prochoice1
It has been universally recognized by all societies and throughout history, including religious ones, that a person’s rights wax and wane during their lifetime based upon their age and capacity.
Rights are acquired and lost in a continuous process that begins at conception, reaches it’s peak at the age of majority, and ultimately declines with old age and senility. Children have never had rights equal with adults because of their lack of capacity. Which is generally a function of age.
Capacity refers to the ability to exercise a particular right. The capacity needed for an unborn child to exercise it’s right to life is different from the capacity needed to exercise the right to drive a car or to exercise the right to free speech.
No one questions it when a parent restricts a young child’s right to liberty by turning off the TV and sending them to bed at 9pm then requiring them to spend 6+ hours per day in school, often times against their will. Lack of capacity is one of the few legitimate and socially acceptable reasons to discriminate against someone’s rights. The younger a person is, the fewer rights they have. And unborn children have the fewest and weakest rights of all.
Pro-life advocates publicly claim that abortion is murder because it intentionally kills a person without justification. But the fact that few if any pro life advocates think that abortion should be treated like criminal first degree murder, including conspiracy to commit murder for the mother, the father and any other participants, suggests that they don’t actually believe their claim.
Jesus makes it clear throughout the gospel accounts that the things we do are more revealing than the things we claim.https://abort73.com/about_us/
Pro life attitudes and the absence of laws that treat and punish abortion participants equal to criminal murders and co-conspirators are society’s acknowledgement that unborn children have fewer and weaker rights than adults.
Greater society does not, never has, and never will treat abortion as criminal murder because it recognizes that the rights of an unborn child, including the right to life, are inferior. Abortions is justified for this reason. It’s not murder. It’s justifiable homicide. This argument was acknowledged on the Christian website ColdCaseChristianity.com where it said “The discussion of what justifies a killing may be the future battleground of the abortion debate. “
Except in the morally wrong cases of State enforced abortions, all abortions are elective. Even when the mother’s life is at risk, she can choose to not have an abortion and risk dying in order to maximize her unborn child’s chances of survival. Unless the doctor ties her down or sedates her and performs an abortion against her will, it is an elective abortion. It’s her choice. It might be a well reasoned and justified choice but it’s still a choice to kill an unborn child based on the superior rights of an adult mother v the lesser rights of her unborn child.
Abortions in the cases of rape or incest are also elective abortions justified by the same principle.
The pro choice position that women have the moral right to “choose” an abortion, thereby killing her unborn child, is based on the universally acknowledged principle that children have weaker rights because of their diminished capacity.
Abortion Is A Moral Dilemma
Abortion is a moral dilemma regarding the balance of rights between a mother and her unborn child. Yes an unborn child has value. And yes an unborn child has rights. But so does the mother have rights. An unborn child does in fact has the right to life which begins at the moment of conception and progresses to perfection with age. While the right to life is the most fundamental right and the easiest to perfect, for a period of time the unborn child’s right to life is inferior and subject to the mother’s superior rights because of it’s diminished capacity and the burdens it places on the mother.
Because of their relative rights and the magnitude and nature of the burdens that carrying a child places on the mother’s life, her body, her health, her liberty, etc., the mother has the right but not the duty to carry the child to term. But if a mother elects to give birth she has the duty to the child and to society to do see that it is as healthy as possible. The massive size and nature of the burdens and her inability to delegate them is why the decision to carry the child to term or to have an abortion solely rests with the mother.
Adoption isn’t always a solution because, while the burdens of raising a child can be delegated through adoption, the burdens of carrying a child in her womb can’t be delegated. Therefore decisions about adoption v abortion also rest with the mother.
The pro life community improperly discounts an unborn child’s weaker rights and the mother’s superior rights and instead focuses on the simpler question of when life begins with the unstated assumption that all rights are equal.
- Life begins at conception.
- An unborn child is a human being.
- An unborn child inherently has the right to life from the moment of conception.
These are red herring arguments that have succeeded for a long time in distracting the debate away from the larger issue. Abortion is not simply a moral question of when life begins. Rather, it’s a moral dilemma that is complicated and potentially expensive to resolve because it ultimately cost the life of an unborn child.
The battle ground may shift for the next generation from arguing that life begins at conception to articulating the nature of justifiable homicide.ColdCaseChristianity.com
So rather than being distracted by these red herring arguments the pro choice community needs to concede that an unborn child is a person with the right to life from the moment of conception. Because this is supported by science and reason.
Then we need to move on and build our message on the age old and universally accepted principle that children have fewer and weaker rights than adults. And this includes the unborn child’s right to life.
Because a sizeable percentage of abortions are motivated by a lack of resource, there are many things that society can do to encourage women to choose to not have an abortion. A better foster care system, equal economic opportunities for women, work place protections for pregnancies, affordable health care, and affordable child care are just a few areas where improvements would discourage abortions. Stronger domestic violence laws would also reduce the demand for abortion.
Crisis pregnancy centers are also legitimate resources that should be available to women contemplating an abortion. Provided they aren’t deceptive or overly aggressive. In fact there is no reason they shouldn’t work hand in hand with abortion providers and social service agencies to educate a woman about her full range of options and thereby potentially eliminate her reasons for seeking an abortion.
If society provided better opportunities and protections for women, that would be reflected in lower abortion rates. But in the end, having an abortion is a morally sound option for a woman if that is how she chooses to resolve her pregnancy dilemma.
The Ultimate Question In The Abortion Debate
“Who has the authority to decide moral issues?” is the ultimate question in the abortion debate.
- Is it God?
- Is it the government?
- Is it the greater society?
If God is the moral authority then the next question is “Which God?” There have been thousands of religions throughout history, representing an equal number of Gods or interpretations of Gods. Even Christianity, which is the world’s most popular religion, only represents about 1/3 of the world’s believers. And among themselves a large percentage interpret the bible as allowing abortions. But since religions are a function of culture rather than an actual God, their authority is simply a reflection of their own collective beliefs.
Moral authority certainly does not rest with governments because they are notorious for representing their own interests at the expense of the people.
The ultimate authority on the abortion issue is the greater society. By greater society I mean that the larger number of people who participate in a decision then the more accurately it reflects the nature of man. The source and measure of morality is human nature. Morality is a reflection of what each of us expects for ourselves. It is a function of human consciousness and our own self awareness. Without human self awareness there would be no morality.
Collective human nature and not God or governments is the ultimate moral authority.
Most people around the world feel that abortion should be legal and this is a reflection of their beliefs about the morality of abortion. This supports the conclusion that the greater society believes that abortion is morally correct.
A Final Moral Question
Is it moral for politicians and governments to use their power to pass or enforce abortion laws that reflect their values but don’t correspond to the values of the people they represent?
Criticism from EqualRightsInstitute.com
This article attempts to establish that the pro-life position fails because the rights of an unborn human are always less than those of an adult human, particularly the mother. However, each of the several arguments advanced by the author have critical flaws.
The first major issue is that it’s unclear how the word “rights” is being used. The author speaks about rights being “acquired” and changing over time, and cites rights like driving a car and free speech. But those rights aren’t the same; driving a car is a legal right, while free speech is an inherent right. If the government banned free speech, that wouldn’t remove the right, it would just show that the government was corrupt because they refused to recognize and protect the right. The right to free speech is static, not age- or capacity-based. Because the author seems to be talking about legal rights, which are conferred by the government, and pro-life people are talking about inherent rights, which the government can’t change, this article isn’t really interacting with what pro-life people actually claim.
On a similar note, the article begins by claiming that the author’s assertion that rights are unequal is “universally recognized.” There is no evidence offered, and, indeed, it would be very difficult to do so; if even one society at any point in history believed in equal rights, then the statement would be false. I do think the statement is false; the United States, however poorly it has done at living up to it, was explicitly founded on equal inherent rights.
And there are good reasons not to advance the thesis that people don’t have equal rights; take, for example, the following argument quoted from Abraham Lincoln’s private papers:
“If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?—
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be a slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly?—You mean whites are intellectually the superiors to blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”
Advancing the argument that different degrees of capacities lead to different levels of rights leads you right into the trap Lincoln laid. There is no real way to consistently claim that one party has sufficiently greater rights than another to kill or enslave them, but then claim that these differences do not justify the same disparities in adults who are, as is asserted, not materially equal in capacities or rights. Do newborns, toddlers, or even older children not deserve to be equally protected from violence under the law since they possess lesser capacities than adults? What about adults who possess lesser capacities than other adults? The only way to salvage such an argument is by converting instead into a threshold argument, in which everyone with whatever relevant capacity gets equal rights as long as they’re at or above a minimum threshold (of course, that has other issues).
It’s not necessary to make an argument that rights are unequal to address abortion as a conflict-of-rights issue, even from the pro-choice perspective, and doing so opens the pro-choice position up to many effective attacks.
Next, the author advances the familiar claim that pro-life advocates don’t actually believe abortion is murder because we don’t currently support prosecuting women who solicit abortions. We have published a statement with our position on prosecution, which minimally establishes that there are reasons to oppose prosecution at the moment that have nothing to do with the severity of the act of abortion. Also, most pro-life people do support prosecuting the abortion practitioner, so we clearly believe some people should be held legally responsible for acts of killing.
The claim that all abortions are elective is odd. I get what the author is saying, but it’s not how anyone, pro-life or pro-choice, uses the word “elective.” If I had stage 3 cancer, I could choose to get or not to get the recommended treatment to (hopefully) save my life, but that doesn’t make it an “elective” cancer treatment. It is medically indicated, and medically necessary for the goal of saving my life. The same holds true for abortions in life-of-the-mother situations; they’re not elective if we want the mother to live.
I don’t want to get into the burdens argument too much, because it’s underdeveloped and distracts from the main argument as it presents a rival justification. In order to make this kind of argument successfully, one would need to anticipate the objections to this position, like the fact that only fathers bear the burden of child support, a burden which legally begins at fertilization in all 50 states, yet are deprived of any rights of decision about abortion.
The final section about grounding morality in some sort of human collective is by far the weakest part of the piece. The dismissal of divine morality as a possibility because multiple religions claim to be true is a terrible, but often repeated, argument. It would be like saying, “Well, Trump claimed to win the 2020 election and so did Biden, so I guess there is no true winner.” No, Trump’s false claim doesn’t invalidate Biden’s true claim. Similarly, the fact that a lot of religions have to be wrong, or that many people who profess a religion neither understand nor believe what they profess, doesn’t mean that there is no true religion. Dismissing governments as a ground for authority requires much more than a single sentence; the author would, minimally, need to show why all of the social contract theorists (from Hobbes and Locke to Rawls) are wrong.
Positing moral authority in the collective creates even more problems. If the collective society decided that slavery was acceptable, would that mean slavery was okay? If the greater society decided that the pro-life position was correct, would abortion no longer be a woman’s right (and would it have been a woman’s right when society supported it, but not when it didn’t)? Rooting morality in what “most people” support means you can’t state an objective right or wrong; “most people” didn’t take marital rape seriously until recently, and if a worldview can’t explain why rape is wrong, I think that alone is a good reason to reject that worldview. Finally, the author asserts that “most people” support abortion rights but provides no justification for that claim.
There are some strong pro-choice arguments that exist, and there are stronger versions of some of the arguments advanced by this author, but the claims offered in this article pose no threat to the pro-life position.
Emily Albrecht
Director of Education & Outreach
