is not followed by the murder of a child.

- It is necessary for the life of the mother.
In nearly every case abortion for the life of the mother can be replaced with a caesarean section that saves both lives. The only time this is not possible is an ectopic pregnancy, the chances of which are greatly increased by ingesting the drugs used in abortion and birth control. It is almost never necessary to abort to save the mother’s life. In those cases where it is, then we must look to adult lives. Can one adult kill an innocent person or innocent people in an emergency if it will save his life? That depends on the law in a given jurisdiction, but generally actions to save one's life are not considered criminal. The important thing is that fetuses be treated under the law as any other person is treated. Technology will eventually develop a solution wherein the child and the mother can both be saved in cases of ectopic pregnancy.

- It is necessary for the health of the mother.
In cases where the health of the mother is at risk but her life is perfectly fine, abortion can worsen her condition because it involves drugs, invasive procedures, cutting and dicing implements, and various other foreign elements. It disrupts a natural process and any surgical procedure includes risks. Since there are numerous documented ways for an abortion to kill –as with most surgeries- it is not so light a risk for a non-life-threatening situation. However, the health problems addressed by abortion can be solved by caesarean section or ignored by simply taking the pregnancy to term. It's hardly justified to kill a person, anyway, because of non-lethal health risks.

Index

Clever, irrelevant responses

- Against abortion? Don’t have one.
Against murder? Don’t have one. Against rape? Don’t get one. Against the death penalty? Don’t do it. Obviously this is a flimsy, glib statement that does not address the basic premise of the best pro-life arguments. If abortion were something as simple and shallow as a personal choice then this bumper sticker solution might have some merit. Since this is a case of violating an individual human being’s rights we cannot solve it by averting our eyes or ignoring it. This is not like smoking a joint or a twenty-year-old buying a six-pack; murder is not a matter of personal choice.

- Castrate men.
This is just irrelevant and defensive – nothing more than a joke. It is not a battle between men and women over reproduction or reproductive control; it is about stopping murder.

- The government would help women more by focusing its energies on policies that reduce the need for abortion.
Yes, fine, whatever. We wouldn’t legalize rape or theft and say the government should just focus on reducing the need or occurrence of them, would we? No, because they’re wrong. Say all you want about reducing their popularity or use, but if abortion is murder –and it is- then it has to be illegal.

- Nobody has a right to make this decision for other people; I’m against abortion but I support the right of women to make their own choices.
Nobody has the right to choose murder; everybody has the right to stop murder. This is a cover, something to hide behind so moderate pro-choicers do not feel anti-women or like a religious nut but they also do not seem cavalier about human life and abortion, or traditional values. It is a cop out. Why would abortion be wrong if not for the murder aspect? Obviously we cannot abstain from prohibiting murder, so we cannot allow abortion in the name of personal choice.

Index

Ad hominem

- They’re all clinic bombers or no better than clinic bombers.
Is every Muslim a member or supporter of Al Qaida? Is every environmentalist a member of ELF? Is every socialist or leftist a member of FARC, ELN, IRA, or Shining Path? Just because the extreme fringe of an ideological group loses touch with reality and society does not mean the ideas are wrong. Virtually any ideological movement has been associated with violence somewhere in the world. We cannot reduce the pro-life movement to clinic bombers any more than we can reduce the religion of Islam to terrorists.

- They say they are pro-life but then they support the death penalty or war.
Pro-life means recognizing the injustice and murder of abortion. It does not mean pacifism. Many pro-lifers are Catholics or even pacifists, and tend to oppose the death penalty and most wars. However, there is nothing inconsistent in opposing murder but supporting the death penalty or war. Abortion and murder take the lives of the innocent. The death penalty can take the lives of criminals and war can take the lives of hostile armies and governments. There is a clear distinction between them.

- They are just religious zealots; no or few rational people are pro-life.
Around half the US population is pro-life, so I really think that’s exaggerating things a bit. There are a number of atheist and agnostic pro-lifers, and the Libertarians For Life stresses the non-religious argument against abortion. Moreover, even if religious nuts do make an argument, that does not make the argument wrong – it just makes the people weird. If a religious nut tells you 2 plus 2 is 4 and an agnostic scientist tells you it equals 5, who is right? Sometimes a strange person can be right and a seemingly normal, intelligent person can be wrong. That is why we should look to the argument and not to who makes it – which is one of the basic premises of logic and debate.

- They use opposition to abortion as an excuse because they hate women.
Women are more likely to be pro-life than men, and women are more likely to be pro-life than pro-choice. We shouldn’t confuse this issue with religion or feminism – it is a simple question of murder. If abortion takes the life of a person then feminism, women’s rights, sexism and chauvinism have no place in the debate.

- They are just uptight about sex.
It is not about sex, it is about the rights of a person to not be killed. This is hugely irrelevant to the debate. One might as well say that pro-choice and pro-abortion people are all wild nymphomaniacs, incapable of love, intimacy or monogamy, and they abort babies so they can keep having destructive sex. Insults of this nature are completely irrelevant and harmful to the real debate.

- They think sperm and ova are human beings.
No. They have the same DNA as the parents. Except for a few extremely rare fringe people, nobody thinks that they count as independent persons. There are more people arguing for post-birth abortions (legalized infanticide for the first few months after birth) than even arguing about pre-fertilization gametes.

- Mostly men are making these laws.
Irrelevant; this is not an issue of men versus women. Every single Supreme Court justice on the Roe v. Wade court was a man, and the author of that decision was of course also a man. Does being a man make one incapable of sound judgment? Anyone can stop murder, man or woman, no matter who commits it.

- Men cannot have an opinion on abortion, only women can.
This is simply irrational. Do women who are incapable of becoming pregnant get to have an opinion on abortion? Murder is not an issue that belongs to individuals and it is not an issue that belongs to one sex or another.

- Doctors are not making these laws; ideologues or zealots are making them.
Doctors are involved in the crafting of this legislation, participate in the hearings on the bills, and actually pass them. There are a number of doctors in Congress, like former thoracic surgeon Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist –the Senate’s only doctor- who has worked to pass a number of pro-life bills, and former obstetrician-gynecologist Rep. Ron Paul, a pro-life Libertarian. So, doctors are actually involved at the different levels of pro-life law making.

Index

Pragmatic

- We need abortion to control any excess population.
Murder is not an acceptable course of action to control even the most overburdened population. Population control is no reason to kill people.

- Every child should be loved.
Yes, they should. Is the answer to kill them if they are not ‘loved?’ This is just an attempt to confuse the issue by making it seem like the child is not missing out on a good life. It is not our place to judge the lives of others and kill them because they would not really miss much. Being unloved is hardly a capital offense.

- Abortion reduces crime and poverty, and it leads to a better and smarter populace.
Social engineering is a horrible reason to kill people. If force-castrating retarded and ugly people led to a stronger, healthier, smarter and more attractive populace would it be okay? Eugenics has been out of style for most of the world (Sweden excepted, which carried on forced sterilization of undesirables until 1976) since the death of Nazism. We should not justify murder because we could create a ‘perfect’ race, society or population.

Index