One of the arrows in the quiver of pro-choice advocates is the accusation – or the insinuation, at least – that pro-life people believe what they believe about abortion because of religion and not basic biology. It’s the old “faith vs. reason”, “primitive vs. progressive” dichotomy that makes me want to vomit.
I’ll admit, I will never debate the existence of the Trinity based on science. Some dogmas are best left dogmas. But abortion is not one of those issues. I don’t care how blue in the face anyone becomes telling me the only reason I am pro-life is because I am religious – or a man, or a defender of the patriarchy, or privileged, or whatever. The main reason I am pro-life is because, deep in my gut, I think a fetus is worthy of human rights.
I know. Shocker! I think a growing human with its own distinct DNA – different from both its biological parents – should not be discriminated against or dehumanized because it happens to still be in the womb. How backwards! How archaic!
Still, despite my “retrograde” belief that a human is actually a human, I persist in the contention that you don’t have to be religious to be pro-life – even pro-life right up to the moment of conception.
Let me explain with a story.
Imagine a mother has a little girl – five years old. And this little girl tragically gets caught in a fire at her school. She is stuck on the second floor of her building and the flames lick up around her, disfiguring her terribly. She jumps out of a window, trying to get away from the flames, and crashes on the ground, banging her head on a rock. She goes into a coma.
But she is still breathing! She gets rushed to the hospital. There, the doctors work their hardest to make sure she stays alive. And thankfully, the doctor tells her parents, she will live. She just needs regular blood transfusions from her mother for awhile – nothing that would be unhealthy for mom. Sadly, she will be in a coma for nine months, but she is almost sure to come out of it. Her disfiguring scars will heal, and they will have their little girl back. They just need to be patient.
Still, the doctor offers the parents a choice. They can let the child go the nine months and come out healthy, or they can kill her. “Having a child is a great burden,” the doctor says. “I want you to know all the options available to you. It is your choice. We can let her get better, or you can legally end her life.”
To me, that is a picture of abortion.
Some will say that’s not a fair comparison. They consider a fetus’ “humanity” and “personhood” to be two different things. A fetus may be human but it is not a person yet. And they define a person as someone with consciousness. The unborn is not yet conscious – at least not in the early weeks.
But the little girl in the coma isn’t conscious either. She will wake up in nine months and have no recollection of anything that passed in that time in the same way that a fetus will have no recollection of being in the womb.
One might say, “The unborn has never had consciousness, but the girl has.” But why should that make a difference? The fetus is unable to have thoughts the way you and I do. It is the same with the girl in the coma. The unborn does not have the physical capability to have conscious thought (again, in the early stages). Neither does the girl in the coma. What is the difference?
“But just look at a fetus,” they say. “Especially in the first few weeks, it doesn’t even look anything like a human being.” Neither did the Elephant Man. Neither does the girl in the story, disfigured by the fire. Is the way a person looks now the decider of whether they are worthy of human rights?
Still, another will say the mother of the fetus is not obligated to keep that fetus alive. Someone who desperately needs a kidney transplant cannot demand a kidney from another person – no matter how worthy the one in need is.
But it is not a kidney being asked of a pregnant mother. And here, though I said I wouldn’t, I will bring in my Christian ethics: if you can help someone in need, you should help someone in need. If that is how you see the world, then take this point.
Still, the pro-choice advocate could say, “You don’t know when life begins. You have no right to say when the unborn should be given human rights.” I have heard this line of reasoning used to explain why, as a society, we should leave the choice to terminate a pregnancy to women themselves. No one knows where the boundary line is where, once crossed, a growing human creature goes from being just a clump of cells to a full-fledged member of the human race.
But that is not an argument for abortion rights. It is the opposite. That is an argument to push that boundary line so far back that we can be sure – absolutely sure – that we are not committing murder. If we really don’t know when life begins – when personhood begins, if you will – then we have no right playing God with the unborn.
Peter Kreeft, the Catholic philosopher, once used this story to illustrate this point. Imagine you are out hunting with a friend, and your friend, for whatever reason, goes on ahead of you into the forest. A few minutes later, you see a bush rustling in the distance.
You are pretty certain it is not your friend. You are almost certain it is a deer or a rabbit, and this could be your lucky moment. But you don’t know that it is not your friend.
Is it all right for you to shoot?
Maybe I don’t know when life begins. Fair enough. Neither do you. Precisely because we don’t know, is it right to terminate a healthy pregnancy? To snuff out what might be a human being just like you or me?
I get it that people disagree with me. Half the country does (actually, far more than that, most likely). These arguments may not be convincing for you. But I can’t help but think that the reason a lot of people in our country didn’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned is not because they are progressive or smarter when it comes to biology. They just haven’t thought through the issue.
If you haven’t, I hope you will.
Jonny Catholic 
It’s great to see you again!
I would note about the “religious” objection, it is true that we have religious reasons to be pro-life insofar as it is a religious sentiment that human life is a sacred gift of God and therefore murder is a mortal sin—but no one says that Christians are just being religious when it should be illegal to walk into Times’ Square and shoot people.
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