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I have formulated some genuine and honest questions that I have rarely if ever received straightforward answers to from pro-choice Christians. I ask these because I sincerely wish to know what you believe, and would love it if you provided answers to any of my questions in the comments section or by contacting me through my blog.
1. The Daily Mail Health section published a story in 2011 about baby Melinda, who was born at 24 weeks, weighing just nine ounces (not much heavier than a coke can). The hospital worked heroically to save baby Melinda’s life and succeeded. Why should it be wrong to kill baby Melinda at 24 weeks, but okay to kill a fetus in utero at 28 weeks?
2. How is it possible for two human beings to create a separate being that is not human, in clear violation of the law of bio-genesis (each thing takes after its own kind – i.e. dogs beget dogs, cats beget cats, humans beget humans), but later becomes one?
3. ABC News once ran a story about a woman whose father was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Having heard that brain cells from aborted babies could be used to treat the disease, she sought to conceive a child for the express purpose of aborting it four months later so its body parts could be used to treat her father. Do you see anything wrong with this?
4. Many online articles (The Economist, KevinMD) report that women in China and India are deliberately having ultrasonography examinations for the purpose of identifying and eliminating unwanted female fetuses (gendercide). Since you claim to be an advocate of women’s rights, do you have any problem with this?
5. Dr. William R. White, Director of Neurosurgery & Brain Research at Case Western University said, “The fetus within this time frame of gestation, 20 weeks and beyond, is fully capable of experiencing pain. Without doubt, a partial-birth abortion is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant.” Furthermore, the pro-abortion British Medical Journal, the Lancet reports: “The fetus reacts to intra-hepatic (liver) needling with vigorous body and breathing movements, but not to cord needling. The levels of these hormones did not vary with fetal age” (M. Fisk, et al., Fetal Plasma Cortisol and B-endorphin Response to Intrauterine Needling, Lancet, Vol. 344, July 9, 1994, pg. 77 ). Should unborn babies scheduled for abortion be given the benefit of anesthesia to ease the pain of dismemberment?
6. How do you balance your pro-choice position with your biblical worldview and to which biblical passages do you look in defense of your position? What do you do with the passages that seem to establish a pro-life position (Proverbs 24:11-12, Proverbs 31:8-9, Luke 1:15, Job 3:3, Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 49:1, Psalm 51:5, Psalm 139:13-16, Exodus 21:22-25)?
7. I’ve often heard you say that we should keep abortions safe and rare, but if abortion does not kill an unborn human child whose life began at conception, and if it is merely a blob of tissue or tissue potential to a human being, then why should we worry about keeping them rare?
8. If the unborn is not a separate and distinct whole human person, but is only a part of the mother’s body, then in the case of a male fetus, does the mother have a penis for nine months and then lose it?
9. A 2007 New York Times article reported that the majority of unborn children (90% according to this study) diagnosed with down syndrome through genetic testing are aborted. Do you have any problem with this given its similarity with the eugenics movement, the slow and deliberate elimination of those our society deems “unfit” to live?
10. Since you don’t believe that there is a human person present from the moment of conception, when do you believe the unborn child should be developmentally entitled to rights of personhood, if ever? What is so significant and unique about the stage of development that you selected that would make abortion permissible before that point, but impermissible after?
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Good questions. I would alter a couple for easier reading: > 2. It has been stated that the fetus is not a person or a human > being with protectable rights, therefore there is no moral problem > with abortion. So how is it possible for two human beings to create > a separate being that is not human, in clear violation of the law of > bio-genesis (each thing takes after its own kind – i.e. dogs beget > dogs, cats beget cats, humans beget humans), yet who, at birth, or > some other arbritary (sp?) time becomes human? >
> > 7. I’ve often heard you say that we should keep abortions safe and > rare, but if abortion does not kill an unborn human child whose life > began at conception, and if it is merely a blob of tissue or tissue > potential to a human being, then why should we worry about keeping > abortions rare? What concern is raised that would call for > abortions to be rare? >
Diana Gruber [email protected] As for me and my household, we will choose the Lord.
Hi Seth,
Solid points. I think your argument would be stronger if you expanded. For many Pro-Choice Christians abortion is ethically wrong but are wrestling with the following questions:
Is it ethically right for a government to enforce ethically right decision making?
For the sake of freedom, would society be better off for the decision to be made at the individual level rather than relying on the state to make decisions for us?
If you address these arguments in your posts I believe you may be more influential.
Sincerely,
Daniel Way
Hey Daniel. Thanks for the suggestions. I didn’t go that route because those questions and arguments that pro-choice christians wrestle with are self-defeating given that they are a huge double standard. Let me explain what I mean.
You will not run across any pro choice christian who will be struggling with whether or not we should have laws against sex trafficking because the government shouldn’t enforce ethically right decision making. You will not run into any pro-choice christian who will be struggling with the question of whether the issue of child slavery should be made at the individual level rather than relying on that state to make those decisions.
You see the double standard? The very people who are expressing those concerns and worries in regards to abortion would never dream of taking those considerations to the issue of sex trafficking and child slavery. Why? Because they recognize that child slavery and sex trafficking is wrong because it dehumanizes and victimizes human beings who are valuable simply because they are human and made in the image of God. And yet pro choice christians do wrestle with the very questions and considerations you mentioned BECAUSE they do not fully believe that the unborn child is just as valuable and human as the victims of child slavery and sex trafficking. If they did, then the very “questions” you brought up would not be in the picture.
I hope that makes sense, and it may be worthy of a separate post.
Yes that makes a lot of sense.
My only problem is determining when do we draw the line for the government to be making ethical decisions for us? If we only have laws protecting humanity after the crime has been committed, then it may merit having laws in place for acts that may lead to the crime. Laws against trafficking may merit laws against pornography, meriting laws against nudity, sensuality and eventually speech. My greatest fear, I suppose, is trying so hard to create a humane society that we compromise one of Americas greatest achievements, freedom.
Having a governing institution tell us what to do may not be the best way of dealing with the crime of abortion. Which definitely merits another post.
Thanks Seth
I’m not sure that the slippery slope you described would necessarily take place so drastically but I understand your concern. Ultimately, what I’m discussing is laws that protect our most basic freedom: life; of which abortion destroys and which sex trafficking and slavery ruins.
” Laws against trafficking may merit laws against pornography, meriting laws against nudity, sensuality and eventually speech. My greatest fear, I suppose, is trying so hard to create a humane society that we compromise one of Americas greatest achievements, freedom.”
And yet, you don’t find yourself wondering whether child sex trafficking should be legal, right? And this despite the fact that it could *possibly* lead to an erosion of liberty.
So what is the difference? I suspect it’s that you haven’t carefully examined the issue of abortion. For if you had, I think it’d be abundantly clear that it is an egregious violation of the right upon which all of our other rights stand: the right to life. It is an act which is ordered toward the purposeful destruction of *innocent life.* Just how can that be justified? Put another way: if that can be justified, what can’t?
Fortunately, there is a useful heuristic for deciding the kinds of issues that deserve and justify legislative attention. The government should legislate to protect individual rights (that includes the right not to be torn to shreds with surgical steel, the right not to be raped by an aggressor, the right not to be enslaved, the right to not have your property stolen, etc), and any excursion from that should be the result of careful thought and the establishment of a case that the curtailing of some specific liberty is required for the proper functioning of society.
Obviously, that leaves room for argument. But it is clearly superior to “you can’t *ever* legislate morality” (just what would we legislate, then?!) or “let’s exhaustively implement one person’s understanding of Biblical society.”
Hi Jared,
Protecting freedom should be argued that it is the best and most effective way of generating and promoting an ethical society. ANY erosion of liberty even if it is a possibility, frightens me.
Legislation has no track record in protecting the lives or even the liberties that you speak of. We have legislation in place against sex trafficking, yet it runs rampant. The same could be said for many issues this country is dealing with. The legislation may as well be nonexistent, yet it cries for more. You’re telling me that the only solution we can think of to prevent the crime of abortion is through legislation? I am shocked. Few lives would be saved with abortion being heavily legislated. Abortion would move to the streets, homes and backyards performed in secret and in unsanitary conditions. If this is your solution, I think we can do better.
The more our liberties become compromised the less we can do as individuals to stop the horrors of tomorrow. I seek to preach the gospel to those in need, and no where am I called to rely on the government to solve our problems. As a pro-choice christian I’m going to leave the choice to those individuals and pray that they receive the guidance necessary to make the right decisions.
I’m not going to congress to mandate them otherwise, I won’t even vote for it.
“Legislation has no track record in protecting the lives or even the liberties that you speak of. We have legislation in place against sex trafficking, yet it runs rampant.”
That is simply patently false. Over a hundred children and teenagers were recently released from violently imposed sexual bondage due to a nationwide FBI investigation, followed by raids performed often with guns at the ready.
You can argue that the curtailing of the “freedom” to “choose” child sex slavery — or the hypothetical curtailing of other actual freedoms that might be eroded in the process — *just isn’t worth* the freedom from bondage of those very real, specific little children and helpless teenagers.
But that is quite obviously a tough argument to make, and I’d implore you to carefully examine your position if an honest assessment of it leads you to oppose laws forced childhood prostitution!
“You’re telling me that the only solution we can think of to prevent the crime of abortion is through legislation? I am shocked.”
No, I’m not. I’m saying that it is one clearly potentially effective solution. If the murder of little innocent children was punished by life in prison, I suspect there would be fewer abortionists willing to enrich themselves with blood money.
“Few lives would be saved with abortion being heavily legislated.”
[A f]ew lives is good enough for me.” But I highly suspect that making abortion illegal and punishable by strict penalties will make it less common. Making it illegal would cause a huge number of people who essentially ignore the issue to reengage in the debate, to reassess the science and arguments behind it, etc. Unfortunately, those with the most calcified positions on the pro choice side are often the most ignorant (on this subject.. I don’t mean that pejoratively) as well, relying on nothing but euphemisms and corrupt slogans to defend their support of the legalized slaughter of innocents. But facing a titanic shift in legislation would surely shake some of them, and the massive number of more or less undecided folks, from their slumber.
“Abortion would move to the streets, homes and backyards performed in secret and in unsanitary conditions. ”
I hope that it would convince some mothers to forego the risks imposed by abortion-outside-a-clinic. Surely, *some* would choose not to abort in that situation. Fortunately, for those that did choose to abort, medicine and technology have evolved to the point that they are far, far less likely to accidentally take their own lives. But, in any case, I am unwilling to protect the hypothetical perpetrator of a crime if doing so requires us to allow them to tear their victims apart with impunity.
“Abortion would move to the streets, homes and backyards performed in secret and in unsanitary conditions. If this is your solution, I think we can do better.”
You misunderstand me. Making abortion illegal is but one of many things that we — as Christians — must do to eliminate this injustice. Preaching the gospel, counseling and education, providing support for pregnant women and new mothers in need, prayer, etc, are all part of a multifaceted strategy to reduce (with an eye toward eliminating) the purposeful destruction of our most powerless brothers and sisters.
“I seek to preach the gospel to those in need, and no where am I called to rely on the government to solve our problems.”
Thank you for your service in preaching the gospel.
I’m curious, how much time do you spend arguing on web sites or in person that murder more generally should be legalized, that child molestation should be legalized, that rape should go unpunished, that it should be legal to starve one’s child to death for one’s own pleasure, that private scientists should be able to kidnap folks at scalpel point for forcible experimentation, etc? Can you point me to any such discussions?
Or are you making an exception for this one grave and horrific injustice, and simply paying theoretical lip service to the notion that you are opposed to ALL legislation?
I have a hard time believing that a person as well-spoken as you would *actually* believe that we should immediately pass legislation legalizing all rape, murder, molestation, etc. Would you?
Sex trafficking runs rampant, does it not?
You may make me out to be a proponent of evil things like rape murder and molestation. That’s hardly the case, but yes I believe that due to the irrelevance of our nation’s legislation it would do us no harm in having it removed, thus as you say, “legalizing it”.
People prevent people from doing evil things, not legislation. Whether or not we pass legislation the problem of abortion remains unsolved and isn’t a step forward in the right direction. The problems of rape, murder molestation all remain unsolved. They in fact continue to grow as problems in society. Mass murders in the United States in comfortable places like a movie theater in Aurora Colorado tragically still happen. Chicago a “gun free” city scores high on America’s list of most violent cities. To me it appears that as freedom is compromised so is our nation’s well-being.
Punishment and death sentences have throughout the course of American history failed to deter the evil that lurks in our society. if we could eradicate evil in our society through the implementation of further more evil, we would have won the war a long time ago, on our own, without the aid of our heavenly father.
You may think I am speaking fantasies but
The righteous man and woman will get in the way of evildoers whether or not there is a bill. I hope to never see the day of righteous men and women only committing righteous acts as legislation demands.The righteous man and woman act freely towards the will of their heavenly father regardless of the governing institution at the time.
So help me God
I’m having a hard time believing that further conversation will be even remotely fruitful.
Let me ask this instead: are you a strict pacifist; i.e., would you agree that there is literally no situation imaginable in which you believe that one could be justified in physically restraining or acting qua physical obstacle to another person’s actions? I am having a hard time even imagining what could be motivating your position, besides that.
If you’re not a strict pacifist, then it would seem that you are advocating a lawless society, where so-called “righteous man and woman” spontaneously “get in the way of evildoers.” Just how can they “get in the way” of armed evildoers? What would these battalions of vigilantes look like? How would the be trained? What restrictions would you put on their behavior? Would there be trials?
I believe it best to continue the discussion another time, as the breadth and scope of our topics seem undefined. As I withdrawal from the discussion I would like to thank Seth for the opportunity. I’d also like to thank onceuponapriori and Jared for their insightful comments.
Regards,
Daniel Way
Thanks Daniel Way. I appreciate that you were willing to take the time to speak to me. I should note that “Jared Nuzzolillo” and “onceuponapriori” are the same person, me. I can’t figure out why it used my real name for one post and my moniker for the other. Oh well!
God bless!
I am really hoping to see some real responses to this. I think these questions are good ones and we really need to address them.
Solid questions, Seth. Keep fighting the good fight.
I will answer
1. The facts presented do not lead to the conclusion. They worked to save the Melinda because the mother presumably wanted Melinda to live. That does not mean the workers are implying that it is wrong to kill Melinda. We only know that they are respecting the mothers wishes.
2. Most honest, scientifically minded people should accept that at some point between conception and the first cell division — at the point that the genome contributions of sperm and egg are fused — the embryo is a new member of species Homo Sapiens, just as a monarch egg is a member of Danaus Plexippus. The question is: what rights does it have? Natural rights tend to be recognized as a matter of ethics to those who assert them. I have a right to speech because I can express myself. I have a right to property because I can work the land and convert it into something sustainable. I have the right to liberty because I do not wish to be a slave and I will be subversive under slavery. They are also recognized under a sense of empathy: I minimally recognize the rights I want you to recognize in me. I maximally recognize the rights that will not infringe on my rights. We do not recognize a childs right to property, dissent, liberty etc until they are ready to take them. And as children, we could not want them before we could demand them, so empathy was not violated when our rights were not recognized. Do we recognize a right to life for an individual before they can express a desire for life? Instead, we grant protections to children in the legal code. They tend to get more as they get older. Is it unreasonable that at the beginning of life, before they are born, they have no protections?
3. If one believes abortion is ethically neutral, then this is not a problem. If one believes it is a negative, then it may be a problem if it is more negative than saving a life. One has to wonder though: Who better to weigh the benefits and detriments of this decision than the father being saved, and the daughter giving the life of her child to save him? How are we better judges?
4. Again, if one believes it is a neutral, then its not a problem. But why focus on the abortion? Why not focus on what societal distortions are leading women to make this decision? In the western world, prosperity and equality have led to a lower birth rate without gender selection.
5. It seems likely that when the nervous system is coordinating with the brain, the fetus can feel pain. It is not clear that without some life experience, the pain is interpreted the same as what you and i feel, but why not be cautious? If a doctor or mother would be more comfortable with applying anesthesia, then why not? Tell me, do we apply anesthesia for circumcision? Or for slaughtering animals? If pain is the only rationale for anesthesia, then why not? And if the woman does not want to give anesthesia, what gives us the right to force her? Presumably we would be forcing her to ingest drugs that she would not want in her body.
6. My pro-choice view is based on a few balances: I balance the rights of a non-assertive underdeveloped human against coercing an adult human to carry to term. I balance the rights of that infantile human against the scope of a state it would take to force the adult to carry to term or prosecute her if she does not. I want to live in a world where power divests from the individual to the family to the community to the city to the state to the federal body. At each stage, power lessens in concentration. If the individual does not own their own body, then she is in some form or another a slave. If she cannot decide who gets to live in her own body then she does not own it. She may be a slave to God, and answerable to God over what she does with her body, but she should not be answerable to the state. She can decide who is trespassing in her body and who is not. I may not like it, but if my home is my castle, then certainly her body is hers. If somehow magically an adult human being with fully adult memories and cognitive abilities managed to shrink himself and attach himself into a womans uterus, I would still say she had a right as self-sovereign to evict him. Through dismemberment if necessary. God may disagree, but only He is her Sovereign in this matter.
7. Why rare. I believe most women who get pregnant, under normal circumstances, want children. If women are able to have sex for pleasure using contraception, if they are in a living situation that is stable and healthy, if their mate is loving and a source of stability and help, or if they are independent enough not to need a long term mate, then a child in most cases is a welcome situation. If abortion becomes frequent, then what I describe above is not the norm. We seek to make abortion rare by making lives prosperous and secure. Abortion is a symptom, not the ill itself.
8. The fetus is an individual human being, as i said before.
9. This is similar to the other questions which argue from effect. If abortion is neutral it does not matter the reason. If it is negative then it does. Personally, I would want my partner to go through with the pregnancy. I would not want a government getting into this though. It is a question of personal sovereignty. What we do with our own bodies should only be answerable to God, or we become slaves to men.
10. There is a person. It is underdeveloped. It has no language to think or speak in. It probably cannot express thoughts like ‘I want to live’, ‘I want to be free’. But it is human. As a result, Gods law may protect it, but natural law does not. The mother is as sovereign over that life as your Sovereign is over yours. She may kill it. God may kill her. But you should have no sovereignty over her body, and neither should the state.
James, the first answer I would like to respond to is number 2, regarding right to life. I don’t believe that the question was whether the unborn child had any rights. It was showing that the unborn baby is completely human from conception and not at some point later in time. You agreed to that, but then attempted to question the right to life of that child by stating that a person only has a right if they are able use it. You do not have a right to free speech merely because you can express it, nor do you have the right to liberty simply because you decided that you do not wish to be a slave. You have those rights because those “freedoms” were fought for. and Yes, we do recognize the right to life before that desire to live is expressed. It is actually a physiological feature, to want to live. I know you are familiar with the “fight or flight” response to emergencies, that is inherent in the human body. God is Sovereign.
Sorry, I did not mean to give you the impression I was changing the subject. I could have just said that I agree the embryo is human. I went further to explain why I do not believe being human is sufficient to give the embryo legal protection, or to recognize any natural rights for it, since that is what number 2 seems to imply.
An embryo has no fight or flight response. And a fetus does not any more response than a bunny I may want to turn into soup. But at some point, we become able to articulate our desire to live, and that is something more than any mere animal can do. That is not to say the fetus cannot be given special protection under the law; I just do not see how it has earned the natural right to life. And though it may have God given rights above its natural rights, God enforces Gods law, not man.
1. There actions imply that the value of a human life is exhaustively determined by whether or not some other second human appreciates that first human’s life. Fortunately, acknowledging that causes most people to experience cognitive dissonance, which is why it is so popular to claim — against all right reason and the deliverances of our senses — that fetuses aren’t human.
2. Yet, newborn infants, who are wholly incapable of asserting their rights and are, according to most scientists, not even self-aware, do possess a right to not be torn to bits with surgical steel. This is the most common (or tied for most common) problem found in intellectual defenses of abortion. Most folks draw the line for “legally protected personhood” at some arbitrary, ad hoc line that “just happens” to exclude the unborn, or (seemingly unknowingly) draw the line in such a way that it would exclude newborns and often even some adult human beings who have impaired faculties. But you don’t really believe that it should be legal to slaughter newborn infants, even prematurely born newborn infants (who are often younger and less developed than many of the late term fetuses aborted each year), if only their mother acquiesces to the killing. Right?
3. That’s true. But it might be worth pointing out that one of the reasons many people find abortion ethically neutral is because they don’t realize how ineffectual their answers would be to some of these other questions. The vast majority of them, in my experience, hold (whether implicitly or otherwise) to wildly inconsistent metaethical frameworks that provide them no basis for ethics whatsoever. Still, their God-given moral compasses can be set to spinning by exposing the poverty of their slogans and euphemisms.
4. [Same as 3, basically. Still, even some who *think* they believe that abortion is morally neutral, really believe that “it’s only desperate mothers in desperate situations who do this”, and are surprised to find that many women are willing to purposely slaughter only their daughters.]
5. Again, it is only in combination with other items that this becomes interesting to pro choice folks. If they admit, as reason compels them, that many (if not all) abortions kill humans, then it is likely that they will feel morally outraged to learn that these tiny, defenseless humans are being caused severe pain. If only for a moment, before many return to suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
6. The bodily autonomy position (depending on its precise form) is one of the few reasonable-seeming pro-legalized abortion positions.
I believe there are some significant problems with this position, but first I’d like to consider what the position buys you, *if* it is true, and if you are forced into using it as an argument of last resort (as I believe most intellectually honest pro-legalized abortion advocates must admit):
A. A mother who wants to rely on this argument, by itself, would have to admit that she is selfishly putting her own autonomy ahead of the life of her *morally innocent*, defenseless child. That, even though her unborn son or daughter deserves rights, she believes her right to autonomy is more important than her child’s health, well-being and even life. To me, this would be a massive win over the status quo, where women are convinced through propaganda that they are basically “removing a tumor.”
B. The mother would be required to merely remove her fetus, and would not be permitted to purposely slaughter it. When someone is transgressing our rights, we are permitted to do the minimum possible to achieve a cessation of that transgression. If a 12 year old is biting your arm, you’re not permitted to shoot him in the forehead, even if that is the quickest and safest-for-you way to detach him.
But many women are equally interested in annihilating their offspring entirely, not simply removing them from their uterus. So this too would be an improvement over the status quo. As technology progresses, we’d be able to save more and more of the “evacuated”/birthed fetuses…
So, at best, it would seem this principle would permit terribly selfish women to legally, but not morally, put their bodily autonomy (which in 93% of cases amounts to comfort and convenience) ahead of their child’s need to remain in the womb. For non-viable fetuses she would be selfishly passing a death sentence on a *morally* innocent child.
But I believe the principle, as you’ve stated it, is problematic.
C. Newborns are dependent on the products of their parents’ bodies for survival. Whether through the work of their muscles (and all of their metabolic organs, brain, etc), or, in many situations, the nipples and mammary glands of the mother, newborns put bodily burdens on their parents and their organs. Not only do we consider child abandonment morally wrong, we also recognize that parents deserve legal punishment if their actions cause their child to starve to death (especially if done merely because they didn’t want the product of their bodily exertion to benefit their children.)
D. Even if the mother didn’t *want* the child, *if* she consented to the sex (which is true in 93-99% of abortions), then it is a choice of her own (and the father’s) that resulted in the fetus being in a needy and endangered state. Imagine a box in a room, with a button on it. Its functionality is clearly labeled. Pressing the button 99 out of 100 times generates an orgasm and a feeling of well being in the button pusher. 1 out of 100 times, it generates a fully formed newborn infant along with that orgasm. Even if the person didn’t *want* to generate the infant, the knowledge that they might be generating an infant puts the responsibility for the infant’s well being on them. To deprive that child of its *only* means of survival is clearly wrong, and I believe that we would, and should, punish folks who walk away from the newborn, leaving it to starve.
E. Another thought experiment. Imagine a woman who goes hiking with her newborn. She uses heavy chains and a strong lock to secure the infant to her tummy. She gets lost and loses the key. After several days of being lost, she decides she no longer wants to carry the infant. It is slowing her down, tiring her out, and she is *slightly* more likely to slip while she is climbing. She tries to wriggle out the chains, but cannot do so without hurting herself or the baby. She could escape, but she’d need to break two ribs, and there’d be a very small chance she’d break her arm. Instead, she grabs a rock, and pulpifies the newborn’s body, such that the remains seep out between the chains, releasing her from the burden. Would you defend her right to do so? I suspect most folks wouldn’t..
This point further demonstrates the problems hinted at in (B), above. Even without really questioning the principle you outlined, it seems that it should be illegal for the mother to harm her child more than is necessary to remove the burden it is causing. But someone might object that giving birth to the fetus early, or carefully removing it, adds burden to the mother… Well, so does asking this mother to contort to remove the infant she chained to herself. It would seem that if it’s wrong to bash in the newborn’s brains to escape a burden, especially if it is a burden *she herself introduced* (as is the case with consensual pregnancy), then it is also wrong for a mother to use surgical steel to rip apart an unborn child (especially if she consented to the sex.)
7. I’ll not argue this point, much. I think it’s more of a rhetorical trick than anything, *when used in the wider abortion debate (e.g., against non-Christians.)* For example, it’s reasonable for folks to say that “root canals should be safe, legal and rare.” Rare because they are the symptom of poor health. To be fair, though, this objection absolutely does apply to many pro life Christians, who would not say that abortion is morally neutral, but object only to legislating against it. Many of these folks will admit that there heart tells them that abortion is unjust killing, and that is often what motivates proclamations like this one.
8. Thanks for your honesty. It’s rare in this debate.
9. This is irrelevant if the bodily autonomy argument fails to prove more plausible than its negation (and I think it does, quite clearly.)
10. ” The mother is as sovereign over that life as your Sovereign is over yours. She may kill it.” Unless you’re stating a conclusion from the bodily autonomy argument (which certainly doesn’t prove that mothers can *kill* their offspring, but only, even if it succeeds, remove them), than this is a mere assertion that should be rejected out of hand.
Okay, I’m throwing in my two cents. Seth, I think these are excellent thought experiments and the philosophy major in me applauds you. You obviously know your stuff. I would describe myself as a pro-life Christian, but I do not favor the legal abolition of abortion at this time. My responses to each of these questions would be in line with pro-life attitudes, the most central of those being that fetuses are human beings, beloved by God. I have no problem admitting that, and I believe abortion is a grave tragedy. But where I often become frustrated in the abortion conversation is when we forget that abortions concern, at least, two lives. The fetus is not the only person involved. Fetuses have mothers and those mothers have rights of their own. It is when the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus come into conflict that we have real ethical dilemmas.
I know that rape cases are brought up far too frequently and sloppily in these sorts of discussions, but when one in four women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, these cases are far too common. Thus, they deserve our attention. In the case of rape, the woman’s right to ownership of her own body has been violated. When she becomes pregnant, that violation continues, as she has not consented to having the genetic material of another person inside her body. Such ongoing violation often results in extreme emotional trauma. In cases such as these, to whose rights do we defer, the fetus or the mother?
Let’s explore another thought experiment. Suppose a woman were to contract a terminal illness during her pregnancy. Suppose that, in order to undergo life-saving treatment for said illness, this woman would need to have an abortion, without which she would die. In this case, the woman’s right to life and the fetuses’ right to life come into direct conflict. To whose rights do we defer?
Let’s try out an even more mundane example– a thought experiment that is all too real. Let’s imagine a young girl of fourteen. Call her Sadie. Sadie comes from a minority community marked by poverty. Due to enduring social and economic evils, Sadie has braved a traumatic childhood. She has suffered through homelessness, domestic violence, and substance abuse. She often goes to school hungry and suffering from anxiety and stress. As a result, she has struggled in school and has contemplated dropping out. Sadie has not had the benefit of positive adult role models, so most of her modeling has come from media sources. As a girl, she has been told both implicitly and explicitly that her primary value is in her sexuality. She becomes convinced that she is worth very little without a man. It is no wonder, then, that Sadie agrees to begin having sex with an older boy from school. Lacking proper sexual education and access to birth control, Sadie soon becomes pregnant. She has no health insurance, no way of providing for herself or her child. Sadie knows that, even if she were to find a way to carry her baby to term, adoption is a long shot. Most couples looking to adopt are white and they’re looking for white babies. Furthermore, adoption is extremely expensive. How would Sadie ever pay for a lawyer to draft adoption papers? Sadie knows that, most likely, her child will end up in foster care, a broken system steeped in exploitation. Sadie is distressed. She lives in a world in which her rights are routinely violated and she is worried that she has nothing more to give her child than the kind of life she has lived. And if she were to keep this child, Sadie’s childhood would be over. Her right to a childhood would be snuffed out completely. To whose rights do we defer, Sadie’s or her baby’s?
I’m not saying I know the answers to these questions, but I wanted to ask them because I think they demonstrate that the abortion debate is often more complicated than we make it out to be. Women become pregnant through rape everyday. Everyday, pregnant women are forced to make excruciating decisions about their health and the lives of their children. And Sadie is not just a thought experiment. She is real. She is the product of systemic injustice so total in scope that it has become invisible to people of privilege. I think Sadie should be able to have her child. I think it would be best for her, and, obviously, best for her baby. But we don’t have a system in place for helping Sadie through pregnancy and motherhood, just like we didn’t have a system in place to prevent Sadie’s pregnancy in the first place. Should we tell Sadie that she cannot have an abortion or should we develop the social and economic resources that would enable her to make the choice an easy one? Should we tell rape victims that they cannot have abortions or should we get serious about the staggering prevalence of rape in this country and work to prevent those pregnancies in the first place? Should we tell mothers facing death that they cannot have abortions or should we start spending as much on cancer research as we do on Viagra? I, for one, think there’s a lot more going on here than Roe v. Wade. There’s more to the abortion debate than the act of abortion and there’s more to being pro-life than defending the rights of fetuses.
As always, I am impressed with the depth and careful care in your thinking Laura. Thank you for being so thoughtful. We need more thinkers like you. That philosophy major wasn’t for nothing. 🙂 Allow me to try and clarify and even simplify the issue, though I clearly, clearly recognize the hard position these women are in and I am not downsizing that one bit. Allow me to speak frankly since we’re friends. In regards to your first point, which is sadly more real than most pro-lifers like to admit or deal with and which is why we need more christians to work with and reach out to these women, I believe the question becomes, does one violation justify another? I recognize you’re not making a defense of abortion, but rather a defense for the legality of abortion, at least for the time being.
Maybe a thought experiment on my end will help me clarify what I want to say. Let’s say that the woman who has been raped and struggling emotionally and even physically still decides to carry the baby to term. Within the two weeks following the baby’s birth, the mother decides that raising a baby is going to be a whole lot harder than she originally anticipated and though she still has a job, she isn’t sure she can make enough money to support herself and the baby, not to mention that the mere look of the small infant brings to mind that night she was so brutally abused. She resolves to quietly and quickly suffocate the infant and put her in with the trash. Now, should this mother be legally able to kill her newborn child for the same very real and tough reasons that we would allow her to use in obtaining an abortion? It could even be said, and I should have included this to be more fair to your thought experiment, that the baby is using the mother’s body (i.e. breastfeeding) for continued life, and the mother could easily rationalize that the infant is doing so as a violation of her own body since she never chose to get pregnant. And since we’re in agreement in regards to the humanity of the unborn child and its value in the sight of God, then you can’t appeal to a change in location (from inside to outside the womb) since the baby’s value was never dependent on its location. In other words, the baby is just as much human and valuable outside the womb as it was inside the womb. When you ask the question “To whose rights do we defer?”, you are essentially asking, “When a mother wants to kill her unborn child, do we defer to her “right” to do so, or to the unborn child’s right to live? I think you’re right Laura, when you say that we often forgot about the life of the woman and her own humanity, but on the flip side, when we always defer to her “rights”, we then dehumanize and ignore the rights of the unborn child. We need to hold both at an equal level, since they are equally beloved in the sight of God. So, another question: When one beloved person wants to kill another beloved person due to emotional, psychological, financial reasons, to whose rights to we defer? As I write and read this last question, there are warnings going off in my head because I know something is wrong: The question is ridiculous, because of course no one should be able to kill another beloved human being for any reason, especially when that beloved human being is your own child. Of course, the woman we are talking about didn’t choose to become pregnant, but again, the reasons that we would allow her to use to possibly justify killing her unborn child, we would never allow her to use to kill her newborn. I hope that helps clarify some of the seeming confusion and I think we can navigate and clear up these tough issues without dehumanizing the mother or taking her too lightly. I think we need to invest more money, time and prayer into pregnancy care clinics which provide FREE care to the women who don’t have the money; in fact most, if not all clinics provide free care period.
Regarding the “life of the mother or life of the child” cases: Just to mention from the get-go, I once heard an amazing, brave stories of a young mother who chose to not start chemo until she gave birth to her child. By the time she did start treatment, it was too late and she passed. Wow! I don’t even know what to say. What a brave, loving mommy. I’ve also heard stories of mothers who have started chemo while they were pregnant, and later gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby. What a testament to the amazing environment that the womb is and how God has created it to be a haven, and keep a baby safe, even when the mother is taking substances that should harm the baby, but don’t. Here is a real example of the sort of case you mentioned: Ectopic pregnancy is when the egg implants in the fallopian tube. As the baby grows, it will make the fallopian tube burst, thus killing the mother. So, if you refrain from doing anything, both mother and child will die. If you take action and perform an abortion, the child will die and the mother will live. But here is the difference, where as the intent in an elective abortion is to end the life of the child, the intent in this case is to save the life of the mother. The death of the unborn child is a foreseeable, though unintended consequence, unlike the majority of all abortions. Better to save one life than lose two. There are other cases where you can only save one life, but luckily because of medicine, we are often able to save both mother and child. It is only in the case of ectopic pregnancy where we KNOW we can only save one life.
In regards to Sadie, I would ask a similar question: Do the hardest and most emotionally and physically difficult situations justify taking a life? What if all we did with the thought experiment with Sadie was change the unborn baby to a newborn baby. Would anyone nod their head and look in approval as Sadie chose to kill her newborn child, even though all her tough circumstances were the same? No, we wouldn’t. That doesn’t minimize her tough situation, in fact, it means we love her more and support her, but it doesn’t mean we should stand by and be okay with a law that enables her to kill her unborn child.
In regards to your questions Laura: “Should we tell Sadie that she cannot have an abortion or should we develop the social and economic resources that would enable her to make the choice an easy one?” = BOTH.
Churches need to begin taking abortion seriously, and one way they can do so is to pour time, energy, money, and prayer into the pregnancy care clinics in their area which are all struggling financially to stay on their feet and provide the amount of care they would like to to pregnant women. Let’s pour into that so we can make mother’s choice to keep her baby an easy one, knowing that she would have all the support and money she needed.
“Should we tell rape victims that they cannot have abortions or should we get serious about the staggering prevalence of rape in this country and work to prevent those pregnancies in the first place?” = BOTH.
One violation doesn’t justify another. So, we should not allow rape victims to kill their unborn children, but we also need to take serious steps toward ending rape and serious steps toward how we treat rapists. In other words, let’s make it such that a rapist will never get out of jail again, thus protecting more women and sending a serious message to would-be rapists.
I know I wrote a lot, but I truly believe that abortion is not a complicated issue. I think what we tend to do is take the real tough and complicated issues that the mother is in and then believe that abortion itself is a tough and complicated issue. I think those are two separate things and that we can meet the tough and complicated needs of the mother without allowing or making room for the unjustified killing of unborn children. No one said its’ going to be easy, but we must protect and love both mother and child.
Thanks for your thoughts Laura. You’re awesome! Can’t wait to see you again soon. Oh by the way, I’m doing choir this year!! lol
One important thing to consider is that, although the rates of rape are high, the incidents of actual pregnancy as a result of those rapes is not. Plus, there have been those who have dared to ask the raped women if they WANT an abortion. The overwhelming majority said they did not. But they felt pressured into it because everyone else assumed that she should want to and that, if she did not want to, then it must not have really been rape. There are many women who do recognize that it is wrong to kill their baby. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The second wrong of murdering the preborn infant does not make the rape go away. So, many of these women, instead of having to deal with the single violation of the rape, now have to deal with the violation of the rape AND the abortion. When people talk about abortion being the solution to rape they make two assumptions. One is that every raped woman does (or should) want an abortion and that abortion has no side effects or trauma of its own. When a woman wants/needs help and abortion is the only thing offered her, she feels pressured to do it. That is not a real choice. A real choice is when a woman is offered support, even if it means offering a room to stay or help with bills and so on. But that requires sacrifice and it is much easier to offer abortion.
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I’m glad to see this, I had gotten into an online argument with a girl who calls herself a pro-choice Christian. I had to remind her that it’s defying the fifth commandment, which is “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. She keeps insisting there is nothing wrong with it. I’ve decided to not waste any time on her and that she will probably come to the conclusion she’s been supporting something that Christianity is strongly against. I agree with you, they never think about the fetus or assume we don’t care about the baby after it’s born. The problem with pro-choice is that they’re not bothering to take responsibility for another life, thus accuse us of being them: horrible people who would rather fight instead of seeing the error of their way. I’m not changing my mind about my pro-life views, but I’m not going to take it lying down when people try to justify breaking commandments.