Abortion in the US: When choice doesn’t matter.

“I’m pregnant.” The words of his fiancé hit him in the stomach with more force than a sucker punch. He did not speak, but his mind raced. How can he possibly handle this? “I’m barely 18 and I’m a freshman in college. I don’t have a job, I don’t have a house, I don’t have…” The litany continued. What options does someone faced with this choice have? For many people, when faced with this decision, the answer is one word: Abortion. The pregnancy is terminated and their life can continue until they are ready for the responsibility. For me, that was not an option. I was left with two words: Step up. Many people would say that my actions, while admirable, were only right for me. After all, how can I dictate to a woman what she does with her own body? What if the mother’s life is in danger, or she is raped? These and other arguments have a few things in common. They are passionate. They play on the deep seated desire for liberty and equality that lives in most Americans. They challenge the one who would dare interfere in the private life of another. Unfortunately, they also have another thing in common: They are completely irrelevant.

             Before we delve into the logical argument it can help to know what the frame of mind is for women who actually choose to have an abortion. As would be expected for such a complicated issue, most women have multiple reasons for seeking to end their pregnancy (Biggs,et. al., 2013). The most common theme was financial in nature, coming in at 40% of respondents. This only narrowly beat out “bad timing”. One respondent stated that she was “so busy with school and work I felt [that having an abortion] would be the right thing to do until I really have time to have [a child]” (Biggs, et. al., 2013). About 31% of women cited reasons relating to their partner. The list goes on, but there are two things that are interesting to note. First, many of the reasons given had to do with wanting what was best for this child (or future children) (Biggs, et. al., 2013). These aren’t the responses of selfish, evil people, but of normal people who are not sure they are up to a great task.

Second, and most shockingly, only 6% of women were concerned for their own health (Biggs, et. al., 2013). While it was not covered in this study, it seems reasonable to believe that cases of rape or incest would also be small numbers. Having a discussion that focuses exclusively on these items ignores 96% of abortions! Yet every debate about abortion invariably focuses a great amount of attention on these cases. This is like having a discussion about airline safety but only considering single engine Cessna!

In an issue as emotionally charged as this one our best friend is dispassionate logic. For those not familiar with framing a logical argument, it goes like this: You start first with the assumptions or underlying principles. Then statement(s) are made. Finally, you have a conclusion which must be the only possible conclusion from the assumptions and statement(s). If any of these pieces are incorrect (the underlying assumption is wrong, for example, or the conclusion does not follow from the assumptions) the argument may or may not be true, but it is certainly logically flawed.

Let us assume for the moment that the extreme extenuating circumstances of rape, incest, & mother’s health make abortion permissible in those instances. Neglecting those, then, we have consider this:

1.  It is wrong to intentionally end the life of an innocent, non-consenting human. (Assumption)
2. The unborn fetus is an innocent, non-consenting human, and is alive. (Statement)
3. Therefore, it is wrong to the end the life of the unborn fetus. (Conclusion)

4.      

Very few people would argue with #1. Though the existence of a person may be a burden or make us uncomfortable it is not considered acceptable to kill that person unless they somehow threaten your own existence. Society calls such an act murder. If #2 is correct then the conclusion, #3, is inescapable. The only item that is questionable, therefore, is #2. Breaking the argument down even further, I think most people can agree that an unborn fetus is innocent and non-consenting (one struggles to imagine a just law that made criminals out of the unborn, or allowed them to enter into contracts).  The fact that it is human is an incontrovertible fact of genetic material; when was the last time a human mother gave birth to piglets?

 We are left, then, with the very last part of the statement: Is the fetus alive? When does life begin? That is the discussion we should be having. In fact, I would argue, it is the only discussion worth having, because conclusions about everything else follows neatly once the answer is found for this one question. After all, if #2 is not correct and the fetus is not alive, then conceivably is it permissible to do whatever is wished to it. If #2 is correct and the fetus is alive, then presumably it has all the rights of any other living human, including the right to life. All the other questions are laid to rest if we can answer just this one.

Unfortunately, the uncomfortable and honest answer to the question “When does life begin?” is “We don’t know”. We have several definitions at our disposal, but most fall short. Birth itself could be used, but that begs the question of what is so different in a fetus the moment prior to birth versus the moment after that imbues it with the spark of life. Many laws use the “viability” metric, saying that a fetus is considered alive when it is viable outside the womb. This may work well in deciding law but is quite silly in practice. Viability depends on many factors, chief among them the state of medical technology available to the mother. Imagine a woman in her second trimester in the back woods of Tennessee. Without access to a hospital her fetus is not viable and therefore not alive. If she takes a trip to New York and suddenly has access to the best medicine, her infant is viable. Does it then become alive? If so, what if she returns to Tennessee? Does the infant cease to be alive again? Going from death to life and back to death must be awfully confusing for the child!

I readily admit I do not know the answer to this question. I doubt anyone alive can honestly say they do. I humbly submit, however, that the standards we ought to measure any definition for the beginning of life are clearly identifiable. The definition should be consistent. It should be something that does not change based on geography or personal lifestyle. If there be any gray area, as civilized members of the human race, we should err on the side of preserving, rather than destroying, life. The only definition that satisfies all of the above is conception. It always happens. It’s easy to say when it has occurred. There is definitely no living human prior to that moment, so it certainly errs on the side of saving life.

Of course, it may be that the actual moment that life begins is some time after. Maybe science will one day progress to the point where we can say life begins at 3 months, 4 days, and 11 minutes. When that day comes and the future human race looks to the present, what will they say? Will they shrug and say “Well, we guessed too early and could have aborted a ton more fetuses. Oh well.” Or will they recoil in horror as they realize that we guessed too late, and inadvertently cut millions of lives short?

The choice is ours.

Biggs, A. et. al. (2013). Understanding why women seek abortions in the US. BMC Women’s Health. Volume 13, Issue 1, pages 1-13. Retrieved October 30, 2013 from Academic Search Complete database.