I was talking recently to someone who was arguing in support of abortion. She used a couple of arguments to try to make her case, arguments that are often used by pro-abortionists but which I am sure are misguided.
In what follows, I
want to mention these arguments and say why I believe they don’t work.
A point about
terminology
Pro-abortionists, of
course, almost always claim that an unborn baby, at least in the first months
inside the womb, is not really a baby. I strongly disagree with that claim.
However, because this
article is aimed at convincing those who take a pro-abortionist position or are
undecided, it would be a methodological mistake for me to assume something that
those I am arguing against wouldn’t accept.
So, for the sake of
argument, at times in what follows I will refer to an unborn baby as an entity
or an entity in the womb, since these are terms that everyone would agree are
correct.
The argument
that appeals to viability
The woman I was
talking to used an argument that appealed to the so-called viability of the entity
in the womb, and it went along the following lines:
Up until about
22 weeks after conception, the entity in the womb would not be able to survive
outside the womb. That means that it is incorrect to describe it as a viable
human being. Therefore, it is not wrong to deliberately destroy it.
Firstly, it is
important to recognise that there is something very arbitrary about this
argument. If someone is going to say that the entity needs to be able to
survive outside the womb in order to be classed as a human being, why stop
there? Why not say that the entity also needs to be able to feed itself in
order to be classed as a human being?
A newborn baby, of
course, if left to fend for itself would die. To survive, it is completely
dependent on another human being to feed it.
So we can divide
things up into three stages. At stage 1, in the first months inside the womb,
the entity is unable to survive outside the womb. Then stage 2 is reached when
the entity is able to survive outside the womb but only if it is fed by someone
else. And finally stage 3 is reached when the entity is able to feed itself.
For someone to claim
that the entity is not a human being at stage 1 but is at stage 2 is purely
arbitrary. This is just plucked out of thin air.
If having a certain
level of ability to survive is a factor that determines whether an entity is a
human being, there is no more reason for drawing the line at stage 2 than there
is for drawing it at stage 1 or stage 3. Simply to assume that stage 1 doesn’t
make an entity human but stage 2 does is an unwarranted assumption.
Secondly, to think in
terms of the ability of the entity to survive in various circumstances is
completely wrongheaded anyway. As God has designed things, in the first months
of its life the entity is not supposed to survive outside the womb. At that
stage in its life it is supposed to live in the womb and feed through the
umbilical cord. And then after birth God
has designed that the entity is dependent on being fed by another human.
The fact that in the
early stages of its life the entity can’t survive outside the womb, or the fact
that soon after birth it can’t survive without being fed, are beside the point.
These things have nothing to do with whether or not the entity should be
classed as a human being.
The argument
that appeals to suffering mothers
The woman I was
talking to also used an argument that appealed to the suffering of some mothers,
and it went in the following way:
Some girls get
pregnant at a very young age as a result of rape. It would be wrong to force
them to go through the trauma of a pregnancy and having a baby they don’t want.
Therefore, in such cases it is not wrong to deliberately destroy the entities
in their wombs.
On this point I want
to make it clear that I shudder just to think of what these girls would go
through having a baby. I have no desire to treat lightly the horrendous suffering
involved. But nevertheless, I strongly disagree that it would be OK for girls
in this situation to have an abortion.
I asked the woman I
was talking to what her view was if a young rape victim gave birth to a baby
and was then deeply traumatised and strongly wished the baby was dead. I asked
her if she would approve of killing the baby after it was born, and she said
that she wouldn’t.
I then asked her why
she took this view, and she said that it was too late at that point to kill the
baby.
Her answer showed
that her top priority was not to protect the young girl from suffering, that
there was some other calculation that was even more important. In other words,
despite the suffering of the poor girl, the woman I was talking to believed
that it was just wrong to kill a newborn baby. The baby was simply too
valuable, and it was simply too late to kill the baby, regardless of how much
the girl wanted the baby to die.
But suppose, for a
moment, that what anti-abortionists like myself believe about the entity before
birth is correct, when we say that this entity is a human being. If that is
right, then it should be obvious that avoiding killing it should trump the
desire to stop the young girl suffering, just as is the case with a baby that
has been born.
So the issue of
whether the entity in the womb is a human being is the key issue. The issue of
the suffering of the rape victim, though very important, is not remotely as
important as the issue of whether the entity in the womb is a human being. That
is the key issue that trumps any issue of suffering.
The point I am making
is that the issue of whether the entity in the womb is a human being is so
important that it makes all arguments to do with the suffering of the mother
irrelevant. So arguments supporting abortion based on the suffering of some
mothers are completely beside the point.
What makes a human
being human?
I have already said
that the ability to survive outside the womb and the ability to feed oneself have
nothing to do with whether an entity should or should not be described as a
human being. So what does make an entity human? What is a human being?
I would suggest that
the answer to this question is really very simple. A human being is an entity
that has a soul made in the image of God.
Now, there should be no doubt that immediately before a
baby is born it already has a soul, and few people calling themselves
Christians would dispute this. But if it already has a soul before birth, it
makes sense to think that the joining of the soul to the material part of the
human occurs at some critical point. However, before birth the only really
critical point that exists is conception.
If we were to say that the soul joins to the fertilised
egg or embryo or foetus at some time after conception but before birth, what
reason would we give for taking this view? Why would we think that the soul
joins after the physical component of the human has been growing for a week? Or
why would we think this happens after 10 days or after 20 or 40?
Crucially, nothing critical happens at these times. But,
by contrast, the time the sperm fertilises the egg is a real critical point,
and this is surely the time at which the soul joins the physical part of the
human. When else could it be?
Thinking, then, that the tiny size of a human fertilised
egg in the first few days after conception means that it is not really a human
being doesn’t make sense. In fact, a human being with a human soul made in the
image of God is present, despite the tiny physical size of the entity in
question.
See also:
Does
the Oral Contraceptive Pill Cause Abortions?
How Serious a Sin Is Sex outside Marriage?
The
Arrogance and Hypocrisy of Western Society
