On Abortion

In order to support the morality of abortion, you must accept one of the following premises: a) that a fetus is not a human life, or b) that it is permissible to kill an innocent, defenseless infant. If you choose the latter, then we suffer from a fundamental ideological difference that cannot be resolved by any amount of discussion. However, if you choose the former, as do most supporters of abortion, then you are faced with a problem. At what point does a fetus become a human life?

I have heard numerous answers to this query. Some claim that the fetus becomes human at the quickening, at the first signs of spontaneous movement. But a why does the capability of movement grant humanity? Is not a hospital patient who has been paralyzed still a human being with the right to life? Others place personhood at the time when the fetus can feel pain, but this suffers from the same problem. A man subjected to total physical numbness is still a man. His ability to feel pain has no bearing on his right to life. I have a friend who claims that the fetus is a person when it can support itself outside the womb, apparently failing to realize that a two year old child cannot support itself outside the womb without someone to feed it. Finally, some claim that the ability of thought is the prerequisite for personhood. This is perhaps the most compelling of any of these arguments. After all, how can humanity exist without thought? But consider, thought is a sliding scale. There is no single moment when a fetus can “think.” Furthermore, a four year old child does not think in the same way as an adult, yet has a much greater capacity for learning. This seems a far too subjective and arbitrary basis on which to justify killing.

Whenever I enter into a discussion of abortion, the phrase I hear over and over is “a woman’s right over her body.” I couldn’t agree more that a woman has the right over her body, but I do not see what that has to do with abortion. A fetus is not part of a woman’s body. A fetus has a body of its own, with its own unique human DNA. A woman has the right to choose, but not when that choice is to kill another human being.

At this point someone usually points out that if a fetus is person and must not be harmed, then the same must be said for a man’s sperm and a woman’s eggs, which die by the thousands every day. This is false. Sperm is a part of a man’s body in the same way that blood, sweat and tears are. They have his DNA and he can do whatever he chooses with them. Likewise for a woman’s eggs. Their potential for creating life is irrelevant. We are not concerned with what could be, but rather, what is.

Therefore, taking all this into account, it is obvious that the one and only moment that a fetus becomes a human life is that of conception. When a sperm and an egg collide to create a unique life form with unique DNA, a human being is born, and from that point on any action taken towards its destruction is nothing short of murder. Any desperate justifications about rape victims or situations which endanger or, God forbid, inconvenience the life of the mother are irrelevant. The prohibition of the crime of murder takes precedence over all of these things. What if the infant would have to be put up for adoption and therefore lead an unhappy childhood? Doesn’t matter. Murder.

Maybe some of you support a woman’s right to infanticide, but I cannot.