Can you imagine if I actually believed such a thing?! And yet that sort of logic is employed by abortion-choice advocates all the time.

I recently moved from Long Beach to San Jose. Would anyone think my change in physical location can deprive me of my value (or give me value if I had none before)? Of course not. So why, then, do abortion-choice advocates think the unborn’s location deprives him of value? Furthermore, why do many abortion-choice advocates think a fetus’ change in location from inside the womb to outside the womb gives him value? Why is a fetus in the womb a non-person deserving of no right to life, whereas that same fetus, once outside the womb, is now a person deserving of the right to life? This (excuse the crudeness) “magical-vagina” view of personhood—in which the birth canal confers personhood on a fetus like the king’s sword confers knighthood on a man—is rationally foolish. There is no ontological difference between the intrauterine fetus, and the extrauterine newborn. If there is no ontological difference, neither is there a moral difference.