As a bioethics student, I’ve encountered several challenging arguments in favor of abortion. In my research on the subject, there have been several authors who’ve forced me to think about the issue more deeply and to sharpen my arguments against it.
But there are also some pretty bad arguments out there. In popular-level discussions about abortion, you’ll often hear pro-choice advocates use arguments that completely miss the point and that show a lack of familiarity with the arguments on the pro-life side. In this post, I want to point out four such arguments and show how they’re really nothing more than red herrings.
The first bad argument for abortion is the idea that you can be personally against it, but you shouldn’t force your beliefs on others.
The second bad argument for abortion is that a woman can do whatever she wants with her body.
A third bad argument is that it’s a women’s issue, so men have no right to tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion.
The last bad argument for abortion is that it should be legal because women will keep having abortions even if it’s not, and we should at least ensure that they will have them in safe environments (instead of in back alleys with rusty equipment).
Click through to read the whole thing and get all the responses!
Hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers protested the 37th anniversary of legalized abortion Friday, buoyed by polls and a recent Republican victory in Massachusetts that they said show public opinion may be finally swinging in their favor.
[…]Organizers estimated the crowd at the March for Life to number at least 200,000. A “virtual” march on Washington, hosted by Americans United for Life at http://www.virtualmarchforlife.com, attracted 74,925 “avatars” by late Friday afternoon. The March for Life marks the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
After two hours of speeches from a variety of political and religious leaders, the mostly college-aged crowd marched up Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court under hazy skies in 45-degree weather.
Twenty-one members of Congress each took the podium to celebrate the current woes surrounding the Senate version of President Obama’s health care bill, which opponents say would expand federally subsidized abortion. Due to the surprise election Tuesday of Massachusetts state Sen. Scott Brown to the late Edward M. Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat, Democrats are now one vote shy of the supermajority needed to overcome Republican filibusters.
“The health care bill is dead,” said Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, an oncologist who last month switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. “They may be able to break off a piece or two but it was fundamentally bad.”
“There’s been a huge turn in the country,” said Rep. Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican. “Huge majorities are in our favor especially on funding of abortion. A lot of members of Congress have realized that the numbers have shifted.”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Spokane, Wash., spoke to the crowd with her 2-year-old son, Cole, draped across her shoulder. Saying the little boy has Down Syndrome, “We get to press the restart button and get the health bill we want,” she said.
Representative Mike Pence had a nice op-ed on his web site about the pro-life issue. He first reviews everything that Obama is doing to increase the number of abortions that have occured in the United States (50 million since Roe v. Wade), but then he switches to a diffferent line of argument.
Excerpt:
William Wilberforce, a central figure in the fight to end the slave trade in Great Britain, understood that to win a moral victory he needed to persuade the hearts and minds of the people, as well as end public policies that supported the objectionable trade. Wilberforce defeated the slave trade by bringing an end to the financial gains it enjoyed.
If we are going to end abortion we must bring an end to abortion profiteering. And we cannot end abortion in this country so long as the American taxpayer is forced to be the largest financial supporter of abortion.
Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, performed more than 305,000 abortions in 2007. That same year, Planned Parenthood received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, either through federal, state or local assistance. This is unacceptable. Now is the time to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
To that end, I will continue to introduce legislation in Congress that will restrict any federal family planning funds from going to organizations like Planned Parenthood that promote or perform abortions. I will seize every opportunity to bring this proposal before Congress until the people’s House respects the will of the American people and ends taxpayer subsidized abortion.
William Wilberforce committed his life to a cause that would “extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic” in human life and said that “posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonor to this country.”
A noble plan, but so far the Democrats keep voting him down. I like his plan because you often hear from some people that we need to transfer more wealth to women who want to become single mothers. But extra-marital sex and single motherhood is not good for children, either. Instead, we need to stop government from subsidizing irresponsible sexual activity. That’s my personal view, anyway. I’m chaste, and one the secondary reasons why I am chaste is so that I do not hurt women or children.
I think that cutting subsidies for Planned Parethood and making women pay every penny for their abortions may cause them to think twice. It also may be a good idea to pass a 300% sales tax on abortions and to force the father to pay for half of the abortion, too. That would get parents involved, for sure. If there’s no more money in it for Planned Parenthood, and no political contributions from Planned Parenthood for the Democrats, then abortion would stop pretty fast.
You can see Mike Pence’s speech here:
I must note that Mike Pence is an evangelical Protestant Christian, as am I, and as is William Wilberforce. But evangelical Protestant Christians are not the only ones who are pro-life.
Check out this quote from the Washington Times article I linked to above:
Three Orthodox Jewish rabbis came on stage to blow a shofar — a ram’s horn used to welcome in the Jewish New Year — and encourage listeners to have more children.
“The selfish liberals are not reproducing,” Brooklyn Rabbi Yehuda Levin said. “We Orthodox Jews are bringing in 7-14 children into a family. You too can have a holy baby.”
Speaking of the nation’s governors, “We have enough killing pharaohs in power,” he said. “Who’ll be the Moses to let our babies grow?”
Today we recognize the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which affirms every woman’s fundamental constitutional right to choose whether to have an abortion, as well as each American’s right to privacy from government intrusion. I have, and continue to, support these constitutional rights.
I also remain committed to working with people of good will to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and families, and strengthen the adoption system.
Today and every day, we must strive to ensure that all women have limitless opportunities to fulfill their dreams.
When a baby is detected growing in a mother’s womb, a mother is confronted with a serious choice of whether or not to kill her baby. Uppermost in a mother’s consideration must be the high probability that a child will limit her opportunities to fulfill her dreams. That being the case, it is perfectly acceptable to torture and kill the child via a variety of currently employed methods. Priorities are priorities.
I think we as Christians need to make sure that we vote to protect innocent children from violence, although that is NOT what many of us did in the 2008 election by voting for Obama. Please talk to your neighbors about abortion. (See links at the bottom of this post to learn how). By the way, Neil Simpson has a nice post up about whether the Bible supports abortion.
First, he argues that none of the traditional arguments for abortion work if the unborn child is an innocent human being. He then explains briefly why the unborn child is human. And then he counters several objections to the humanity of the unborn.
Excerpt:
The fact that a fetus cannot survive independently of its mother does not mean it is not a human being. Fetal viability is contingent upon the medical technology of a given culture. A fetus that is not viable in Chad is viable in Los Angeles. If viability is necessary for something to be a human then a woman pregnant with a viable fetus in Los Angeles who flies from Los Angeles to Chad carries a human being when she leaves but this human being ceases to exist when she arrives in India and yet becomes human again when she returns (Peter Singer Writings on an Ethical Life (2000) 148).
Similarly, while the fetus lacks consciousness, lack of consciousness does not make a being non-human. If it did, then a human being ceases to exist when asleep or unconscious and then pops back into existence upon awakening. Shooting someone would cease to be homicide provided we render him or her unconscious first.
I’m reading the comments now and it looks like one of the challengers is using the Violinist argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson, which states that a woman is justified in using deadly force to repel invaders, even if they are human beings.
The challenger says:
Yes, abortion is homicide. But abortion on demand is JUSTIFIABLE homicide.
If something is inside your body, then you’re entitled to have it killed. No exceptions. Even if it’s an “innocent” person. If you were inside my body, then I’d be entitled to kill you, and if I were inside your body, you’d be entitled to kill me.
Matt responds with this:
The question then is not whether the fetus is intruding upon a mother’s body, it is whether the fetus unjustly intrudes on her body. Has the mother done anything that places a duty on her to provide bodily support to the fetus or that gives the fetus a justified claim upon her body?
I maintain that in most cases such a duty exists. A parent has a duty to provide the children that their voluntary actions have brought into existence the normal, basic necessities that those children need in order to reach maturity.
Except in the very rare case of pregnancy from rape or in cases where the pregnancy poses a serious threat to the mother’s life this duty applies. The woman has engaged in voluntary intercourse, has brought the child into existence and bringing the child to term is one of the normal, basic, necessity the child needs to mature. Hence the fetus is not unjustly intruding upon the mother’s body.
That’s what I would have said, because I always emphasize the responsibility aspect. Babies don’t just appear out of nothing, you know.
But look what Matt’s wife Madeleine says:
I am assuming you are not wanting your argument to endorse infanticide. If this is the case, then you cannot simply appeal to “your body” as a newborn makes incredible demands on the body of its mother if it is breastfed. Even if not breastfed, the adult(s) taking care of it also have extremely high demands placed on their body to ensure its health and survival – sleep deprivation, formula making and feeding, nappy changing, financial drains (finances come from work, work requires the use of one’s body), immunisations, doctors visits, increased cleaning and housework and so on. The demands a newborn places on the body of another are higher than the demands a fetus places on the body of its mother; you can measure it scientifically by comparing the calorie intake required by the life-providing adult pre-birth and after-birth (and also by talking to any woman who has been pregnant and then has cared for their own child).
Now, the reason I do not think you intended to endorse infanticide is because you limited your appeal to “your body” with the addition of the qualification ‘location’ – you stated “If you were inside my body…” What I want to know is what is it about demands made on your body that gives you a right to kill when those demands are made inside your body but not when those demands, arguably greater demands, are made outside your body? It seems rather arbitrary to claim that one’s right to control one’s body has this kind of asymmetry.
It’s fun because she knows what she’s talking about from experience.
This post is highly recommended! And the comments are fun, too.
UPDATE: I had mistakenly stated that Madeleine had an abortion previously, but actually I was mistaken and must have been thinking of someone else. I apologize for my stupidity!
WINTERY KNIGHT 