Abortion: Right or Wrong?

An Essay Based on Legal and Logical Arguments

By: Steve AuBuchon

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There are emotional and religious arguments for both sides of this issue, but I will make the argument for my cause on purely logical grounds because, I do not believe that Pro-choice advocates will listen to a religious argument. They often try to argue that their point of view is correct because it is logical or "makes sense", but their logic is flawed.

I believe that abortion is, in general, wrong. However, I believe an argument could be made that, in the singular case where both the mother and child will definitely die unless the child is aborted to save the mother, it could be morally justified. But, that does not mean that it is not a sad thing when an unborn child dies. It should also be noted that even in this very narrow case, medical science has advanced to such a point that this rarely happens. If the pregnancy goes sour in the early stages, there is usually a miscarriage. If something goes wrong in later stages of the pregnancy, the baby can be taken by C-section and then incubated until it is well enough to go home with the mother.

Never the less, I concede that this type of incident does occur. I do believe, however, that the decision should be made by the medical professionals involved and not on the emotional whim of the parents who are not in a position, emotionally or medically, to see the whole picture anyway.

There are a number of standard arguments that the Pro-choice advocates use when trying to sway the masses to their viewpoint. I believe these arguments to be spurious or purposely misleading.

The first argument is the "abortion-is-not-murder" argument. Abortion is murder. Murder is not based in any way on age. It makes no difference, for instance, whether a person is killed when he/she is 85 years old and on his/her deathbed or an infant in a cradle. To take any portion of a person's life from them is murder.

The legal concept of murder is based exclusively on one's personhood. In other words, it would not be murder to kill a dog or a fish. It is only murder if one kills a person. Pro-choice advocates argue that a fetus does not become a person until it exhibits human brainwave patterns or is viable. I will discuss viability later.

The brainwave argument revolves around the idea that until the fetus develops recognizably human brainwave patterns, it isn't yet human (or a person) and aborting it is no different than killing any other non-human living thing such as a cow or other "lower animal".

No one argues that when a woman is pregnant, she is carrying anything but a human baby in her womb. By definition, if a human being, in any stage of its development, does something, it is a human action. Therefore, I would argue that any brainwave patterns a human fetus exhibits are "recognizably human" brainwaves.

Some would narrow this argument even further by requiring that the brainwave patterns be "adult human" brainwaves. This argument is also ridiculous because adulthood is not a criterion for murder. It is still murder to kill a child, so to require some measure of adulthood before it becomes wrong to kill would merely be another attempt to rationalize the taking of a child's life.

The Pre-Viability argument states that it is okay to commit abortion because the child is not yet "viable". The argument of viability states that, "Because a fetus is not capable of surviving on its own outside the womb, it doesn't matter if someone keeps that fetus from reaching the point of viability."

There are three problems with this argument. First, if you define viability as being able to survive on its own, then it should be permissible to kill an infant, toddler, or pre-schooler since no children at these stages of development are capable of surviving without copious amounts of love and care from their parents. Since it is murder to kill a small, non-viable child, the viability argument does not hold water.

Second, the pre-viability argument assumes that survival outside the womb is the standard. Abortionists argue that if a pre-born infant were hypothetically to be removed from the womb and it doesn't survive, it isn't "viable" and therefore doesn't deserve to, or have a right to live. Never in the natural course of a fetus's development is it outside the womb. Why should that be a criteria?

Every organism on Earth has a certain set of environmental conditions to which it is suited. This is called an organism's "natural environment". If that organism's environmental conditions change, it will attempt to cope wit that change, but will only be able to do so up to a point. Beyond that point, the organism cannot survive.

Some notable examples would be the Giant Panda which lives only in the bamboo forests of China, the Koala which lives only in the Eucalyptus forests of Australia, the Orca or killer whale, which can live only in the ocean, etc. All of these animals do live far from their original habitats in zoos, but in these cases, man has recreated the animals' original environmental conditions closely enough that the animal can cope. To put a koala 300 feet under the pacific or an Orca up in a Eucalyptus tree would quickly be fatal to both organisms.

In the same way, to remove a baby from its mother's womb before it has developed to the point that it can cope with the outside world is removing that child from it's natural environment. A pre-born baby is perfectly viable in the environment of the womb, but naturally, is not viable outside of it. To abort a pre-born baby is to interfere with the natural course of events.

Which brings us to the third problem I have with the viability argument (and with all these arguments to a greater or lesser extent), which is the non-interference problem. The viability argument should read, "Because a fetus is not capable of surviving on its own outside the womb, and assuming we decide to interrupt the natural course of events in the pregnancy, it doesn't matter if someone keeps that fetus from reaching the point of viability."

Pro-choice advocates are making the tacit statement to the effect that left alone, the pregnancy will, barring medical problems, produce a viable person at some time in the future. The very name "abortion" means to stop something in progress before it comes to fruition. If they did not believe this, there would be no reason to have an abortion in the first place. Therefore, by the very act of aborting a fetus, they are admitting that they are taking a person's life before they even have a chance to begin living it.

Then there is the "It-hasn't-been-born-yet" argument. Pro-choice advocates argue that abortion can not be murder since the child has not been born yet and therefore cannot be considered a person. Why should the point of birth be the starting point of personhood? A person was considered to be legally a person at English Common Law (which is where our legal system largely comes from) when the expectant mother experienced "quickening", the first time she sensed the baby's movement in the womb. It is only because it is convenient for those who want to find some justification for abortions that a boundary for personhood is set at a point beyond which abortions are physically impossible. After all, abortions after birth would be murder!

Besides, why should being a "person" be the criteria at all. How do you define "person"? When the original concepts of murder were formulated, it was never considered that there might a "pre-person" who could not be murdered because they were not "person" enough. Every human was considered a "person".

Now that definition of "person" is being reevaluated. "Person" now seems to depend on one's concept of another's mental capacity. Well, what about someone who's body is alive, but whose brain no longer exhibits consciousness? What if someone is conscious, but not intelligent? Do they have to be severely retarded or only mildly retarded before they are considered a non-person? Where do you draw the line?

What if mental capicity is not the criteria, but a perceived mental capacity? Haven't we gone down that road before? Hitler believed that Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and anyone who didn't fit is idea of the Arian race were beneath contempt good only for firewood. This was because he believed they were mentally and physically inferior to Arians. This is a slippery slope down which we should not start.

I submit that any definition of "person" dependant on someone's mental capacity would be too vague and/or too flexible to be useful. Instead I think the criterion should be whether an animal is human or not. Obviously, a baby in the womb is as human as it's mother (see above) and therefore should be afforded the same protection against murder that any other human is.

An argument could be made that it is ethically worse to kill an infant in vitro than it is to wait until he/she is a fully-grown adult. In our culture, it is considered worse to harm or kill a child than an adult. Partly, I think this is due to our natural instinct to protect our young and partly due to the argument that, "She had her whole life before her."

Well, is this fetus not still just as much one of our young as a baby in the cradle? Does she not still have her whole life before her? Obviously, the answer to both of these questions is, "Yes", so if everyone believes that it is very wrong to kill or harm a child, then everyone should also believe that it is very wrong to abort a fetus.

Next is the Miscarriage argument. Some would argue that because a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage, it does not matter if some are aborted on purpose, that there is no difference in a pregnancy ending through natural means and one purposely terminated. This argument is fallacious.

First, just because it is possible that the pregnancy might succumb to some naturally-occurring event which kills the fetus, it doesn't follow that we have the right to bring the pregnancy to an end on purpose by killing the child.

Second, this claim is analogous to someone claiming that because millions of children die of deadly disease "X" anyway, it is okay to infect infants with that disease in the interests of population or birth control, or that we should declare it permissible to kill X number of teenagers in the interests of family harmony simply because ten times that number of teenagers die in automobile accidents every year anyway. After all, parents have the right to have fewer children in their home and a harmonious home life if they so choose, right? Millions of teenagers die every year anyway, so what would a few more matter, right?

This is ridiculous. Obviously, no sane person would seriously advocate these kinds of Hitlerian, genocidal tactics and yet every year millions of girls and women gladly pay doctors to suck their unborn babies into sinks at their local abortion "clinics" simply because the babies are unwanted or inconvenient!

The next argument the Pro-choice proponents advocate is that there is a right to privacy which the expectant mothers possess which should prevent the government from stopping them from having abortions. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that though the U. S. Constitution doesn't explicitly state a right to privacy, such a right does exist. The right to privacy is "embedded" in the assumptions the framers made when they wrote the Constitution. Privacy is implied in many of the rights the framers specifically listed, such as the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and to be secure in one's "persons, papers, houses and effects". (Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution)

The right to privacy also covers things other than the security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects." (U.S. Constitution, 4th Amendment) For example, Lawyer-Client, Confessor-Confessed, and Doctor-Patient privileges. In these examples, the Lawyer, Confessor and Doctor can not be required to reveal the legal, moral or medical condition of the Client, Confessed, or Patient, respectively. Let's be clear. The fact that they are not allowed to reveal confidential information is controlled by the ethics of their respective professions, not the law. The law only protects them from being forced in court to reveal confidential information about their respective clients.

There is no law which protects a person from performing an illegal act just because they do it in private. Just because someone rapes, or murders someone behind locked doors doesn't mean that the government and society don't have anything to say about it.

The Pro-Choice advocates make statements like, "It's my body. I should have the right to control what happens to my body." and, "I'm having a medical procedure performed and the government has no right to interfere in my private medical treatments."

These arguments are based on their right to be secure in their persons and their right to Doctor-Patient privilege. They either misunderstand their rights or are purposely misconstruing the meaning of their rights as stated in The Constitution to suit their own purposes.

Let us consider their right to be secure in their persons. The Fourth Amendment states,

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

As is quite plain, the Fourth Amendment is intended to restrict the government's power to search a person's property, arrest a person, or take a person's property without good reason. It is not a license to do with ones body what one pleases, without regard for the rights of others.

Often it is the case that one right will modify, regulate or even supercede another. For instance, everyone has the right to travel freely, but not at speeds exceeding the speed limit. This would be an example of one's rights being modified or regulated.

Another example would be the situation where one person attacks another with a knife. Most states have self-defense statutes which would allow the person being attacked in this example to kill his or her attacker in self-defense by any means at their disposal without fear of imprisonment. This is an instance where one person's right to live (the victim's) supercedes another's (the assailant's).

It should be noted that the assailant in this case gave up his right to be free from attack when he attacked his victim. It was his choice. No one forced him down that path.

An infant in the womb, however, commits no crime against the mother. The only reason it is being aborted is that it's existence is inconvenient because the mother would rather not be pregnant or is no longer with the boyfriend she was with when she became pregnant, or offensive because the mother was raped or a victim of incest. Clearly, the baby's right to his or her life would supercede the mother's right to take that life if the mother's only argument was inconvenience or personal offense.

Doctor-Patient privilege means that the doctor may not reveal a patient's medical condition unless expressly authorized to do so by the patient. This does not mean that the government can not regulate the practice of medicine or prohibit the performance of a specific procedure. The government already regulates or prohibits many aspects of the practice of medicine including which procedures may and may not be performed. So, for a woman to say, "I'm having a medical procedure performed and the government has no right to interfere in my private medical treatments." is ridiculous. Government "interferes" in the practice of medicine in this way all the time.

It should also be noted that just because one may have the right to control what "happens to" ones body doesn't give one the right to purposely damage someone else's body. It should be obvious that a baby in the mother's womb is not her body, but rather is simply contained within her body. If the fetus were actually her body, she would have two noses, four eyes, ears arms and legs, and two separate and distinct sets of genes, not to mention that in the case of a male baby, she would have both male and female genitalia, which would really be a weird concept! (Yes, I know that there are rare cases where these sorts of androgynous people exist, but they are not considered normal.)

Another argument is, "This is a women's issue. Men should have no say in it." This is ridiculous because it is not just the woman who is involved. It is not just a "women's issue". Every baby has a father. Why should fathers be denied their parental rights? The father was just as responsible for creating that baby as the mother and should have an equal say in what happens to it.

Some Pro-abortion advocates claim, "The government shouldn't interfere." Why not? Our Declaration of Independence declares that each of us has an "inalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." and the government "interferes" in our lives all the time to make sure that we all may exercise our "inalienable" rights whenever we wish. Thomas Jefferson defined government's role in this way: "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." Government should protect all of us regardless of age, but especially before we are born, when we are most vulnerable.

I have tried to cover all the misleading arguments that Pro-Choice advocates use to promote abortion. I believe that I have effectively shown that all their arguments are based upon misunderstandings stemming from a lack of education about the topics involved, excessive emotionalism, or intentional falsehoods, and should therefore be given no credence. I hope that this article has helped to clear some of the fog surrounding this topic and caused the reader to look at it in a more objective fashion.

I think that it should also be noted that just because something is legal does not make it right. Sometimes people of good conscience must hold themselves to a higher standard than what the law will allow.

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