This paper makes the point that abortion is wrong without resorting to the argument, "Because God said so." It is not that God doesn't figure prominently in my feelings about abortion (since I am a Catholic, He certainly does). It is just that I don't believe pro-choice advocates will accept a religion-based argument, so I have written from a purely logical and legal standpoint.
Let’s start by defining abortion. For the purposes of this essay (and the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate) it should be noted that abortion does not just incidentally cause the death of the fetus, but rather the death of the fetus is one of the reasons for performing the abortion in the first place. I would therefore define abortion as, the intentional termination of a pregnancy when the mother, her doctor, and/or another knowingly performs an act that is accompanied by, results in, is closely followed by, or intends the death of the embryo or fetus for reasons not related to the continued life of the mother. “Abortion” comes from the Latin word
aboriri, meaning “to perish.”
Additionally, it is important to note that abortion is defined broadly as the arrest of development (as of a part or process) resulting in the imperfection of that process. In other words, had the process been left uninterrupted, the process would have been completed (or perfected), in this case, resulting in a full-term baby. It is only the arresting of the process that makes it imperfect. Pregnancy is a process of genetically controlled, natural development from conception, through birth, that ultimately leads to adulthood. It is the interruption that is the unnatural event in the process. Because of this definition of abortion as a decision to unnaturally interrupt the natural process of fetal development, miscarriage is not being discussed. Miscarriage is a sad, though natural, event.
Whether abortion is right or wrong now comes down to the reason for doing it. The question before us is, “Is there any circumstance where the interruption of pregnancy with the sole intent to end the life of the fetus is justified?” The answer is always, “No.”
There appears to be only two justifiable reasons to end a pregnancy before the baby can live outside the womb. First when there is a choice between the mother’s death and the child’s, and second when it is known that the child will certainly die before birth and cannot be saved anyway and the mother’s health is in danger should the pregnancy be allowed to continue.
Though there is moral justification to terminate the pregnancy in these two situations, this type of pregnancy termination does not fit the definition of abortion given above, because the sole intent of the termination is not to end the pregnancy, but to save the mother. It is the intent to save the mother that makes the termination of the pregnancy morally justifiable, though still an evil and a great loss.
So, is abortion right or wrong? There are a number of standard arguments pro-choice advocates use to sway others to their viewpoint. These arguments are spurious and sometimes even appear to be purposely misleading.
The first argument is that abortion is not murder, but is equivalent to killing an animal because the fetus is not yet a person. But abortion is murder. Murder is not based in any way on age or stage of development. It makes no difference, for instance, whether a person is killed when he is 85 years old and on his deathbed or an infant in a cradle. To intentionally take any portion of a person's life from them is murder.
The legal concept of murder is based exclusively on one's personhood, not age. In other words, it would not be murder to kill a dog or a fish. It is only murder if one kills another person. Pro-choice advocates argue that a fetus becomes a person when he has reached some arbitrary stage in development, most commonly when he begins to display “human” brainwave patterns, or when he has reached the point of viability. I will discuss viability later.
The brainwave argument revolves around the idea that until the fetus develops recognizably “human” brainwave patterns, it isn't yet human (or a person) and aborting it is no different than killing any other nonhuman living thing such as a cow or other "lower animal."
However, there is no consistent and generally acceptable definition of “human” brainwaves. The definition is entirely empirical in nature, meaning that brainwaves from something known to be a human are recorded. This then becomes the standard against which all other brainwave patterns are measured to determine if they are “human” or not.
Since it was adult human beings whose brainwaves were recorded, their brainwaves became the standard. Obviously infant brainwaves will be different from adult brainwaves, and fetal brainwaves will be different from both adult and children’s brainwaves. That does not make fetal brainwaves less human. (Had embryonic brain waves been measured first and used as the standard, you would not be considered human!).
No one can reasonably argue that when a woman is pregnant, she is carrying anything but a human baby in her womb (as opposed to a whale, a chipmunk, etc.). Furthermore, if a human being, in any stage of its development, does something, it is by definition a human action. If it produces something, it is by definition, a human product. One need only measure and record the fetus’ brainwaves and understand that they are, by definition, human, and suddenly the fetus is emitting “recognizably human” brainwaves. Therefore, the pro-choice argument in this case falls apart. Some would narrow this argument even further by requiring that the brainwave patterns be "adult human" brainwaves. This argument is also ridiculous because adulthood is not a criterion for murder. Everyone agrees it is murder to kill a child. So to require some measure of adulthood before it becomes wrong to kill would merely be another attempt to rationalize the taking of a child's life.
The previability argument states that it is okay to commit abortion because the child is not yet "viable." The argument of viability states that, "Because a fetus is not capable of surviving on its own outside the womb, it is not immoral if someone keeps that fetus from reaching the point of viability."
There are three problems with this argument. First, if one defines viability as being able to survive on one’s own, then it would be permissible to kill an infant, toddler, or preschooler since no child at these stages of development is capable of surviving without copious amounts of love and care from her parents. Since it is murder to kill one of these “older” nonviable children, it is also murder to kill a nonviable fetus, if viability is the only criterion. So the viability argument does not hold water.
Second, the previability argument assumes that survival outside the womb is the standard. Pro-choice advocates argue that if a preborn infant were hypothetically to be removed from the womb and is not capable of survival, she isn't "viable" and therefore doesn't deserve to live, or have a right to her life. But never in the
natural course of a fetus's development is she outside the womb. Why should this hypothetical, unnatural situation be a criterion for granting her the right to her life? I could just as easily say any adult who cannot survive under water for 10 minutes does not have a right to life. Therefore, if I kill any such adult, it is not murder.
Every organism on Earth has a certain set of environmental conditions to which it is suited. This is called an organism's "natural environment." If that organism's environmental conditions change, it will attempt to cope with that change, but will only be able to do so up to a point. Beyond that point, the organism cannot survive.
Some notable examples would be the Giant Panda which lives only in the bamboo forests of China, the Koala which lives only in the Eucalyptus forests of Australia, the Orca or killer whale, which can live only in the ocean, etc. All of these animals do live far from their original habitats in zoos, but in these cases, man has recreated the animals' original environmental conditions closely enough that the animal can cope. To put a koala 300 feet under the pacific or an Orca up in a Eucalyptus tree would quickly be fatal to both organisms.
A preborn baby is perfectly viable in the environment of the womb, but naturally, is not viable outside of it. To intentionally change an organism’s natural environment drastically enough to cause its death is to kill it. To do so to a human being is murder. To remove a baby from its mother's womb before it has developed to the point that it can cope with the outside world is removing that child from its natural environment and is murder.
Which brings us to the third problem I have with the viability argument (and with all the arguments that require the fetus to reach a certain stage of development before abortion becomes immoral), which is the noninterference problem. The viability argument should read,
"Because a fetus is not capable of surviving on its own outside the womb, and assuming we decide to interrupt the natural course of events in the pregnancy, it is not immoral if someone keeps that fetus from reaching the point of viability."
Pro-choice advocates are making the tacit statement that if left alone the pregnancy will produce a viable person at some time in the future. The very name "abortion" means to stop something in progress before it comes to fruition. If they did not believe this, there would be no reason to have an abortion in the first place. Therefore, by the very act of aborting a fetus, they are admitting that they are taking a person's life who would otherwise have been born and, probably, lived a full life as an adult.
If murder is one person depriving another of some portion of his life, and (as the pro-choice advocates claim) the fetus is not yet a person, but soon will be, then it stands to reason that pro-choice advocates are depriving these unborn babies of their
entire postpartum lives. Clearly this would constitute murder.
Then there is the "It-hasn't-been-born-yet" argument. Pro-choice advocates argue that abortion cannot be murder since the child has not been born yet and therefore cannot be considered a person. But they don’t explain why the point of birth should be the starting point of personhood. A person was considered to be legally a person in English Common Law (which is where our legal system largely comes from) when the expectant mother experienced "quickening", the first time she sensed the baby's movement in the womb. It is only because it is convenient for those who want to find some justification for abortions that a boundary for personhood is set at a point beyond which abortions are physically impossible. After all, an “abortion” after birth is a
non sequitur, and killing a born baby would be murder!
All the pro-choice arguments that require that the fetus reach a certain stage of development before the act of ending the pregnancy becomes immoral share a common problem. How do you define “person”? If one requires personhood to make an abortion illegal, then one had better be able to reasonably define when a fetus becomes a person. Clearly there is no consensus on this question. Some say this transition occurs at conception, others at the end of the first trimester, others at quickening, and others at birth. Some require intrinsic developmental states be reached such as when “human” brainwaves are detected, or when the fetus is able to react in some self-aware way. Since we cannot decide, is it not reasonable to err on the side of caution and set the boundary at conception? This would make sure that we do not accidentally, through our ignorance, kill even one person.
Besides, why should reaching personhood be the criteria at all? When the original concepts of murder were formulated, it was never considered that there might a "preperson" who could not be murdered because they were not "person" enough. Every human was considered a "person." The term “person” was used to distinguish people from all other living things, not one type of person from another (as for instance, distinguished by age).
Now that English Common Law definition of "person" is being reevaluated. For some, "person" now seems to depend on one's concept of another's mental capacity. A fetus is not a “person” until it displays thoughts/actions that can be recognized as “consciousness.”
Well, what about someone who's body is alive, but whose brain no longer exhibits consciousness? What if someone is conscious, but not intelligent? Do they have to be severely retarded or only mildly retarded before they are considered a nonperson? Where do we draw the line?
What if mental capacity is not the criterion, but a
perceived mental capacity? Haven't we gone down that road before? Hitler believed that Jews, Catholics, blacks, and anyone who didn't fit his idea of the Arian race were beneath contempt, good only for firewood. This was because he believed they were mentally and physically inferior to Arians. This is a slippery slope down which we have already started.
Obviously, any definition of "person" dependant on someone's mental capacity would be too vague and/or too flexible to be useful. Instead the criterion should be whether a creature is human or not. Obviously, a baby in the womb is as human as its mother (see above) and therefore should be afforded the same protection against murder that any other human is.
An argument could be made that it is ethically worse to kill an infant
in utero than it is to wait until she is a fully-grown adult. In our culture, it is considered worse to harm or kill a child than an adult. Partly, I think this is due to our natural instinct to protect our young and partly due to the argument that, "She had her whole life before her."
Is this fetus not still just as much one of our young as a baby in the cradle? Does she not still have her whole life before her? Obviously, the answer to both of these questions is, "Yes." If everyone believes that it is very wrong to kill or harm a child, then everyone should also believe that it is very wrong to abort a fetus.
Next is the miscarriage argument. Some would argue that because a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage, it does not matter if some are aborted on purpose, that there is no difference in a pregnancy ending through natural means and one purposely terminated. This argument is also fallacious.
First, just because it is possible that the fetus might succumb to some naturally-occurring event, it doesn't follow that we have the right to intentionally kill the child. The logical extension of this miscarriage argument is that it would be permissible to kill a 20-year-old man because it is probable that he will succumb to some naturally-occurring event and die anyway. This argument also does not stand up to reason.
Second, this claim is analogous to someone’s claiming that because millions of children die of a given deadly disease anyway, it is okay to infect infants with that disease in the interests of population or birth control. A similar analogy would be society declaring it permissible to kill X number of teenagers in the interests of family harmony simply because ten times that number of teenagers die in automobile accidents every year anyway. After all, parents have the right to have fewer children in their home and a harmonious home life if they so choose, right? Millions of teenagers die every year anyway, so what would a few more matter, right? Obviously, this argument is both morally and culturally unacceptable.
The next, and possibly most used, argument the pro-choice proponents advocate is that there is a right to privacy which an expectant mother possesses which should prevent the government from stopping her from having an abortion. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that though the U. S. Constitution doesn't explicitly state a right to privacy, such a right does exist. The right to privacy is "embedded" in the assumptions the framers made when they wrote the Constitution. Privacy is implied in many of the rights the framers specifically listed, such as the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and to be secure in one's "persons, papers, houses and effects." (Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution)
The right to privacy also covers things other than the security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" (ibid.) for example, lawyer-client, confessor-confessed, and doctor-patient privileges. In these examples, the lawyer, confessor and doctor cannot be required to reveal the legal, moral or medical condition of the client, confessed, or patient, respectively.
But, let's be clear. There is no law which protects a person from governmental reprisal when they commit an illegal act just because they do it in private. Just because someone rapes, or murders someone behind locked doors doesn't mean that the government and society don't have a legitimate concern with respect to it.
The pro-choice advocates make statements like, "It's my body. I should have the right to control what happens to my body" and, "I'm having a medical procedure performed and the government has no right to interfere in my private medical treatments."
These arguments are based on their right to be secure in their persons and their right to doctor-patient privilege. They either misunderstand their rights or are purposely misconstruing the meaning of their rights as stated in The Constitution to suit their own purposes.
Let us consider their right to be secure in their persons. The Fourth Amendment states,
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
As is quite plain, the Fourth Amendment is intended to restrict the government's power to search a person's property, arrest a person, or take a person's property without good reason as attested to before a magistrate (who then issues the warrant). It is not a license to do with one’s body what one pleases, without regard for the rights of others.
Often it is the case that one right will modify, regulate or even supersede another. For instance, everyone has the right to travel freely, but not at speeds exceeding the speed limit. This would be an example of one's rights being modified or regulated.
Another example would be the situation where one person attacks another with a knife. Most states have self-defense statutes which would allow the person being attacked in this example to kill his attacker in self-defense by any means at his disposal without fear of imprisonment. This is an instance where one person's right to live (the victim's) supersedes another's (the assailant's).
It should be noted that the assailant in this case gave up his right to be free from attack when he attacked his victim. It was his choice. No one forced him down that path.
An infant in the womb, however, commits no crime against the mother. The only reason it is being aborted is that its existence is inconvenient. Perhaps it’s because the mother is no longer with the boyfriend she was with when she became pregnant, or the infant is offensive because the mother was raped or a victim of incest, or some other reason dependent on the mother’s discomfort. Clearly, the baby's right to his or her life would supersede the mother's right to take that life if the mother's only argument was inconvenience or personal offense.
Doctor-patient privilege means that the doctor may not reveal a patient's medical condition unless expressly authorized to do so by the patient. This does not mean that the government cannot regulate the practice of medicine or prohibit the performance of a specific procedure. The government already regulates or prohibits many aspects of the practice of medicine including which procedures may and may not be performed. So, for a woman to say, "I'm having a medical procedure performed and the government has no right to interfere in my private medical treatments" is ridiculous. Government "interferes" in the practice of medicine in this way all the time.
It should also be noted that just because one may have the right to control what "happens to" one’s body doesn't give one the right to purposely damage someone else's body. It should be obvious that a baby in the mother's womb is not her body, but rather is simply contained within her body. If the fetus were actually her body, she would be in the impossible position of having two separate and distinct sets of genes, which biologists agree is what defines what (and to a certain extent, who) we are as individual persons.
Another argument is, "This is a women's issue. Men should have no say in it." This is untenable because it is not just the woman who is involved. It is not just a "women's issue." Every baby has a father. The fact of the matter is that pro-choice advocates only admit fatherly responsibility when they say that a baby conceived as a result of rape or incest is the reason for the abortion. The father was just as responsible for creating that baby as the mother and should have an equal say in what happens to it. It is ironic that these same pro-choice advocates who so blithely deny the father’s prenatal rights with regard to their child are the first to scream about dead beat fathers and nonpayment of child support after the child is born.
Another reason it is not just a woman’s issue, is that there is more than the woman involved, even if you discount the father’s rights. Clearly there is another person present, the fetus, who is incapable of defending his rights. The fact that he is unable to do so (a) does not mean that he has none, and (b) should ethically require us to vigorously defend those rights as we would with any other class of people who are incapable.
Some pro-abortion advocates claim, "The government shouldn't interfere." Why not? Our Declaration of Independence declares that each of us has an "inalienable right to Life," and the government "interferes" in our lives all the time to make sure that we all may exercise our "inalienable" rights whenever we wish. Thomas Jefferson defined government's role in this way:
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." Government should protect all of us regardless of age, but especially before we are born, when we are most vulnerable and least able to defend our own rights.
I have tried to cover all the misleading arguments that pro-choice advocates use to promote abortion. I hope that this article has helped to clear some of the fog surrounding this topic and encouraged the reader to look at the subject objectively.
It should also be noted that just because something is legal does not make it right. People of good conscience must hold themselves to a higher standard of conduct than the minimum standard the law requires.
