Arguments and pseudo-arguments for abortion and replies to them

Alexander Blackstone

 

That abortion is illicit can be proved through this argument:

It is illicit to directly kill an innocent human being;

But the unborn is an innocent human being.

Therefore, it is illicit to kill the unborn.

It is a straightforward syllogism whose premises are obvious enough. However, that abortion is licit, at least in some cases, is a thesis that has been held with a variety of arguments. Here I will respond to all the arguments of this kind that have come to my notice. I will do it not because there are no other sources where to find this list but just to (a) make it easier for whoever happens to run into this blog and to (b) reply to people of flesh and blood that have held many of these arguments in discussion with me.

Here, then the list of arguments and their replies: 

 

(1)             Although I personally oppose abortion, I may not impose my opinion on other people.

Reply: This argument amounts to an abolition of all laws because that is precisely what all laws do, and especially criminal laws. They impose an opinion about what is right and wrong on all those who are subject to the legislator.

 

(2) Whether people may abort or not is not the issue of the politicians in Pierre, but only of the people involved.

Reply: all laws are approved by the competent authority, be it the legislators or be it the people in referendum. And all laws are imposed on the people concerned. That workers must have vacations or minimum wage are impositions of the legislator upon the employer and the employee, for example. There is nothing wrong about it. In the case of abortion, the right protected by the law is the right to life of the unborn, a right more basic than that of getting a just salary.

If a part of the population thinks that handicapped born children should be killed or at least it should be allowed to kill them; or that some dangerous ethnic minority should be suppressed, why are we allowed to impose our opinion on them by establishing as a crime any instance of killing an innocent human being?

 

(3) Only the woman and the doctors have an interest in the issue of abortion.

Reply 3.1: that is obviously false. The baby does not come to life by the woman’s egg alone. The man’s sperm intervenes as well. Moreover, the protection of the right to life is a matter of public concern. Since the unborn is a human being, the preservation of its life is the concern of the legislator. The reader may think on the protection of the life of a born baby: is it the concern of the mother and the pediatrician alone? Are they authorized to kill the baby and the legislator is wrong in forbidding that killing?

Reply 3.2: This is a hypocritical sophism because the woman could be underage, for example. If that is the case, not only the father of the baby has a much clearer standing in the case than any doctor, but the parents of the woman as well. Amendment G would allow the doctors in the abortion facility to wrestle this crucial issue in the girl’s education from the parents.

 

(4) The unborn is not a human person, he is just a part of the woman, who has the right to dispose of her body as she wishes.

Reply: Every human being is a person. There is no doubt that since conception there is a new individual human being different from the mother and the father. There is no serious person today who doubts that the individual human life starts at conception.

 

(5) After conception the zygote is just one cell and for a long time what you have there is just a clump of cells.

Reply: Since conception the zygote starts a process directed to form a mature human being. It has its own life with its own tendencies to fulfillment and the whole embryonic organization of the individual human being, including the DNA and the epigenetic configurations and processes. To deny that the zygote and the embryo are not individual living beings is biologically untenable. And, since they are the offspring of mature human beings, it is clear that such living beings are human beings.

 

(6) But those individuals are totally dependent on the mother, they are just parasites.

Reply: to be totally dependent is not the same as being a parasite. It is sick, actually, to give the name “parasite” to a being that is the child of the woman. A society that accepts such naming is in the way to collective suicide by lack of reproduction. Only for a foreign enemy that wants to wipe out the population of this country could it make sense, to call “parasite” the fruit of women’s fertility.

We all are totally dependent on the right environment and on our neighbors’ cooperation. Who can survive on the moon for a long time? Who can survive without a supply of the necessities of life from our fellow human beings?

 

(7) Aristotle and Aquinas thought that the individual human life starts after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Aren’t they serious persons?

Reply: Aquinas and Aristotle did not have the microscope. They did not know that the woman plays an active role in procreation, that she has a reproductive cell, the egg, which is actually more important than the male’s procreation cell. And they did not know that the zygote possesses a structure that is specifically human. They thought that week 12 was the important mark because they were able to see with their eyes all the specific parts of the organic human body. Today we know that there are specific parts of an organic human body from conception on, they are the parts specific to an embryonic human being, which possesses a natural teleology towards maturity, towards becoming an adult totally distinguished from the parents, and that is already totally distinct from them in its genetic structure and in all the other aspects of its being.

 

(8) If a zygote is a living being, the egg and the sperm are so, too. But it is absurd to hold that they have the right to life. Moreover, there are many natural miscarriages. The world would be a very cruel place if every miscarriage means the death of an innocent human being.

Reply: the egg and the sperm are not new individual human beings. They are just reproductive cells of the parents. But if a sperm fertilizes the egg and is fused to it to form a zygote, then, something marvelous begins. It is the formation of a new individual of the human species.

I think that the number of spontaneous miscarriages is exaggerated by those who defend abortion, although nowadays it may be much higher than in past ages because the contraceptive pill produces sometimes a hardening of the uterus that makes more difficult the nestling of the embryo. However, the argument is immaterial in the discussion concerning abortion because we are examining whether it is licit for a human being to kill an innocent human being, we are not discussing why God allows that many embryos die naturally.

 

(9) But if it is true that the zygote and the embryo are human beings, then, how is it possible that the cells in early stages of pregnancy can divide in a way that twins are formed?

Reply: All living beings can reproduce sexually or asexually. Many plants, many worms, bacteria and so on can reproduce asexually during their whole lives. Mammals, however, normally reproduce sexually. There is only one exception, the division of the zygote that produces twins. Art imitates nature. So, cloning imitates conception; de-differentiation of the cell nucleus imitates the production of twins.

 

(10) The zygote is a human being alright, but it is not a person. Peter Singer has shown this point very well.

Singer acknowledges that the unborn are human beings. But, since he is ideologically committed to abortion, he justifies it by claiming that it is not always illicit to kill a human being. He goes as far as to say that not only abortion is licit and right, but also infanticide is licit and right up to the time in which the child turns one year and a half. This opinion that not all human beings are persons is what led to the huge mass murders of the 20^th century committed by the totalitarian tyrannies. However, that is the internal logic of abortion: if you break the principle that it is illicit to kill an innocent human being, where do you stop?

 

(11) The fetus is a human being alright, but the woman is not obliged to be connected to it for nine months so that it can live. It is a stranger to her who happens to be in her way against her will, why should her be obliged to assist it?

This argument intends to present an act of unjust killing as if it was an act of justified omission of assistance. If a person is walking on the street and suddenly some paramedics and firefighters call her and ask her to lie down on a stretcher so that they can connect some tubes to her belly in such a way that she would be for nine months supporting the life of a stranger now lying of the street who otherwise would die, is she obliged to submit herself to such procedure? The argument wants to equate this situation to the normal pregnancy of a woman. So, the interruption of the natural process of pregnancy (and often the burning and dismembering of the fetus) is equated to the refusal to being connected to a stranger for nine months in order to save the stranger’s life. So, it is a trick that aims at equating an act of killing and an act of justified omission of assistance. Think about it: if a mother stops feeding her baby, is she killing it or just not assisting it?

Besides the equation of direct killing with omission of assistance, the argument also attempts to destroy the natural connection between the woman and her baby. On this sense, the argument has something very unnatural about it. In a case like that proposed by the argument, I would have to answer to the paramedics and firefighters that I can’t spend 9 months like that, since my first duty is towards my family. But, what if the person lying on the ground is not a stranger, but my son? Well, I would accept the connection. Love must be ordered. The child in the womb is not a stranger, but a son or a daughter. It is absolutely evil to attempt to devaluate the natural bond of consanguinity, which exists even if we would like to eliminate it.

 

(12) Are you so extreme as to hold that human life begins at conception?

Naming names is not an argument. Whether the zygote is a human being or not is not a matter of being ‘extreme’ or ‘moderate,’ but an ontological matter that must be established rationally.

 

(13) If it is illicit to directly kill innocent human beings, who can tell who the innocent human beings are? You, pro-lifers support wars, and weapons and the death penalty.”

Reply: What this argument does is to confound and mix everything. Discussions about morality and law must avoid mixing everything up. The answer to the relevant concrete question is that all are innocent until found guilty of a crime by the competent criminal court. Since the zygote or the embryo or the fetus is a human being, it is illicit to directly kill it, because it is obvious that he or she has not committed any crime punishable by human law with death.

 

(14) But South Dakota’s laws do not even protect the life of the woman. Don’t we have to allow abortion so that women whose life is in danger can be saved through abortion?

Reply: First of all, nobody in the whole history of medicine has ever thought that indirectly killing a zygote, embryo or fetus is an illicit action. What do I mean? I mean that if the mother has a true medical condition that seriously threatens her life, such condition may be attended by the doctors in the best way to prevent her death, even if they know that doing so might (or even almost certainly will) cause the death of the zygote, embryo or fetus. A common case that all doctors encounter is that of the ectopic pregnancy. There is no moral doctrine that forbids removing the sick trump so as to prevent the deadly bleeding of the mother, even if the embryo will die. Some doctors wait as long as possible, just in case the embryo migrates, but nobody holds that such removal is illicit. The reason is because the intent is not to kill the baby, but to heal the mother. The death of the embryo is a collateral damage. Other examples might be mothers with intermediate cancer who cannot wait to be treated after all the months of pregnancy remaining. They may choose to be treated, although they know that the baby will probably die. Of course, there are mothers who choose to wait so that the baby can live, but they are not obliged to do so.

Besides, the 1877 South Dakotan law that banned abortion established that abortion is punishable “unless the same is necessary to preserve her [the woman’s] life.”

 

(15) It is cruel to criminalize women who, in desperation, or pressed by compelling circumstances, enter an abortion facility and are subjected to the procedure of abortion.

Reply: according to Samuel Buell the woman who suffered an abortion was not punished by either the state’s laws or the state’s courts of the United States, before or after Roe vs. Wade. Only the doctor or other person who killed the baby were treated as serious felons. So, the criminal laws that punish abortion usually go against the “health care” provider who refuses to live up to the Hippocratic oath that should guide his or her actions: “I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.” And punishing such professionals is very fitting because they are corrupting the very foundations of the medical profession.

However, in some cases it might be just to punish the woman, if she is not underage and if she was not pressed by extenuating circumstances.

 

(16) Women will never be free if they may not abort.

Reply: This kind of “freedom” that the abortionist seek is a mirage full of malignity. We all have duties and must serve others. And we all have passions such as pride, disorderly self-love and anger that oppose those duties. To encourage a person to break those duties in the most thorough way (by killing the subject to whom she owes care and love) and to free those passions is actually to push her towards enslavement. Our forefathers knew that real freedom was really self-possession, the rule of reason over such passions by responsibly fulfilling one’s duties.

If a woman, trapped by fear, pushed often by an irresponsible boyfriend, submits to the snares of the abortionist, she often gets entangled in a network of serfdom and despair, due to the unacknowledged guilt. She often becomes a furious abortionist in a futile attempt to suppress guilt. The only way to recover real freedom is repentance and conversion.

 

(17) Women will never be equal to men if they may not abort.

Reply: women and men have the same fundamental dignity. They are, however, different. This is the kind of diversity that should be promoted, which is ingrained in nature and reflects God’s loving plans for humanity. This diversity is the corner stone of the family, which is the institution in which children are properly welcome to this world.

The kind of “equality” promoted by abortion is a concept whose origin is Marxism and other crooked religious beliefs. A country that accepts this notion is doomed because it will have less children than the replacement rate and they will often be received in an environment far worse than the one offered by the natural family. I actually think that it is our foreign enemies who actually promote the ideology of abortion, in order to weaken the United States.

 

(18) If a woman has been raped, she should be allowed to kill her baby.

Reply: a rape is a very traumatic experience, precisely because sex is not a toy but a sacred reality, the natural way to conceive a new person, an immortal being. But that new person is not guilty of the rape and to direct the thirst for vengeance of the woman against the innocent is to misdirect her lower passions. The process of healing from rape requires to recover self-possession and the awareness that one (the woman) has done nothing wrong, she has just suffered a crime. It is not the evil that we suffer that defiles us but the evil that we do. For this reason, to misdirect the lower passions and push the woman to kill an innocent person is not helping her to recover self-possession but to deepen the wound in her soul. It is true that to have to raise that child in some cases might be for the woman a constant and unhealthy remembrance of the traumatic event. So, in some cases it could be good to give that child in adoption. But this is often not the case. Women who face reality and give their love to the innocent and are able to forgive even the offender (who must be punished for his own good and the good of society) heal better. It is actually a totally non-Christian and inhumane outlook the one that seeks to unleash revenge even against the innocent.

 

(19) The woman who has a non-viable baby should be able to kill it in order to avoid the traumatic experience of giving birth to a dead child or a child that will live for a very short time.

Reply: human beings have such dignity that what most profoundly harms them is not to suffer a disgrace but to commit a crime. To kill in cold blood a child because it is not viable is a crime, even if criminal law does not punish it. We all are doomed to die, but we are not the lords of life and death. God is. Some doctors today want to be the lords of life and death, but they are violating their fundamental Hippocratic oath: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”

 

(20) The woman whose health is in the line should be able to kill her baby if it threatens her health.

Reply: The abortionists use this reasoning to introduce a wedge through which abortion can penetrate the legal system. “Health” is understood by them in an ever-expanding way. The truth of this matter is that abortion is illicit when it is “direct” and licit when it is “indirect” and proportionate. Nobody in the whole history of medicine has ever thought that indirectly killing a zygote, embryo or fetus for proportionate reasons is an illicit action. What do I mean? I mean that if the mother has a true medical condition that seriously threatens her life, such condition may be attended by the doctors in the best way to prevent her death, even if they know that doing so might (or even almost certainly will) cause the death of the zygote, embryo or fetus. A common case that all doctors encounter is that of the ectopic pregnancy. There is no moral doctrine that forbids removing the sick trump so as to prevent the deadly bleeding of the mother, even if the embryo will die. Some doctors wait as long as possible, just in case the embryo migrates, but nobody holds that such removal is illicit. The reason is because the intent is not to kill the baby, but to heal the mother. The death of the embryo is a collateral damage. Other examples might be mothers with intermediate cancer who cannot wait to be treated after all the months of pregnancy remaining. They may choose to be treated, although they know that the baby will probably die. Of course, there are mothers who choose to wait so that the baby can live, but they are not obliged to do so. (The last part was copied from reply number 14.)

 

(21) The poor should be able to kill the children they cannot properly educate.

Reply: This is perhaps the most evil and hypocritical of all the “reasons” given in favor of a abortion. We may call it the masked eugenic “reason.” It masks under the guise of compassion the belief that the lives of the poor do not have the same fundamental dignity that the lives of the rich have. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and of the war against birth in the United States and the whole world, wrote: “The ministers [sic] work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we wish to reach. We don’t want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members” (letter to Clarence Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939, cited by Angela Franks, Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy [Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005], p. 43).

This is not to deny that some times women in poverty might find themselves in a tight situation. Society should try to lend a hand to such women and their children. But killing those children is not really the solution.

 

(22) To ban abortion is to violate the separation of church and state and to impose one’s religion unto others.

This is an arbitrary statement. The issues at stake are one principle and one judgment. The principle is: “it is illicit to directly kill an innocent human being.” This principle translates into ethical language the legal principle enshrined as the “right to life.” This is a fundamental principle of the US Constitution, even more fundamental than the non-confessionality of the state. Moreover, this ethical principle does not belong to any particular religion, it must be known by the right reason of any human being.

The judgment is about whether the unborn is or is not a human being. This judgment belongs to natural reason as well. So, this argument is just a smoke screen to hide that there is no real argument for abortion.