Joe Response

Sarah,

Thanks for the response. And thanks in advance for taking the time to read my (also very long) response.

The main thing I noticed is that you’ve twisted the argument. You’ve nearly disregarded the “Is it human?” question, while attempting to prove that “Women have the right to control their own bodies” and “abortion is a women’s issue.”

Let me say this: When debating abortion, only one thing matters: Is the unborn a person, or not? Everything rests on this question. Let me explain.

If the unborn is not a person, then:

• There’s nothing wrong with abortion, in any circumstances, because it doesn’t kill a person.
• Abortion is completely a women’s issue, because after all, it’s her body.
• When a zygote fails to implant, a life has not ended.
• Miscarriages don’t end a life.
• The Pill, when used to prevent implantation, is fine.
• Planned Parenthood is not a murderous business.

If you can prove to me that the unborn is not a person, guess what? I’ll concede the whole argument and agree with you!

But if the unborn is a person, then:

• Abortion is wrong, because it intentionally kills a human life.
• Starting at the moment of conception, abortion is not a women’s issue, because it’s not her body! It’s the body of someone else within her, someone who deserves all human rights, especially, the right to live and grow and be protected. The womb should be the safest place on earth for this tiny person.
• When a zygote fails to implant, yes, a life has ended, but it’s not the same as abortion! If a life ends by natural causes (as here, 20% of zygotes just don’t implant, for some reason), then of course it’s not murder. I support the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, and clearly, sometimes that “natural death” is before birth. This is always sad, but sometimes there’s just nothing we can do.
• Miscarriages do end a life. However, the death is by a natural cause and not by the intent of the parents. If a natural miscarriage occurs, then of course the parents aren’t murderers. On the other hand, when they consent to an abortion, they directly will the death of their innocent unborn child. So it all comes down to intention. Comparing miscarriage to abortion is like comparing a hunting accident to an assassination.
• The Pill can be abortifacient, which means that it can prevent a new human being from implanting in the mother’s uterus, thereby killing him/her.
• Planned Parenthood is bad news because it actively performs the murder of millions of lives.

There was one thing that really surprised me in your response. I thought for sure you would change your definition of a “person,” but you didn’t! So far, your answer to the question, “When does human life begin?” has been inconsistent. Let me remind you, this is the most important question. If the unborn is a person, then abortion takes the life of an innocent human being and should thus be unthinkable, no matter the circumstances!  We’ve discussed it a little, but now it’s time to go a lot deeper.

From your statements, I can conclude that you think human life begins at the point of viability. Viability is generally accepted to be around 6-7 months (24-28 weeks) after conception. You also gave me a list of what you consider to be a “person.” However, not only does your list fail to apply to all humans, it also extends to non-humans (aka, pre-viable embryos, by your definition) too! Logically, if criteria can’t define all humans, then clearly, it shouldn’t be used to define a “person” at all! Let me discredit your criteria piece by piece. (As I said, I’ve talked about this in a previous response, but you haven’t changed your answer yet—it remains inconsistent. So let me try again.)

Five senses: You’ve done my work for me on this one! You yourself said that people can have “sometimes less” than five senses and still be a human. Helen Keller was both deaf and blind, yet she was still a person. So this criterion does not apply to all humans.

Brain: This is really interesting. By Week 7 of embryonic development, brain waves can be detected. Medically, the presence or absence of brain waves is used as a legal means to determine if someone is dead or alive (heartbeat and respiration aren’t used). Check my facts on http://www.ncrtl.org/LifeLine.htm and the Wikipedia entry on Brain Death. So upon medical examination of a 7+ week pregnant woman, a doctor would find legal evidence for two lives, not one! But you might say something like, “That’s the beginning of a brain, not a complete one.” To which I would respond: By Week 10, the embryo’s brain has the same structure that it has at birth (http://peacepigeon.tripod.com/fetal.html). Sarah, your definition of a “human” then applies to pre-viable embryos! You might want to think this through some more.

Heart: I’ve already mentioned that the heart starts beating at Week 3, with the embryo’s own blood, separate from the mother’s and often a different blood type. You might say, “That’s the beginning of a heart, not a complete heart.” But to pump blood, you need all 4 heart chambers and a complete, closed (though tiny) circulatory system. By Week 14, the heart pumps several quarts of blood a day.

Lungs: The lungs begin to develop at Week 4 and by Week 12 the embryo practices breathing the amniotic fluid. If you say, “That doesn’t count as real lungs, because no air is involved,” then let me remind you that only at birth do you receive your first breath of air. So 10 seconds before birth, are you not a person? Of course not.

Colon and pancreas and other organs: At Week 3-5, these begin to develop. Within Week 11, all body systems are complete and begin functioning.

Ability to process memory, make decisions, and reason: Babies can’t make decisions or reason for themselves. And my 88-year-old grandma, who has dementia, can’t do any of these things.

I recommend coming up with a new definition of what a person is. You are not consistent between saying “an unborn becomes a human at viability” and the definition I debunked above. Think it through. What makes all humans human? (Their DNA, which makes them a unique person, maybe?)

Meanwhile, you might say, “Being viable or post-viable (and thus physically autonomous if delivered) is the only requirement for being human.” Maybe you’d say this and maybe you wouldn’t, but I’d like to refute it anyway.

First, some history: Roe v. Wade placed viability at 7 months, “permitting states to freely regulate and even ban abortion after the 28th week.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viability_(fetal)  In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “viability itself was legally dissociated from the hard line of 28 weeks, leaving the point at which ‘undue burdens’ were permissible variable depending on the technology of the time and the judgment of the state legislatures.”

Now, some medical research: If there’s one thing certain about viability, it’s that viability is not certain! The youngest children to survive premature birth were “just under 20 weeks from fertilization, or a few days past the midpoint of an average full-term pregnancy” (same wiki article). In a nutshell, “There is no sharp limit of development, age, or weight at which a fetus automatically becomes viable.”

How can we define a human as “being viable or post-viable,” when we can’t even define what viability is! Still, suppose that being “physically autonomous if delivered” is what makes you human. We’d need to know the exact point when this occurs, so as to know that the fetus is a non-human beforehand and a human afterwards. And you can’t pick a compromise right in the middle or even at the beginning of the viability range. What’s to say that a baby can’t survive beforehand? More than 90% of babies born before 27 weeks (remember, Roe v. Wade said 28 weeks) survive long-term. As I’ve said over and over again, a matter of life and death is far too important to be guessing on! So what do you say? Isn’t it obvious? If you have no idea when one becomes a person, shouldn’t you error on the side of caution?

(And, for your sake, the above is even assuming that a fetus becomes a person at viability, per your (first) definition. Even if you fail to believe the biological and philosophical evidence—evidence I will present yet again below—that personhood begins at fertilization, you must still answer the above question. You haven’t yet.)

So, I’ve shown that you don’t seem to know what a person is. At this point you’re probably still thinking, “Joe, why do you believe that a zygote is a person, when it clearly isn’t viable, and doesn’t even have the beginnings of the characteristics on my list?” Not to worry! Now I’ll put fourth my reasons.

Within the single cell of a zygote, there are 46 chromosomes with a unique combination of DNA. Every living thing—plant, animal, bacteria—contains DNA. DNA, in turn, resides within the nucleus of the cell, directing the lives of living organisms. The 3 billion pairs of A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s form a combination that no other human has, has had, or ever will have. Everything is already determined: gender, eye color, hair color, look of the face, etc. When given nutrients, a zygote will develop itself into an embryo, then a baby, then a toddler, and so forth. (This differentiates a zygote from, say, a skin cell that has DNA. When you give a skin cell nutrients, it grows and divides into more skin cells only.) Every single cell of the mother’s body contains her unique DNA, while the cell of the zygote and all future cells of the baby contain its unique DNA. The zygote is not part of the mother’s body! It is a separate being within her.

And the mother? It’s her nutrients that sustain the zygote’s growth. Yes, that’s just how it works, so don’t be bitter. The zygote is a unique human individual, with above all, the RIGHT to life. If you say, “That zygote has no right to steal nutrients from my body,” then you are mistaken. That zygote deserves to live, so it DESERVES the nourishment of the mother. Is this greedy, you ask? No, because the right to life trumps all other rights!  To deny this is none other than a crime against humanity. To invade the safety of a mother’s womb and snatch away an unborn being’s life has consequences too. There are millions of children who should be alive today. In our generation, for every 3 kids you look at, there should be a 4^th.

A Few More Things

You wrote, “And you claim that abortion causes irreparable harm to the mother, both physically and emotionally. This is opinion.” But I say no, it’s fact:

• Check this website out: http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/index.aspx because it’s truly amazing. Check the boxes you want, hit “search,” scroll down, and click on the titles. These are testimonials by women who have had abortions. I really encourage you to spend some time reading them.
• Emotional: Women who have abortions have a 98 percent increased risk for any mental health disorders compared to women who did not have an abortion. They also have:
• 59 percent increased risk for suicidal thoughts
• 61 percent increased risk for mood disorders
• 61 percent increased risk for social anxiety disorders
• 261 percent increased risk for alcohol abuse
• 280 percent increased risk for any substance use disorder
• Approximately 6 percent of suicidal ideation cases among women nationwide and 25 percent of cases of drug use could be related to abortion
• (http://afterabortion.org/)
• Physical: Compared to pregnant women who had their babies, pregnant women who aborted are:
• 3.5 times more likely to die in the following year
• 1.6 times more likely to die of natural causes
• 6 times more likely to die of suicide
• 14 times more likely to die from homicide
• 4 times more likely to die of injuries related to accidents
• Also, women who have one, two, or more previous induced abortions are, respectively, 1.89, 2.66, or 2.03 times more likely to have a subsequent pre-term delivery, compared to women who carry to term.
• Women who have one, two, or more induced abortions are, respectively, 1.89, 2.61, and 2.23 times more likely to have a post-term delivery (over 42 weeks).
• Immediate complications — About 10% suffer immediate complications; one-fifth of these are life-threatening
• (http://afterabortion.org/)
• I think we both agree that this is bad, really bad. Abortion is, in reality, anti-woman!

I know what you’re probably thinking: “The solution is not to reduce abortions, but to reduce unwanted pregnancies.” In fact, you wrote, “…instead of doing all you can to support women facing difficult pregnancies, you should be doing all you can to make sure these unwanted pregnancies DON'T HAPPEN. Educate. Make contraception available.”

First of all, I’m very surprised that you apparently don’t want me to support women facing difficult pregnancies. Why not help them through a difficult time in their life?

Next, realize that to focus only on “making sure these unwanted pregnancies don’t happen” is a separate entity from what we’re debating, and it’s irrelevant to making abortion right or wrong. The fact is, unwanted pregnancies do occur, and we need to decide whether abortion is a solution or not. That, in turn, depends on what a person is.

Education is very important. But here’s what society needs to be educated about. “Educate the public that abortion is harmful emotionally, physically and spiritually to women, men and families, so that it becomes unacceptable for anyone to recommend abortion as a 'fix' for a problem pregnancy.” (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/)

You think contraception’s the solution? Here’s an interesting fact, from none other than Planned Parenthood’s own research arm:  Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. (http://www.guttmacher.org/) So, the majority of so-called “unwanted pregnancies” could not be avoided through contraception use.

You specifically asked me, “Would you make the Pill illegal, then? Even though it's able to help women and girls like me with a whole variety of different medical issues? This is a matter of women's health. Denying it would be a matter of women's rights.”

Yes, I would make the Pill illegal. Please don’t faint! Remember, this is separate from our discussion—we’re debating the morality of abortion. The morality of contraception has no bearing on the morality of abortion. However, I’d be happy to start another blog to debate contraception. Aside from being abortifacient, the Pill wreaks havoc on the environment. Its high estrogen content creates pollution in our water and causes serious deformations to aquatic wildlife. As for the “variety of different medical issues” you speak of, there are other, natural ways to treat such problems.

Here are a couple more things I wanted to respond to:

You wrote, “[Margaret Sanger’s] racism, however, does not make abortion wrong.” But that wasn’t my point. I was instead responding to your earlier comment that “unlike slavery [abortion is] not about racism.” I was just trying to point out that initially, yes, abortion was about racism. And even today, race plays a large factor in abortion—abortion rates are much higher in minority communities, and PP specifically targets them.

You wrote, “If you believe that "the killing of innocent human life is ALWAYS evil," you should be as vocal about ending the war as you are about ending abortion. You should be on street corners, you should write to your congress people, you should post about it on Facebook.” The truth is that there are many evils in the world. Is it wrong to focus on one area? I’m much more likely to make an impact when I specialize in one area, not if I devote a little time to each and every one of the world’s problems. My goal is not to simply reduce abortions. It isn’t to only overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s to change hearts, to create a mentality that would make abortion utterly unthinkable, because it fatally disregards a person’s intrinsic human dignity. It may take time, but I know there will be one day when this class of citizens once again regains its civil rights. The unborn cannot speak to defend themselves, so I will have to be their voice. Is there something dishonorable in this?

I’ve tried to stay focused on facts, but for just a moment I’ll diverge to emotional appeal, similar to your arguments. You wrote, “Kids are huge burdens to their parents. Just not in the same physical way that a fetus is a burden on its mother.” I’d just like to remind you that children are a gift! When I ask my mom about her pregnancy with me, and all her difficulties, she never fails to say that “it’s worth it!” I’m a guy, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the ability to have children, to give life to another, truly elevates all of womanhood. What dignity! To think that women—and women alone—carry the next generation, the future of humanity, within them is truly humbling! (at least for a guy…)

I once heard someone say that if men had to give birth, there’d be no humans because men couldn’t handle it. As much as it’s a blow to my man card to admit it, I agree. If you want to argue who’s tougher--men or women--I seriously doubt if I can win.

Before I finish (finally, I know!), I’d like to repeat my challenge to you. If you can prove to me that the unborn is not a person, I’ll concede the whole argument and agree with you! However, if you can’t, don’t be afraid to just say something along the lines of “Yes, abortion kills an innocent human life, but I really just don’t care.” Doing so is, in my opinion, far more honorable than continuing to deny the humanity of the unborn. I have confidence in you, Sarah, and I know you will think it through and not beat around the bush.

Take care,

Joe

Sarah Response

The responses I wrote were not arguments for or against abortion, for the most part, they were just showing you where you had holes in your arguments - you asked me to point out the holes, so that's what I did.

And okay, I misspoke (typed?). I meant zygote. A zygote doesn't have any of those characteristics, and yet you still consider it to be a person (because it contains DNA). And having the beginnings of those characteristics doesn't mean that they have those characteristics.

Here's another fun fact - only 60-80% (from Dr. John P. Ortiz, University of Utah School of Medicine, testifying before the president's Council of Bioethics in 2003, thanks newsreview.com) of zygotes actually attach themselves to the uterine wall to start growth. This means that 20% of these "people" come out during menstruation.

You're telling me that abortion is not about gender equality, and I'm telling you right now that abortion is VERY MUCH about gender equality. Women are the only people that can have babies. That makes abortion a woman's issue.

You even make the point yourself. You quote Margaret Sanger - "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children. [Women must have the right] to live, to love, to be lazy, to be an unmarried mother, to create, to destroy." Men unequivocally have these rights (minus the unmarried mother one, because they aren't women. They can be single dads, though!). You claim that these rights are a sign that women are "greedy." And you know what? Women have the right to be greedy, just as much as men have the right to be greedy.

To claim that women need to give up these rights, this "greed" to carry a baby to term, whether they want it or not, reduces them to nothing more than an incubator.

And you claim that abortion causes irreparable harm to the mother, both physically and emotionally. This is opinion. Have you ever spoken to a woman that's had an abortion? Have you asked her questions about it? The reason why pro-choice people often say that they want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare" is that yes, it would be great if there were fewer abortions, because it often is a physically and emotionally difficult procedure for the women who choose to undergo them. On the other hand, not all women feel this way, and they should not be shamed for the choices they make either. Men are not shamed for causing these pregnancies - the women should not be shamed for how they carry (or don't carry) the pregnancies out.

And yes, Margaret Sanger may have been a racist. Margaret Sanger was a white woman with power living in the 1920s. Her racism is not a surprise. Her racism, however, does not make abortion wrong. It makes her a racist. She lived in a very different era than we do now, and was an incredibly privileged and occasionally narrow-minded, bigoted woman. Just because she was the one that was the catalyst for a movement doesn't mean she was right about everything. In that same stroke, it doesn't mean she was wrong about everything, either.

I've seen this written too - our founding fathers were also racists. They kept slaves. It was a reflection of their time and of their position in society. This doesn't mean that all of their ideas or the things they did for our country were bad. To reject the work that Margaret Sanger did for her discriminatory opinions, and to not reject others who acted the same way, is inconsistent.

Margaret Sanger's most important cause was birth control and contraception. Birth control and contraception are most of what Planned Parenthood provides. Birth control and contraception are NOT BAD THINGS. People should be educated about birth control and contraception from the time they understand what sex is. People should not be ashamed about buying and using birth control and contraception. Birth control and contraception are a matter of improving public health for both men and women. Denying it on either side is bad for people, period.

Sometimes, being on a birth control pill means that fertilized eggs don't stick to the uterine lining, and therefore are menstruated out. Does this mean that women on the BCP are murderers too? Where do you draw a line? Would you make the BCP illegal? I'm not ashamed to tell you that I take it, and that I have friends that take it, though the reasons why are absolutely none of your business.

Would you make the Pill illegal, then? Even though it's able to help women and girls like me with a whole variety of different medical issues? This is a matter of women's health. Denying it would be a matter of women's rights.

What about women who have stillbirths and miscarriages based on their living environment, or due to a drug they were taking, or were told that carrying a pregnancy to term would be risky for them, but continued the pregnancy anyway? Or women that just have miscarriages, even if there is no evidence that their habits caused them? Is it their fault? Are they murderers too? Regardless of whether or not you think so, there are women in jail and women being prosecuted for homicides for these reasons. Here's an article, so you can tell I'm not making this stuff up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

If you think that abortion is still irrelevant to women's rights, the fact that men may continue to perform these activities legally while the woman who is carrying their child is deemed a murderer if these activities end up causing a miscarriage should show you that it certainly is. If, like before, you think these rights shouldn't matter if the woman is carrying a child, you are again reducing her to incubator status.

Furthermore, you claim that being autonomous is not a requirement for life. I agree that we all depend on people to some degree, but I'm talking about physical autonomy. If you walk into and out of a building, you are not feeding off another human. You are not eating what they eat, you are not pumping their blood, you are not reshaping their body. This dependence is COMPLETELY different than asking your parents for gas money or buying somebody groceries. Fetuses are burdens to their mother in a COMPLETELY different way than a kid is a burden to their parent. And like I said before - and as before, this is not a slight against you - you are male, and you will never understand this. You can't.

This is from Wikipedia's entry on Planned Parenthood:

Federal legislators have also proposed laws that would ban Planned Parenthood from receiving federal money for any purpose.[42] By law, Planned Parenthood cannot allocate any federal funding for abortions.[41]

A lot of Planned Parenthood's funding comes from outside sources as well, like people who donate. People who donate to Planned Parenthood are not murderers by association. That is patently ridiculous.

And I never said you did support war! But I did say that if you believe that "the killing of innocent human life is ALWAYS evil," you should be as vocal about ending the war as you are about ending abortion. You should be on street corners, you should write to your congresspeople, you should post about it on Facebook.

I said the concept was similar, not that I put humans and trees on the same page.

And by the same notion, instead of doing all you can to support women facing difficult pregnancies, you should be doing all you can to make sure these unwanted pregnancies DON'T HAPPEN. Educate. Make contraception available. Make sure that rapes go reported and that women feel comfortable going to the authorities with a rape charge. Make sure more rapists are prosecuted (according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 15 of 16 rapists never spend a day in jail and 60% of rapes go unreported. Here's some interesting data on the subject: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates).

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group" (wikipedia again). This is perpetrated out of hate and intolerance on a massive scale, in a systematic and organized manner. Your statement that "abortion is genocide," essentially makes the claim that women the world over are guilty of perpetrating genocide, which is inappropriate and ignorant. I know that you're a good person - please don't make this comparison again.

I hope that you've got some answers for me - sorry it took so long to respond!

And in the event that the comment gets misinterpreted, as I have a feeling it might, I definitely agree that kids are burdens to their parents. Kids are huge burdens to their parents. Just not in the same physical way that a fetus is a burden on its mother. That's all!

Joe Response

Sarah,

I have made some detailed comments on your last response. Please see below. My comments are in red. I hope you don’t think I’m yelling at you with all the CAPS, it was just way quicker than constantly clicking the italics button for emphasis.

Overall, it appears you believe that while in the womb, human life has EXTRINSIC value; that is, its worth is subject to what others think about it. So, if a mother really wants the child, then he/she is valuable and worthy of protection, and anything that would harm the life in the womb would be a tragedy and crime. But if a mother doesn’t want the child, then he/she is not valuable and not worthy of protection, and voluntarily killing the life is acceptable. Once out of the womb, however, it appears you shift your argument to support the life’s INTRINSIC worth; that is, its inherent worth for the very sake of being human, and independent of what others think of it.

I, on the other hand, maintain the INTRINSIC value of a human being from its biological beginning, namely conception, to its biological end, namely natural death.

Finally, you did not address my argument about the burden of proof being on the side that’s doing the killing. Until the pro-choice side can prove without a doubt that what they are dismembering is NOT a human with intrinsic dignity, then abortion should be illegal. Matters of life and death are simply too important to be guessing on or justifying merely by emotional appeal or personal opinions.

I’m looking forward to your response. You can reply in the comments section on the blog if you’d like. This is a good discussion, and I think we’re mutually striving to go far beyond the typical one-liner arguments of our respective sides.

Take care,
Joe

On 6/22/2011, Sarah wrote: (My comments in red.)

I will answer you point by point, for the most part. I just did a word count on this and it's almost 2000 words, so hang in there. I have to split it into two; Facebook told me it was too long.

Your four differences are as follows: size, development level, environment, and degree of dependency.

Size: You said the fact that a newborn baby that weighs about 8 pounds and a fetus or embryo can weigh nearly nothing shouldn't make a difference, and that men being bigger than women shouldn't make a difference either.

What makes the difference in the baby is a brain and a heart and lungs and bones and all the things that make you essentially human (and heavier. Brains are a pretty substantial human element). An embryo doesn't have any of those characteristics. (Yes it does! Have you ever taken a biology class? The heart begins beating at 21 days. At Week 5, called the beginning of the EMBRYONIC period, the baby's brain, spinal cord, heart and other organs begin to form. During this same week, a layer of skin called the mesoderm forms, which will be the foundation for the baby's bones, muscles, kidneys and much of the reproductive system. So even a 5-week-old embryo has the beginnings of the characteristics you cited.)

And your comment on men vs. women - I'll keep it short, because I could talk to you about this for days and it is almost a different issue (not quite!), but men DO have more rights than women. Not that that's a good thing, but it's been true as long as there have been patriarchal societies. Women still make less per dollar than men. Women are still denied job opportunities and raises because they are women (look up what's going on with Wal-Mart right now). Women have to worry about verbal and sexual harassment, both in public and at the workplace - if you think this is no longer a reality, I can tell you that it's happened to me. Women are still taught to guard themselves against rape. And this is just in the United States. It's a lot worse in most other places around the globe. Men have more power than women, world-wide (not that they should), and size does have something to do with it. (OK…But this isn’t about gender equality, which is a separate issue; it’s about the right to life. In terms of human dignity, both men and women are equal, despite any differences in size. That’s my point.)

Level of development: First of all, the level of intellectual maturity is not a bell curve. Once you hit peak intellectual/physical maturity in your 20s, you pretty much level off. You may droop just a little, but mostly you stay constant. The only time at which an 80 year old performs at the same level as a 2 year old is the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." (Development occurs both physically and in terms of experience. When comparing a 2-year-old, a 40-year-old, and a 90-year-old, their bodies are all different based on their age. The 90-year-old, in addition, has had more experiences. Life is a CONTINUAL PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT. If a 2-year-old dies, she will never live to be 40. If a 40-year-old dies, she will never live to be 90. That’s just how it works. So if our mothers had had abortions when we were embryos, WE WOULDN’T BE HERE TODAY, even though we would have been less developed.)

And 20-year-olds DO have more rights than a 15-year-old or a 5-year-old or a 2-year-old, and rightly so! They can drive and drink and smoke and consent to sex and vote and sign their name to things and buy houses and rent cars and serve in the military and have way, way more rights than a child does. Technically, at present, you have more rights than I do, because I'm 17 still. And if you want to make the point that 80-year-olds have fewer rights - not in so many words, but there are many families in which the children take the car keys from their parents when they become elderly, and the elderly often go to live at places where they're taken care of, or need to otherwise be taken care of - there does come a point where their freedom becomes limited. Not that I'm advocating for that, but there is a modicum of truth to it. (It appears you’ve missed the whole point. This ISN’T about those trivial rights (driving, drinking, smoking, etc). It’s about the RIGHT TO LIFE, and ONLY THAT!!! Are 15-year-olds just as human as 2-year-olds and 80-year-olds? Yes! The difference is their level of development. A 6-month-old fetus is less developed than a 2-year-old. Is it just as HUMAN? Yes!)

Also, when I think of what a "person" is, I think that it has five senses (though sometimes less), a brain, heart, lungs, bones, colon, and pancreas, breathes air, has an ability to process memory, makes decisions, and reasons (among other things, but my schema would make one very long page of qualities). A baby has most, if not all of these things. An 18-year-old has all of these things. Every living person of every race and creed and whatever else has these things. (They might not always be good decision makers, and they might not reason very well, and they may be missing one or more of their senses, but they generally have the rest of these qualities.)

(Uh-oh. Three things. First, this is only your opinion, aka what you “think” a person is. It’s not grounded in scientific fact. I “think” a person comes in being at conception. Does the act of believing this make it so? No. To be credible, you need empirical evidence, not opinions, to back up what you’re saying. Second, though I know you wouldn’t, it sure sounds like you would support infanticide, because babies cannot make decisions or reason [def: the ability to think logically regarded as a basis for knowledge, as distinct from experience or emotion] and because you yourself admit that a baby might not have “all these things.” Finally along the same lines, you fail to find characteristics that define ALL humans, as you yourself admit. What defines ALL humans? How about their unique DNA imprinted at conception?)

Embryos and early-stage fetuses do not.

All this to say -- the level of development is very relevant. (You’re right! It is relevant to the functions of a person at their state in life. It is not, however, relevant to the humanity of an individual.)

Environment: When you are walking into and out of a building, you are not making any difference to the life of another person (unless you're hitting them with the door, obviously, or someone is holding the door open for you). You are an autonomous individual. Pretty much you can go wherever you want. When a baby is in the birth canal, they are not autonomous. (Being autonomous is NOT a requirement for life. A newborn is not autonomous. A toddler is not autonomous. Many elderly are not autonomous. In a sense, kids and teenagers are not autonomous…they depend on their parents for food, shelter, money, electricity, etc.)

They feed off the mother. She makes a lot of incredible sacrifices to her child - giving up her body, giving up her job, giving up alcohol and coffee, giving up going out on weekends, giving up thousands of dollars to put towards its care, giving up personal comfort, giving up all the clothes that she is currently able to wear, and occasionally giving up her health or her life.

When you walk into and out of a building, you are not putting that kind of immense burden on a person, unless the doorlady is birthing you across the threshold. And even then, you're probably not walking. (Yes, clearly women go through a lot to have children. But burden has no effect WHATSOEVER on the humanity of the embryo. If pregnancy was without burden, it’d still be a human. Since when has burden been a dehumanizing factor? Kids are burdens to their parents too.)

Degree of dependency: This is not part of the pro-choice argument, usually, except for the argument I made earlier - a woman has to undergo an incredible amount of sacrifice to have a child - an amount of sacrifice that you, being male, will never understand. This is not a slight against you at all, it's just me saying honestly: you will never understand the physical consequences of childbirth, because you can't. (I sincerely appreciate you not making an ad hominem attack on me because I’m male. Most pro-choicers are not so gracious. But you seem to understand that while people have gender, arguments don’t. Because if they did, then Roe v. Wade should be reversed because it was decided by 9 men!) Sometimes it's a sacrifice that a woman just cannot handle, physically, mentally, or economically. Generally a pacemaker doesn't suffer through helping a person with a heart defect, unless somebody's forgotten to put batteries in it. (Again, you’ve digressed to talk of burden, and seemed to have missed the point. Perhaps you have a low level of dependency on others, but many others do not. An embryo depends on the mother. If being autonomous is a requirement for deserving to live, then we might as well kill a baby, or an elderly person with dementia.)

You put the Planned Parenthood debate this way:

"If the unborn are human beings, then they are entitled to the same right to life enjoyed by born human beings. If this is the case, then Planned Parenthood is a mass murderer and should definitely not be supported by taxpayers, regardless of how many other services they may provide."

First of all, tax-payers don't provide the funding for abortions at Planned Parenthood. At all. Not a penny. (Can you show me your facts? Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant. Suppose there was a company whose goal was to murder all 15-year-olds. In addition, they also planted trees for the environment. Would we want to pay taxes to support their company if none of the funds went to murder? Of course not! Just giving them ANY money would help keep them in business, allowing the murder to continue. Planned Parenthood CANNOT be separated from its abortions. Any money that supports them indirectly supports abortions. It’s simple logic: If PP goes out of business, their abortions stop. If PP stays in business, their abortions CAN CONTINUE!)

Second of all, most of your taxes DO go to support the mass murder of innocent people: they go to the United States defense budget. (Whoa! I never said I supported war. This is true but a COMPLETELY SEPARATE ARGUMENT.)

Wait, you might argue, doesn't the defense budget keep us safe? Isn't that important?

It does, and it is! Like your argument against Planned Parenthood, even if 97% of what a company or group does is good and helps the people (keeps us safe, even!), it shouldn't matter if a small percentage of what they do causes "assassinations." (I must interject. PP does not have a monopoly on its “good” business. It is inseparably linked to abortion, while other facilities—such as Arbor Vitae in AA—provide the same services minus abortion. We have little control over the Defense Budget. But we can and should promote an end to Planned Parenthood, while simultaneously promoting pregnancy help centers like Arbor Vitae in AA.) But your taxes go to this every day. If you want to make sure that none of your taxes go to the ending of one innocent life...don't pay your taxes. (Please pay your taxes. I would rather not see you in prison.) (Me too!)

It is incredibly hypocritical, then, for a pro-life person to argue against abortions while simultaneously supporting military action in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Over 100 thousand innocent people have been killed by US troops in the past 10 years, people with families and memories and the capability to think and feel and reason and suffer and grieve. I don't know what your stance on the war is, but until pro-life protesters oppose the war as vehemently as they oppose abortion, I will have doubts in their firm belief in the sanctity of life.  (Yes, the murder of innocent people by US troops IS very sad. But why do you assume that I support these military actions? Because, in fact, I do not. They are unjust wars, and the killing of innocent human life is ALWAYS evil. At the same time, abortion has the GREATER MAGNITUDE, though both are evil. You say 100 thousand have been killed by US troops in the past 10 years; however, 40 MILLION babies are slaughtered worldwide by abortion EVERY YEAR.)

Next point - yes, an embryo does have most of the "ingredients" to be a person. It has DNA. It still needs nutrients and time to become viable. You say that it is impossible to say that a viable fetus is more human than a conceived embryo (clearly it is possible, because that's what I'm saying). But that's like saying that an acorn is no less an oak tree than an oak tree (Here, the question would not be if it is an oak TREE, bur rather if it is a living OAK (because seeds actually have plant embryos inside). That would be like saying: is it an ADULT, or is it HUMAN?) There are fundamental differences between the acorn and the tree that would make you sad to see a tree cut down but not even phased to turn the acorn into an elementary school craft project, even though the acorn has all the ingredients it needs to be a tree, besides nutrients and time. I'm not saying that people and trees deserve the same respect (though trees deserve a little more than they've been getting, since they keep us alive), but the concept is similar. (No, it’s not too similar. Please don’t compare humans to a plant. There are similarities in biology, but human life is special, infinitely elevated in a separate category.) If not for the mother, and what she gives to the embryo to make it a fetus, there is no child. (Correct! Much is missing, though. If not for the mother, there is no fetus. If not for the fetus, there is no child. If not for the child, there is no adult, and no mother. It’s a cycle, and every part is equally important. Remove one part, and the rest will cease.)

The comparison you draw between abortion and bank robbery is completely unfair. Abortion is not about power or inciting fear. Abortion is not done out of malice. Abortion is not done out of pride or monetary greed. Bank robberies never happen because the perpetrator has been raped, or because the perpetrator is dying and couldn't live another hour without robbing a bank. The difference between having a safe abortion and feeling like you have no other option besides throwing yourself down the stairs is the difference between keeping a woman alive and healthy and her potential death. If you're so concerned about keeping people alive because life is important and sacred, this should hold for people of any age or circumstance, including women who feel like they have no other option. (This is the great trap. Women should not feel like abortion is their only option, yet they often do. There are other options, such as adoption. The circumstances may be very unfortunate and very sad, but to deny an unborn child of its life is impossible to justify. Abortion is never safe; it completely wipes out one life, while causing irreparable harm to the mother, both physically and emotionally. Rather than advocate a patch-up “solution” such as abortion, we should be doing all we can to support women facing such difficult pregnancies.)

The other equivalency you draw, between abortion and slavery, is inaccurate. Like a bank robbery, abortion is not about power or greed (Yes it is. To quote Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and pioneer of abortion, "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children ... [Women must have the right] to live ... to love ... to be lazy ... to be an unmarried mother ... to create ... to destroy ... The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."), and unlike slavery, it's not about racism. (I’ll let Margaret Sanger take this one: “We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Accordingly, abortion rates are sky-high among minorities, especially the African American communities, because organizations like PP specifically target them.) Abortion is not about forcing people to live lives they don't want (in fact, it's usually the opposite). Abortion is not laden with the implications of thousands of years of race-based violent crime and cruelty and fear. In fact, to make this comparison is insensitive in that it minimizes the truth of what slavery did to the US and what slavery is still doing in other places in the world. (Slavery was a terrible blight on our nation’s history. And so is abortion. Hopefully, society will realize this one day. As you admitted, many women feel that they have no other option besides abortion. In a sense, then, our society is chained to abortion. Also, just as slaves were persecuted as a race, the unborn are a part of the world’s largest genocide.)

And about your last paragraph - you state that abortion is a question of morality. It makes me wonder if you believe that I -- and many other people who are pro-choice -- am immoral. It's almost an accusatory statement, and certainly a blast to someone's character, to tell them that they're not a good person (since generally, that's what morality implies). It's possible for us to disagree on this issue and still both be good people. Moreover, it's possible to be an anti-abortion person (or a pro-choice person!) and be a huge tool. Being on one side of this issue or another does not determine your morality. (Our whole conversation proves that abortion IS a moral question. We both think that we are right, and neither of us would accept a compromise. To some extent, you are correct. Two people can have opposite beliefs and be doing what they FEEL is right. But to feel to be right is utterly subjective; truth, however, is objective. So one of us holds morally wrong views through a misguided, but truth-seeking, conscience.)

And I agree - it's been cathartic for me to be able to take this time to write out my beliefs in this way, and to be able to share them with you. It's also been good for me to see where you're coming from, so I appreciate you taking the time (by the time this is over, I will have written you a novel and a half) to read. My mom thinks that we should post this back and forth on a blog somewhere - what do you think about that? (Well, here it is!)

Sarah Response

I will answer you point by point, for the most part. I just did a word count on this and it's almost 2000 words, so hang in there. I have to split it into two; Facebook told me it was too long.

Your four differences are as follows: size, development level, environment, and degree of dependency.

Size: You said the fact that a newborn baby that weighs about 8 pounds and a fetus or embryo can weigh nearly nothing shouldn't make a difference, and that men being bigger than women shouldn't make a difference either.

What makes the difference in the baby is a brain and a heart and lungs and bones and all the things that make you essentially human (and heavier. Brains are a pretty substantial human element). An embryo doesn't have any of those characteristics.

And your comment on men vs. women - I'll keep it short, because I could talk to you about this for days and it is almost a different issue (not quite!), but men DO have more rights than women. Not that that's a good thing, but it's been true as long as there have been patriarchal societies. Women still make less per dollar than men. Women are still denied job opportunities and raises because they are women (look up what's going on with Wal-Mart right now). Women have to worry about verbal and sexual harassment, both in public and at the workplace - if you think this is no longer a reality, I can tell you that it's happened to me. Women are still taught to guard themselves against rape. And this is just in the United States. It's a lot worse in most other places around the globe. Men have more power than women, world-wide (not that they should), and size does have something to do with it.

Level of development: First of all, the level of intellectual maturity is not a bell curve. Once you hit peak intellectual/physical maturity in your 20s, you pretty much level off. You may droop just a little, but mostly you stay constant. The only time at which an 80 year old performs at the same level as a 2 year old is the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

And 20-year-olds DO have more rights than a 15-year-old or a 5-year-old or a 2-year-old, and rightly so! They can drive and drink and smoke and consent to sex and vote and sign their name to things and buy houses and rent cars and serve in the military and have way, way more rights than a child does. Technically, at present, you have more rights than I do, because I'm 17 still. And if you want to make the point that 80-year-olds have fewer rights - not in so many words, but there are many families in which the children take the car keys from their parents when they become elderly, and the elderly often go to live at places where they're taken care of, or need to otherwise be taken care of - there does come a point where their freedom becomes limited. Not that I'm advocating for that, but there is a modicum of truth to it.

Also, when I think of what a "person" is, I think that it has five senses (though sometimes less), a brain, heart, lungs, bones, colon, and pancreas, breathes air, has an ability to process memory, makes decisions, and reasons (among other things, but my schema would make one very long page of qualities). A baby has most, if not all of these things. An 18-year-old has all of these things. Every living person of every race and creed and whatever else has these things. (They might not always be good decision makers, and they might not reason very well, and they may be missing one or more of their senses, but they generally have the rest of these qualities.)

Embryos and early-stage fetuses do not.

All this to say -- the level of development is very relevant.

Environment: When you are walking into and out of a building, you are not making any difference to the life of another person (unless you're hitting them with the door, obviously, or someone is holding the door open for you). You are an autonomous individual. Pretty much you can go wherever you want. When a baby is in the birth canal, they are not autonomous. They feed off the mother. She makes a lot of incredible sacrifices to her child - giving up her body, giving up her job, giving up alcohol and coffee, giving up going out on weekends, giving up thousands of dollars to put towards its care, giving up personal comfort, giving up all the clothes that she is currently able to wear, and occasionally giving up her health or her life. When you walk into and out of a building, you are not putting that kind of immense burden on a person, unless the doorlady is birthing you across the threshold. And even then, you're probably not walking.

Degree of dependency: This is not part of the pro-choice argument, usually, except for the argument I made earlier - a woman has to undergo an incredible amount of sacrifice to have a child - an amount of sacrifice that you, being male, will never understand. This is not a slight against you at all, it's just me saying honestly: you will never understand the physical consequences of childbirth, because you can't. Sometimes it's a sacrifice that a woman just cannot handle, physically, mentally, or economically. Generally a pacemaker doesn't suffer through helping a person with a heart defect, unless somebody's forgotten to put batteries in it.

You put the Planned Parenthood debate this way:

"If the unborn are human beings, then they are entitled to the same right to life enjoyed by born human beings. If this is the case, then Planned Parenthood is a mass murderer and should definitely not be supported by taxpayers, regardless of how many other services they may provide."

First of all, tax-payers don't provide the funding for abortions at Planned Parenthood. At all. Not a penny.

Second of all, most of your taxes DO go to support the mass murder of innocent people: they go to the United States defense budget.

Wait, you might argue, doesn't the defense budget keep us safe? Isn't that important?

It does, and it is! Like your argument against Planned Parenthood, even if 97% of what a company or group does is good and helps the people (keeps us safe, even!), it shouldn't matter if a small percentage of what they do causes "assassinations." But your taxes go to this every day. If you want to make sure that none of your taxes go to the ending of one innocent life...don't pay your taxes. (Please pay your taxes. I would rather not see you in prison.)

It is incredibly hypocritical, then, for a pro-life person to argue against abortions while simultaneously supporting military action in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Over 100 thousand innocent people have been killed by US troops in the past 10 years, people with families and memories and the capability to think and feel and reason and suffer and grieve. I don't know what your stance on the war is, but until pro-life protesters oppose the war as vehemently as they oppose abortion, I will have doubts in their firm belief in the sanctity of life.

 

Next point - yes, an embryo does have most of the "ingredients" to be a person. It has DNA. It still needs nutrients and time to become viable. You say that it is impossible to say that a viable fetus is more human than a conceived embryo (clearly it is possible, because that's what I'm saying). But that's like saying that an acorn is no less an oak tree than an oak tree. There are fundamental differences between the acorn and the tree that would make you sad to see a tree cut down but not even phased to turn the acorn into an elementary school craft project, even though the acorn has all the ingredients it needs to be a tree, besides nutrients and time. I'm not saying that people and trees deserve the same respect (though trees deserve a little more than they've been getting, since they keep us alive), but the concept is similar. If not for the mother, and what she gives to the embryo to make it a fetus, there is no child.

The comparison you draw between abortion and bank robbery is completely unfair. Abortion is not about power or inciting fear. Abortion is not done out of malice. Abortion is not done out of pride or monetary greed. Bank robberies never happen because the perpetrator has been raped, or because the perpetrator is dying and couldn't live another hour without robbing a bank. The difference between having a safe abortion and feeling like you have no other option besides throwing yourself down the stairs is the difference between keeping a woman alive and healthy and her potential death. If you're so concerned about keeping people alive because life is important and sacred, this should hold for people of any age or circumstance, including women who feel like they have no other option.

The other equivalency you draw, between abortion and slavery, is inaccurate. Like a bank robbery, abortion is not about power or greed, and unlike slavery, it's not about racism. Abortion is not about forcing people to live lives they don't want (in fact, it's usually the opposite). Abortion is not laden with the implications of thousands of years of race-based violent crime and cruelty and fear. In fact, to make this comparison is insensitive in that it minimizes the truth of what slavery did to the US and what slavery is still doing in other places in the world.

And about your last paragraph - you state that abortion is a question of morality. It makes me wonder if you believe that I -- and many other people who are pro-choice -- am immoral. It's almost an accusatory statement, and certainly a blast to someone's character, to tell them that they're not a good person (since generally, that's what morality implies). It's possible for us to disagree on this issue and still both be good people. Moreover, it's possible to be an anti-abortion person (or a pro-choice person!) and be a huge tool. Being on one side of this issue or another does not determine your morality.

And I agree - it's been cathartic for me to be able to take this time to write out my beliefs in this way, and to be able to share them with you. It's also been good for me to see where you're coming from, so I appreciate you taking the time (by the time this is over, I will have written you a novel and a half) to read. My mom thinks that we should post this back and forth on a blog somewhere - what do you think about that?

-Sarah

Joe on Abortion

Sarah,

Thanks for your well thought-out response. The fact that it was long is actually good—it indicates that you put a lot of thought into your arguments. This reply will probably also be pretty long, so thanks in advance for your patience.

First of all, contrary to popular opinion, the morality or immorality of abortion is not a religious question. Rather, it is a question of science, specifically of embryology and human development. This is the basis of my argument.

My argument centers upon one question—what are the unborn? The answer to this question is absolutely fundamental. If the unborn are not human beings, then I concede that abortion is not wrong and that I’m wasting my time being in the pro-life movement. However, if the unborn are human beings, then they deserve the same protection we give to born humans, the most important of which is the right to live.

OK…so to start let’s consider a born human, say a newborn infant girl. Is it OK to kill her? Of course not! But what about if she was born to a really poor mother who couldn’t afford to raise her? What about if the mother didn’t even want her? What about if she had some kind of disability or handicap? Is it still wrong to kill her? Of course! Why so? Because we recognize that she is a member of the human species, and is thus entitled to protection regardless of how inconvenient she may seem.

So now to the core of my argument. Let me know if you follow and/or if you find any flaws in it. I would like to argue that there are only four differences between a newborn and a fetus in the womb. I believe that none of these differences justify being able to kill the latter but not the former. The newborn and the fetus differ in:

Size--I believe this is irrelevant. Since when do big people have more rights than smaller people? Men tend to be bigger than women. Does this mean that we should give women less rights? Of course not!

Level of Development--If this were relevant, the amount of rights we have would be a bell curve. People tend to reach their peak physical maturity in their late twenties and their peak intellectual maturity in their late thirties. Does this mean that such people should have more rights than, say, a two-year-old or an eighty-two-year-old. Of course not! A two-year-old isn't less valuable than a thirty-year old, even though the two-year old isn't even fully developed (for example, doesn't have a functioning reproductive system).

Environment--Do we become more/less of a person by changing locations? If you walk from outside into a building, do you stop becoming you? Of course not! Then how can a mere eight inches down the birth canal change a non-person that we can kill into a member of the human family that we cannot?

Degree of Dependency--Yes, the fetus depends on the mother to survive. But is this any different from the newborn that also depends on its mother (and others) to survive? Or what about those who have pacemakers or are on oxygen machines? Do they lose their rights just because they depend on other people/things? Of course not!

So I would argue that the four differences are all irrelevant. None of them justify being able to kill an unborn human being regardless of how painful the situation, difficult the circumstances, or hopeless the future looks for the child. Why? For the same reason we would never kill a newborn who was born into the same conditions. Once again, it all comes down to this question--what are the unborn?

If the unborn are human beings, then they are entitled to the same right to life enjoyed by born human beings. If this is the case, then Planned Parenthood is a mass murderer and should definitely not be supported by taxpayers, regardless of how many other services they may provide. Imagine how absurd it would sound if I said “Don’t worry, only three percent of Company X’s services are assassinations. But don’t worry, 97% of their other stuff is good, and may even reduce the need for assassinations.” That’s where the pro-lifers are coming from.

But if, on the other hand, the unborn are not human beings then, as I said, pro-lifers are wasting their time and even pro-choicers who want to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare" have it wrong. If abortion doesn't take an innocent human life, then why should it be rare? Have as many as you want! Why should we try to reduce instances of something that doesn’t even hurt anyone? Of course, I think all scientific and philosophical evidence points to the former case.

Now, as you’ve probably noticed by now, my argument considers irrelevant any distinction between early-term and late-term abortions. I believe this is for a good reason. It has to do with the difference between construction and development. Human embryology reveals (quite obviously) that fetuses aren’t constructed piece-by-piece by some external force (such as in an assembly line). Rather, they develop from within. From the moment of conception, the fertilized egg has everything it needs to fully develop itself. This is not opinion, but biological fact. Even after birth, all development comes from within. Therefore, it is impossible to say that a viable fetus is more human than a newly conceived embryo. In the same way, it is impossible to say that the former is more deserving of protection than the latter.

Now, I think this is pretty sound reasoning for the immorality of abortion. But, to play devil’s advocate for a second, let’s pretend that we aren’t absolutely convinced that the unborn are humans. In fact, let’s even say that we have some fairly serious doubts. So I ask: When it comes to matters of life and death, shouldn’t we error on the side of caution? Pretend you’re driving your car at night and you see a rumpled-up blanket with a bulge in it in the middle of the road. If you have even the slightest doubt that the bulge isn’t a homeless person, do you still run it over? Or if you’re hunting with a partner and you see a bush rustle, do you just fire at the movement without being absolutely sure what it is? (Well, not unless you’re Dick Cheney!) Especially with abortion, the burden of proof lies with the side in support of legal abortion. Unless they can prove absolutely and positively that they aren’t killing a human person, abortion should not be legal. But it’s kind of hard to prove something that isn’t true. In fact, even in the past ten years, I’ve seen the arguments from the pro-choice side shift from “It’s not a human life” to “It’s a human life, but…”

To briefly address your argument about abortions happening no matter what the law says: Would you agree that bank robbing is always going to happen, regardless of the fact that it’s illegal? Does this mean that we should make bank robbing legal, so that bank robbers can avoid the potentially dangerous situation of having to elude the police and make a speedy escape?

This is getting pretty long, so I’ll just address one more thing and then call it quits before I get carpel-tunnel. Often the question comes up, especially with regard to abortion, about people imposing their personal morality on other people. You may be familiar with pro-choice signs, bumper stickers, etc. that say something to the effect of “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one.” Notice what this (quite cleaver, in my opinion) technique does. It takes a question of morality and turns it into a preference.

So I would argue that as a pro-lifer, I am not imposing my morality any more than someone who is against slavery is imposing their morality that slavery dehumanizes a person and treats him/her like mere property to be bought or sold. Imagine what a stir it would cause if I put up a sign that said “Don’t like slavery? Don’t own slaves.” I would be labeled a racist and rightly so!

Whew! Well, there’s my argument. I’m very interested in knowing what you think. I’d especially like to know if you find any holes or weak arguments. Again, I appreciate your willingness to dialogue. These respectful, calm discussions sure beat the heated yelling matches that so often characterize the abortion debate, eh?

Take care,
Joe

Sarah on Abortion

I thought I would answer your questions about my stances on abortion via a message instead of that same article so as to not give all your friends a whole pile of notifications that they don't want/need. Get ready for a long letter.

My personal feeling is that abortions should be limited at the time of viability (late term abortions) which are mostly illegal at present anyway. If a baby can breathe and live on it's own without massive medical intervention, I think it's a baby. Less than two percent of abortions happen this way (as I've noted) and that's why I think the more gruesome pictures that are sometimes shown are incendiary - it's not an accurate depiction of the reality of abortion and it can trigger an intense emotional response in women who have had abortions or miscarriages themselves (and/or their families). From an article by Lisa Wade at thesocietypages.org: "According to The Guttmacher institute, 90% of all abortions occur in the first trimester. According to WebMD, a 12-week old fetus is 2.5 inches long and the typical woman will have gained three to five pounds. Most of these women’s pregnancies are essentially undetectable to an observer."

I believe abortion should be legal for a lot of reasons, but I'll appeal to you with this one: abortions are going to happen, whether or not they're legal. When they're legal, they can happen in an environment that's the safest and the healthiest possible. There will always be women who want to end their pregnancies for any number of reasons - they can't afford to have a baby and don't want the baby to grow up in poverty, they have a husband/boyfriend that doesn't want a baby, they've been raped, or they just plain don't want one - and it's much better for a woman to have an abortion performed in a safe and sterile environment by a doctor than to have a back alley abortion performed by someone with a coat-hanger, or to throw themselves down the stairs.

I also resent the term pro-life as it is currently used, because it implies that people who believe abortions should be legal are against life. You've met me, clearly, and you can probably guess how the implication that I am against life is hurtful to me. Abortion isn't an easy decision to make, by a woman herself or by a woman in conjunction with her significant other, and implying that the women and their families that make this choice are thoughtless or criminal is an insult to their character and their intelligence.

If the goal is to have fewer aborted fetuses, which is certainly not a bad goal, then contraception has to be more readily available and sexual education has to be better than "don't have sex." It's fine if abstinence is a tenet of your religion, and even better if you can stick to that as a measure of your faith, but teaching abstinence, especially in public schools, is a waste of federal funding and classroom hours. Not all kids hold the value that abstinence is important and the majority of them are going to have sex before they're married. Health teachers should be held responsible for teaching students the reality about their health, and accurately informing students about sex and contraception would be an important step.

This is why groups like Planned Parenthood are so important - they inform women and men of all ages about their health and they make contraception readily available for those who need to use it. That's why the whole government brouhaha over it was so frustrating for me - it was an argument about abortions when none was necessary. About three percent of the work Planned Parenthood does is abortions, and none of those abortions are federally funded anyway. What the government is funding is information about sexual health, contraception, pap tests and breast exams to detect cancer, and identification and treatment of STIs. A stat from the Planned Parenthood website: "Planned Parenthood health centers focus on prevention: 83 percent of our clients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy. Planned Parenthood services help prevent more than 612,000 unintended pregnancies each year." This is how you prevent abortion - not by shaming and criminalizing women who are doing what is best for themselves and their families, whether or not they are married, whether or not they are poor, whether or not they have children already.

I know there was a lot to read here (and I probably have more to say, if you ask me) and I hope that you got through it. I have faith in you - you are usually good about listening to both sides and hearing people out, so I appreciate it if you took the time to get all the way through this.

-Sarah