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
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