I posted this on my blog, but I figured it would go well on the Papists, too. I didn’t make any references to faith or religion, but my love of God and my love of the life he breathes into each and every one of us is what motivates me to fight for life.
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So I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately on the topic of abortion and how the unborn uses the woman’s body, and I just want to answer them all here. (note: “fetus” and “embryo” and “unborn” are all being used interchangeably here for variety’s sake)
oh goodness. you really aren’t understanding this. It isn’t about a fetus being inconvenient in the way a homeless person is inconvenient (??), it’s about a pregnant person having the right to allow and disallow the use of their body. In this situation, nobody but the fetus is violating the pregnant person’s right, so obviously the pregnant person could not remove, or in the hyperbolic scenario you are painting, murder them.
Abortion really is only about a person’s right to complete ownership of their bodies. Nobody has to share their bodies with anyone unless they want to. that’s it. I wish abortion wasn’t necessary. I wish that we had 100% effective birth control. But we don’t and taking away the human rights of born, legally recognized people in favor of protecting the theoretical and highly debatable rights of a fetus is extremely dangerous and sends a clear message to people with uteri; we aren’t that important
“You can’t deny the possible consequences of an action. It’s just not logical!” the person covered that in their ask to you. you seem to ignore the most inconvenient parts of everyone’s arguments. you argue that the baby is its own body, but you don’t mention that the baby is using another person’s body without their consent, which has been pointed out multiple times to you. i’d like it if you mentioned that the fetus living in the mother’s body every time you say it has its own.
“A fetus isn’t hypothetically autonomous. Its cells both take in nutrients and expel waste on their own. If you don’t believe me, crack open any respectable biology textbook.” Nutrients that the mother’s body supplies. And this still does not override the fact that you placed the fetus’s right to autonomy above the mother’s.
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it’s about a pregnant person having the right to allow and disallow the use of their body.
What about the body inside of them? Does it not deserve the right to life over the mother’s desire for immediate comfort? I mean, the mother has the right to life, but why should her right to bodily autonomy overrule the fetus’ right to life? You tell me that I act as if the fetus were more important, and I say to you, the life of the mother is just as important as the life of the fetus. However, the mother’s discomfort is a mere speck compared to the joys that a child can bring.
Yes, there is rape.
Yes, there is poverty.
Yes, there is abuse.
But are these injustices enough excuse to deny the most basic right of all: the right to life?
How can we deal with these problems if we can’t even accept and support the fact the life is precious from the moment of conception onwards? The unborn need love and nurturing, not scalpels and vacuum tubes.
Again, I know we live in an imperfect world filled with imperfect people who do imperfect things. The Holocaust happened. The Apartheid happened. Black Slavery happened. Human trafficking still happens. We do our best (or do we?) to help people in these situations, but we can’t even try to support life at the stage that is literally fundamental to the continuation of humanity?
Many pro-choicers claim to be radical feminists, and although I stand apolitical on their beliefs for argument’s sake, I find it ironic that you won’t even give some female fetuses a shot at helping you in your cause!
Those “clumps of cells” in there are not just clumps of cells. They’re biologically members of the human species, and they each have unique sets of genetic information (excluding the case of identical twins). No amount of “science” or rhetoric could disprove these points. In fact, I’d like to take a few seconds and quote someone on the proof that they are human persons, no matter what the law says. Remember, the law used to deny women and POCs personhood. Why should you trust a law that condones the killing of millions of human beings per year?
But I digress.
Here, I’d like to quote Dr. Peter Kreeft and his articulated explanation on why a fetus is a person:
Is a fetus a person? Well, is a teenager a person? Is an adult a person? These words—fetus, teenager, embryo, adult—are nouns that come from adjectives. Embryonic human: embryo. Fetal human: fetus. Infantile human: infant. Childish human: child. Teenaged human: human. These are stages of development. Of what? Of one entity. So what is that entity? Philosophically, it seems that that’s the crucial issue, because most moralists would agree that the first premise is true. If deliberately killing an innocent person isn’t wrong, what is wrong? So it seems that the strongest pro-life case would be to deny that abortion kills a person.
Or maybe technology makes you a person. If you’re viable—that is, if you can live outside the womb—that makes you a person. Well, viability depends on the technology available to keep you alive. In the jungle, you’re not a person; in a hospital, you are. That doesn’t make much sense.All right, when do you become a person? Is it a gradual process, or does it happen suddenly? It’s got to be one or the other. Well, if it happens suddenly, at what point? Well, according to the law of the land, it’s birth. When the doctor’s scissors cuts the umbilical cord, you become a person. Scissors makes you a person. When you move from one room to another, you become a person. When you move from your mother’s womb to the larger room called the world, that’s when you become a person. So the external environment makes you a person.
So if it’s not the scissors that makes you a person, what is it? Well, every biology textbook in the world, before Roe v. Wade, was not in doubt in answering the question, “When does an individual life of any mammalian species begin?” The answer is, “When the genetic code is complete.” When instead of the haploid ovum and the haploid sperm, you get the diploid embryo. And at that point, something happens that is totally different, because the thing that’s there seems totally different. Cells replicate immeasurably, and a pattern emerges, and gradually organs develop. Granted, there’s nothing like a human brain in an embryo, but a human embryo grows a human brain, and an ape embryo grows an ape brain, and a bird embryo grows a bird brain. So that’s a bird embryo, not an ape embryo. That’s a human embryo, not an ape embryo, even though it doesn’t yet have a brain and can’t think.
Well, maybe this absolute dividing line of conception or fertilization is too simple. Maybe it’s a gradual process. Maybe “person” is not either/or. Maybe you gradually become more of a person. All right, in that case it’s not so bad to kill somebody who doesn’t have all their systems in place, like a child whose reproductive systems are still immature, as it is to kill an adult. Does anybody seriously believe that it’s not as bad to kill an eight-year-old as a eighteen-year-old? Of course not.
Well, the process of growth and development doesn’t begin at birth, it begins at conception. And part of it takes place in the nine months in the womb, and then the rest of it takes place in the years after the womb. There is no point during that process where you see any absolute break.
Well, it seems like I’ve strayed from the original topic: “It’s my body, and it’s my choice.”
No matter who you think is infringing on your right to comfort, you have no right to kill them. If they’re infringing on your right to life, then yes, saving yourself is justified. I may made myself unclear in past responses, but “abortion” is justified if a medical procedure needs to take place in order to save the woman’s life (example: ectopic pregnancy—remove the oviduct and the unborn). The indirect consequence of that action would be that the unborn dies, but since the death of the embryo was not the intended effect of the action, it is not wrong.
Yes. It lives in your body. Yes, it needs your nutrients. Yes, it needs your love. What innocent human being doesn’t deserve to be loved? No matter how it got there, the unborn is an innocent life. You can’t justify its death out of spite for rape, or out of the excuse of poverty. Rape and poverty are terrible things, but can we kill off the rapists and those living in poverty like we kill off the unborn? One injustice doesn’t combat another. By aborting the human person, you have fought fire (sexism, rape, poverty, etc…) with fire (abortion). And what’s the result? Just more fire.
Okay, so last point. “I didn’t give it consent to be there.” But as long as you had consensual sex, you did give it consent to be there! Consent to sexis consent to any and all possible consequences of the sex act. It’s simply a biological fact that when a man and woman have sex, there’s a chance that sperm will meet egg, no matter how many contraceptives you use! The only 100% effective contraceptive is abstinence. And I’m not preaching that everyone should be abstinent, but I’m saying that birth control isn’t always effective.
What if people don’t know birth control is effective? Why don’t we give them comprehensive sex education? Why don’t we teach them about abstinence, birth control/contraceptives and natural family planning, and why don’t we educate them on the fact that sex in fact, does carry the chance of creating a new human life.
What if people aren’t willing to accept that if they don’t potentially want a baby, they probably shouldn’t be having sex? I’m going to get lambasted for this, but yes, you shouldn’t have sex if you don’t support the idea of getting pregnant. As human beings (as opposed to human doings), aren’t we more than just carnal desires? I’m not saying sex is bad either, but I am saying that we can act on it if, and only if we are ready to accept and support its potential consequence, i.e. a human life.
A human life is not something we, as moral creatures, can simply cut out with a scalpel and throw into a trash can. We’re better than that. And it’s not like abortion is the only problem, we have to deal with poverty, intolerance, rape and misogyny, and a whole slew of other injustices that this world faces. But how is killing a human being going to solve any of these?
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Notes:
- “consequence” doesn’t carry negative connotation, it’s simply the effect of an action.
- For those of you who want to label me as a self-righteous, bigoted, misogynistic pig, please refrain. I try not to ad hominem (I stand beside the fact that abortion is wrong and not the fact that abortionists or women who get abortions are evil. I don’t think that women who get abortions are evil.), and neither should you. I support the lives of both men and women, both inside and outside the womb. I don’t think you can label me as a misogynist.
- For those of you who want to read more of Peter Kreeft (or send him hate mail, I don’t really care), I recommend reading “Three Approaches to Abortion” or checking out the following link. It’s where I pulled his quote.
http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/19_prolife-philosophy/prolife-philosophy_transcription.htm
- Have a nice day!
