Abortion: Philosophical Arguments

INTRODUCTION

What's contained in this post was originally presented alongside with the previous post (Abortion: A Scientific Argument). But for the sake of not making these monstrous in length, we'll break the into two parts. In this one, we'll consider some philosophical elements to the abortion debate.

IS IT HUMAN?

I once had the pro-life versus pro-choice discussion with an atheist. One of the points I made in our discussion was that an unborn baby is scientifically alive. This was his response: "Yes, it may be alive. But it is not human. It is a fetus."

How do we address this?

First, I believe that the burden of proof rests on people who make this claim. In other words, how do we know it's NOT a human? Common sense would say that there's no reason for us to think it was anything else. It's not like it's a cow or a weasel or a plant. It seems obvious that it's a human. Those who think otherwise should consider their reasons and be able to produce evidence to back up their strange claim.

But secondly, this sounds like a cop-out to me. Think about this for a second. If you were a proponent of abortion, but knew that a fetus was scientifically alive, what would you do to keep yourself from feeling bad about your worldview? Well, one option would be to simply dismiss the humanness of the baby, right? If you can explain away the fact that it's a human, you can continue to justify your stance. Thus, this seems to be less about explaining reality and more about reshaping reality to fit a pre-determined worldview.

As my conversation continued with this atheist, he explained to me what it means to be human. What he told me that in order to be human, "you must be able to survive on your own outside of the mother's womb." Now first of all, this is a very convenient definition since it eliminates the possibility of being alive inside the womb since it restricts humanness to "outside the womb." But beyond that, this ideology opens a dangerous can of worms as you may have already begun to realize. For example, some born babies can't survive on their own. Does that mean their not human? People who are on life-support can't survive on their own, are they human? A rhino can survive outside the mother's womb. Is it human? Reducing humanness to the ability to survive just doesn't seem to hold water.

THE DESTRUCTION OF POTENTIAL

Finally, consider this. You may have heard a version of this before.

"The grandmother is an alcoholic and the father spends his evenings out drinking in the taverns. The mother has tuberculosis. She has already given birth to four children. The first child is blind, the second child died, the third child is deaf, and the fourth child has tuberculosis. Now the mother is pregnant again. Given the extreme situation, would you recommend an abortion? If you said yes, you have just killed the famous composer, Ludwig van Beethoven!"

Now, from some things I read, the facts of Beethoven's family mentioned above may not be entirely correct. However, the point still stands. Potential is destroyed when an abortion takes place. Potential family members, friends, teachers, artists, athletes, politicians, and others are lost when you end a person's life.

This is simply another angle to look at this issue. It simply doesn't make a lot of sense to advocate abortions.

CONCLUSIONS

1. An unborn baby IS a human.
2. Abortion eliminates people    people with potential.

Abortion: A Scientific Argument

INTRODUCTION

As we continue with our discussion of abortion, we're going to look at a scientific argument to validate our stance that abortion is wrong and equal to murder.

THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR LIFE

One of the arguments proponents of abortion use is the idea that unborn babies are not even alive and aren't alive until they are born. Last time we made it clear that as Christians, we are to hold life in high regard. However, if a baby in the womb is not alive, then abortion cannot possibly be murder. Consequently, we must know whether or not an unborn baby is alive and at what point it does become living being.

An examination into the biological qualifications for life will result in various criteria that must be met. Some say there are x number of qualifiers while others say there are y number of qualifiers. But when you examine all of them and boil them down to their basic components, I believe there are 6 consistent themes. For a creature to be considered alive, it must
(1) be composed of cells,
(2) have levels of organization,
(3) take in and use energy,
(4) respond to stimuli or its environment,
(5) grow,
and (6) reproduce.

Let's look at these individually and see if they applies at conception.

(1) A living organism must be composed of cells. This one is pretty clear. We know that at conception, the fetus is composed of cells.

(2) A living organism must have levels of organization. Levels of organization would include layers such as tissue, organs, organ systems, etc. Obviously a fetus has distinct organs and organ systems later in development. But what about early in it's development. Well, consider this. We know that single-celled bacteria are alive, right? Right. Even though they are composed of a single cell, they have levels of organization such as the plasma membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus, etc. Thus, at conception, a fetus is composed of cells that have levels of organization. Therefore, it meets this criteria.

(3) A living organism must be able to take in and use energy. As you should know, at fertilization, the fetus begins taking in nutrition from the mother and converting that into energy used to grow. If it did not do this, it would never grow.

(4) A living organism must be able to respond to stimuli or to its environment. There are several examples that we can point to that demonstrate that this is true for an unborn baby. First, it has been observed that babies do respond to the pain that comes from some forms of abortion. Second, unborn babies are able to respond to their mother's voice. Thirdly, from day 1, the baby has the ability to protect itself from harmful substances. An example of this would be that if a mother uses drugs while pregnant, the baby does have the ability to protect itself and survive. Does it always succeed? No. But it does have that ability beginning at fertilization.

(5) A living organism must be able to grow. This is clearly true for a fetus beginning at conception.

(6) A living organism must be able to reproduce. Obviously an unborn baby cannot produce viable offspring. Does this mean it fails this last criteria? Let's think a little bit deeper by considering another creature. A mule is the result of a horse and a donkey mating. However, mules cannot produce viable offspring. Does that mean the mule is dead? No. What qualifies it is the simple fact that it's living cells reproduce themselves. This is the case in all large creatures: their cells are continually reproducing in order to grow and/or replace dead cells. When it comes to a fetus, we know that it's cells are reproducing as that is the cause for it's growth. So even though at first glass, this seems to be the killing criteria, a fetus meets this one too.

CONCLUSION

All of these are true on day 1! Therefore, life begins at conception. What does this mean? It means that an unborn baby is just as alive as a full-grown human and therefore deserves the same right to protection of it's life as anyone else.