"If the suggestion of personhood [of the unborn] is established, the appellant’s
case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed
specifically by the [Fourteenth Amendment]."1
Abortion: Right or Wrong? By Mark C. Jennings
Arguing moral issues in a postmodern, pluralistic and
increasingly democratic context is a difficult thing to do. Concerning abortion,
generally speaking, those who are ‘pro-life’ tend to be conservative and
more literal in their religious beliefs and those who are ‘pro-choice’ tend
to be more agnostic and/or ‘liberal’ in their religious beliefs. So the battle
lines are pretty much drawn, and I think the increasingly democratic process
will decide whether the ‘procedure’ will continue by majority opinion. Publicly,
the nature of the issue is now a pragmatic one.
Pro-Lifers will not be able to break through this deadlock by
stressing the humanity of the unborn. [T]hat is a question nobody is asking.
But there is a question they are asking. It is, ‘How can we live without
it?’ The problem is not moral, but practical.2
This being said, I will briefly argue from a religious
(and moral) context that abortion is unjustified, unless both mother and
baby will die such as in the case of ectopic pregnancy (thus failing to save
a life that could be saved,) that only God can take life because He gave
it and is always justified to take human life. I will do this by deconstructing
some flaws in pro-choice reasoning and conclude with a defense for the fetus
being a person and as such has a right to life. This assumes that man is
God’s image bearer, so man has no right to take what is not his without justification,
such as in the case where both mother and child will die.3 (Or in self-defense
or in a just war.) And that there is such a thing as objective right and
wrong since there is an absolute standard (God) and that man’s reason alone
cannot lead to morality.
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral
point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth
or ideo1ogy need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason
doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant
one. Reflection on it depresses me. .. . Pure practical reason, even with
a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality. 4
There should be no question as the fact that the fetus
is alive and is human in nature. "It is scientifically correct to say that
an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to
form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species
in all stages of its life."5
This isn’t what is being argued against by the pro-abortionists.
Their primary argument is that fetus, although human, is not a person; and
that there no moral obligations to non-persons.6 In doing this, the
pro-abortionists create moral quagmire by disintegrating the ‘person’ from
his or her body in which all sorts of problems arise in areas of sexuality,
bio-ethics and family structure since the body has been reduced to the mere
instrument of the person; and blurs the issues so that careful distinctions
cannot be made. (There are some who argue that social harmony is of higher
value than human life.) What is left is just how you ‘feel’ about this or
that particular issue. So without grounding human life in it’s intrinsic
value as defined by our Creator, we are left in the blurry world of pragmatism
where you really can’t know if you are doing the right thing until after
you do it.
It has been proposed that what makes a human a person
is the desire for life.7 So then if I happen to walk by when someone
suddenly next to me states that he wants to jump off the bridge and steps
over the railing to demonstrate intent, could I then push him off and not
be guilty of murder because he is no longer a person by the above definition?
And do not all sorts of creatures other than humans desire life? Are they
persons then?
Am I responsible for the child abuse that is done to children
who otherwise would have been aborted if not for my moral tyranny and lack
of progressive advancement? An argument was made by Dan Savage in Skipping
Towards Gomorrah where the ‘virtuecrats’ are ones responsible for the
breakup of the family when adultery occurs because we (Christians primarily)
say that it is wrong, so causing the guilt feelings that do the actual damage.
This is the same category of argument that I should feel (and be) personally
guilty for what others do. From my perspective, I should be morally guilty
for sanctioning through either silence (or support) of a morally abhorrent
practice for it would be my own choice for condoning something that is wrong.
Indeed, the difference between the positions of ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’
are as different as night and day; since our foundations are completely different.
The very foundation from which we begin with applies not only to the abortion
issue, but to all other moral issues that are intrinsically tied to it as
well.
The fetus has also been described as an aggressor (such
as in the case of rape or incest.) So then is it justified to kill the secondary
aggressor? 8 This removes volition from moral acts to one of mere position;
where the fetus is guilty of aggression because of where it is rather than
any choice that he or she has made; even from the perspective of natural
law, it is always wrong to kill an innocent.9 Again, the question of
personhood is the real issue.
Does another person have the right to another person’s
body, such as in the ‘woman’s right to choose?’ Do my children have a right
to be cared for by me and my wife, though it costs us to do so? Yes. Do I
have the right to do violence to them if they inconvenience me? No. Women
do not wish to have others impinge upon their person by violence or force
but in exercising their ‘right to choose’ are they not doing the same thing
they desire not to have done to themselves? "Abortion has something...in
common with the behavior ecofeminists and pacifist feminists take to be characteristically
masculine; it shows a willingness to use violence in order to take control.
The fetus is destroyed by being pulled apart by suction, cut in pieces, or
poisoned." 10 So ‘the right to choose’ shows inconsistent reasoning
with the fact that they do not want violence done to themselves but will
do it to others to have that ‘choice.’
Legally and morally we are obligated to care for our children,
the courts have consistently upheld this. 11 The courts have also upheld
that desire, or lack of, to care for the child does not absolve the parent
from his or her responsibility simply due to the fact of the nature of their
relationship. 12 The raising of children requires sacrifice and resources
that could be scarce, but this does not release the parent from his or her
obligation.
It has been argued that abortion is the mere withholding
of support from the child. What if a mother were to bring her child home,
lay it the crib and refused to care for it, would she not be held criminally
liable? 13 Besides abortion is more than mere withholding of support. "A
woman who has an abortion is indeed ‘withholding support’ from her unborn
child....abortion is far more than that. It is the active killing of a human
person — by burning him, by crushing him, by dismembering him."14 So
this argument is wanting as well.
So we are back to the question that all this leads to;
Is the fetus a person? There is a great deal of confusion that has been created
as to what defines a ‘person.’ I don’t think, in most cases, that the
woman who aborts her child, consciously believes she is killing a person.
As philosopher Francis Beckwith points out, "why do women only kill their
fetuses when confronted with practical difficulties, rather than their already
born children, if they truly believe their fetuses are fully human?" 15 Although
it could be argued that deep down she knows it because of the guilt feelings
commonly felt in post-abortive women. 16 So comes the crux (and constructive
part) of my argument, the fetus is a person.
Biologically, an individual sperm or ovum is not a person
in itself, but a part of the parent much the same as an individual skin cell
is. Sperm and ova cease to exist at the moment of conception when the zygote,
an individual genetic human being, comes into existence. When this occurs,
baring interruption, the zygote, will mature into a person like we are when
he or she grows up. I was once a zygote; never was I a sperm or ovum. (It
is true that some humans have not the normal 46 chromosomes, but this does
not make them any less human because they are missing certain parts.) All
that is needed is a chance to mature. "The embryo contains the natural capacity
to develop all the human activities: perceiving, reasoning, willing and relating
to others." 17
But mere consciousness itself does not a person make,
for if we were to place this as a condition of ‘personhood’ then unconscious
or senile humans would cease to be persons. This condition reverses the ontological
order from which consciousness arises. "Our ability to have conscious experiences
and recollections arises out of our personhood; the basic metaphysical reality
of personhood precedes the unfolding of the conscious abilities inherent
in it." 18 So this ‘potential’ is ontologically actual. This is due to the
fact that something cannot come out of nothing; personhood is already there,
just it is not being expressed to it’s full potential. Mere function does
not define a person; a person functions as a person precisely due to the
fact he or she is a person and is not a person just because he or she
functions as one. Defining personhood merely in terms of function is severely
lacking in accounting for how the functions of the person came (and comes)
to be.
It has been argued that the potential for human clones
creates such a difficulty in that all human cells which contain human genetic
material could meet the ‘pro-life’ criteria as being ‘persons.’ "Cloning
processes give to non-zygotic cells the potential for development into distinct,
self--integrating human beings; thus to recognize the zygote as a human being
is to recognize all human cells as human beings, which is absurd." 19 A self-integrating
person would come into being as a monozygotic twin (or a hybrid through haploidization
process) by the process of cloning a human, but this fails to take into account
"the non-zygotic cell must be activated by a process that effects substantial
change and not mere development or maturation. Left to itself, apart from
an activation process capable of effecting a change of substance or natures,
the cell will mature and die as a human cell, not as a human being." 20 So
then human skin cells and the like cannot be regarded as ‘persons’ just as
sperm and ova are not persons.
Since the zygote is genetically independent from it’s
mother, although the mother is providing life support for it, and so is not
a ‘part’ of the mother (like a kidney or lung is a part,) and since
the zygote is a human person in a very immature stage of development who
will become a mature person (as you and I am,) it is homicide to kill the
fetus by the procedure of abortion.
Viability is determined by current medical technology,
so cannot define what is or is not a person. Whether or not a fetus consciously
desires life or feels pain is not the question, for even the lower animals
demonstrate self-preservative behavior and pain response; so this is no indication
of personhood. As persons we have certain rights over the animals. Children
have the moral and legal right to be cared for; we all recognize this. Pregnancy,
childbirth and child-rearing involve emotional, physical, and financial sacrifices
of the pregnant woman (and on the father who should help shoulder the burden
as was originally intended by the establishment of the institution of the
family.) These sacrifices are inherent to parenthood in general, we
are obligated to love and care for our children. If we can’t do it, then
we should give them to someone who can. Abortion is nothing more than one
person exercising power over another person, to end that person’s life
because of an inconvenience, perceived threat, or someone else’s crime, by
taking something that doesn’t belong to you, human life. The decision may
be psychologically complex for the mother, but morally it is not complex
at all.21
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's
womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are
wonderful,
I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was
made in the secret place.When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written
in your book before one of them came to be. 22
1. Justice Harry Blackmun, "The 1973 Supreme Court Decisions
on State Abortion Laws: Excerpts from Opinion in Roe v. Wade," in The
Problem of Abortion, 2d ed., ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1984), 195.
2. Frederica Matthews-Green as quoted in "The Vanishing
Pro-Life Apologist: Putting the ‘Life’ Back Into the Abortion Debate" by
Scott Klusendorf Christian Research Journal, Volume 22 / Number 1
3. Walter Harrelson, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980) pp. 116-119.
4. Kai Nielsen, "Why Should I Be Moral?" American Philosophical
Quarterly 21 (1984):90
5. Dr. Micheline Matthew-Roth, a principal research associate in the
Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, quoted in "Annihilating
Arguments for Abortion" by Hank Hanegraaff. Christian Research
Newsletter, Volume 6: Number 4, 1993.
6. R.M. Hare, "A Kantian Approach to Abortion" in Right
Conduct: Theories and Applications
7. Laura Purdy and Michael Tooley, "Is Abortion Murder"
in Right Conduct: Theories and Applications (New York: Random House,
1989) pp. 157-166
8. Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press) p. 39
Right Conduct: Theories and Applications eds. Michael D. Bayles and
Kenneth Henley (New York: Random House, 1989) p. 135
9. Celia Wolf-Devine, "Abortion and the ‘Feminine Voice,’"
Public Affairs Quarterly 3 (July 1989). 86-87.
10 Dennis J. Horan and Burke J. Balch, Infant Doe and Baby
Jane Doe: Medical Treatment of the Handicapped Newborn, Studies in
Law and Medicine Series (Chicago: Americans United for Life, 1985), 3-4.
11. See In the Best Interest of the Child: A Guide to State Child Support
and Paternity Laws, eds. Carolyn Royce Kastner and Lawrence
R. Young (n.p.: Child Support Enforcement Beneficial Laws Project, National
Conference of State Legislatures, 1981).
12. Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick: Transaction
Books, 1987), 288-89.
13. Stephen D. Schwarz and R. K. Tacelli, "Abortion and
Some Philosophers: A Critical Examination," Public Affairs Quarterly
3 (April 1989), 85.
14. Francis J. Beckwith, letter to the editor, First Things
(October, 1998).
15. Rachel Richardson Smith, "Abortion, Right and Wrong." (Newsweek,
March 25, 1985, p. 16)
16. Andrew Varga, The Main Issues in Bioethics, 2d ed. (New
York: Paulist Press, 1984), 61-62.
17. John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian (Phillipsburg,
NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1984), 57.
18. Jed Rubenfeld, "On the Legal Status of the Proposition that
‘Life Begins at Conception.’" As quoted in The Clash of Orthodoxies
by Robert P. George (Delaware, ISI Books, 2001) p. 72
19. Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies (Delaware, ISI
Books, 2001) p. 73
20. Francis J. Beckwith, Answering The Arguments For Abortion Rights:
(Part Four): When Does a Human Become a Person. Christian Research
Journal. Summer 1991.
21. http://www.equip.org/free/DA020-4.htm
22. Psalm 139:13-16