When it comes to the issue of abortion, both opponents and proponents support the freedom of choice and the sanctity of human life. Those on the pro-choice side, however, think a woman’s freedom to choose trumps the life of the unborn. Those on the pro-life side think the sanctity of the life of the unborn trumps a woman’s freedom to choose. How do we break the impasse?
All parties recognize that the freedom to choose is not sacrosanct. It can be trumped by a higher principle or moral good. We generally restrict people’s ability to choose when their choice would bring tremendous or irreparable harm to others. For example, physically abusing a child would bring irreparable harm to the child, and thus we restrict people’s freedom to abuse children. We prohibit people from exercising their choice to kill their fellow citizens for the same reason: it brings irreparable harm to a valuable human life.
The question, then, is whether the life of the unborn is a higher moral good than the freedom to choose. The answer depends on what the unborn is. If it is just a cellular growth comparable to a tumor, then it lacks value/sanctity and can be killed without moral consequence (freedom to choose trumps the life of the unborn). If, however, it is a bona fide human being, then it possesses value and cannot be killed (the sanctity of human life trumps the freedom to choose). The biological and philosophical evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that the unborn are full members of the human race from the moment of conception onward. That being so, it would be just as wrong to take the life of the unborn without proper justification as it would be to take the life of your neighbor.
Here is a good strategy for conveying this point to pro-choice advocates:
Pro-Life: “Do you think the freedom to choose includes the freedom to kill another human being?”
Pro-Choice: “No.”
Pro-Life: “So if I could demonstrate that the unborn are human beings from the moment they come into being, would you agree that we do not have the freedom to choose to kill them?”
If they are consistent, they will have to respond with a “Yes.” At that point, present them with the evidence for the humanity of the unborn. If they are intellectually honest, they will cede the point that when it comes to the issue of abortion, the sanctity of the unborn human life trumps a woman’s freedom to choose.
Thinking to Believe 
December 14, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I don’t know Jason. When you actually unpack your 1st question you are asking “Do you think the freedom of a woman to choose to kill her unborn child (up to a certain age) includes the freedom to kill another human being that has already been born and may or may not be your child for whatever reason you may choose”
The way your first question is phrased leaves unstated and unadressed some important assumptions that the pro-choicer probably wouldn’t agree with you on and enables you to shift the debate somewhere else (which your second question reveals) that although might be effective in the moment, might also begin to fall apart as the pro-choicer has more time to think about it. When you unpack the 1st question then the 2nd question doesn’t seem as relevant or at least it seems like you have much more to demonstrate.
I guess I’m saying that your 1st question seems to try to simplify the issue too much.
Sorry, don’t know if I’m being clear on what I’m saying here. I always have a hard time expressing myself when commenting on my iPhone. : )
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December 15, 2010 at 12:35 am
El Bryan Libre,
Perhaps I worded the question poorly, because your unpacked version of the first question doesn’t accurately reflect the meaning of the question as I intended it. The question is meant to be a general question about principle. It does not mention the issue of abortion (by “freedom to choose” I am referring to libertarian freedom in general, not a euphemism for abortion), nor does it reference the age of the human beings in question. The question is intended to assess how far the individual think personal freedom extends. Is it completely autonomous, or are there limits? If there are limits, what limits it? The limitation I am testing in the question is the limitation of taking the life of another human being. When personal freedom is pitted against taking the life of a human being, which is the weightier moral good? Most people have a moral intuition that it is wrong to take the life of a human being without proper justification, which is why most people will readily agree that personal freedom should be restricted when it comes to killing another human being. Of course, as a pro-choicer, what they would not agree to is the idea that the unborn are human beings. And that’s where the second question comes in. If they acknowledge that life trumps choice when other human beings are involved in the equation, then all that should be necessary for them to agree with you that abortion is wrong is to recognize that the unborn are human beings in the fullest sense of the word. That’s where the scientific evidence comes in, to show them that the unborn are included in the group “human beings,” and thus their general moral principle ought to extend to the unborn as well.
Jason
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December 15, 2010 at 4:57 am
But why change the “the freedom to choose” from specifically speaking about the choice of a woman to choose to abort her child” to the freedom to choose to do whatever? Do libertarians speak about their philosophy of human freedom as “the freedom to choose”? This all just seems very unclear and it seems like it makes the target of your question a potentially small group, those who are libertarian and believe that a woman have a right to choose to have an abortion.
I guess this strategy just seems a bit unclear and like it’s taking the long route to get through this issue which has to go through a philosophical discussion of what human freedom is.
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December 15, 2010 at 8:15 am
You know I’m reading my comments and they seem like they may sound a bit incoherent so feel free to just ignore them. I keep writing them while I’m in a rush and they need a bit more proofing. Thx.
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December 15, 2010 at 11:25 am
I think I understood your comments well enought to respond.
I’m not aiming my question at radical libertarians. Indeed, I am depending on them not being a radical libertarian; i.e. that they recognize there are limits to our liberty to choose to do what we want.
I don’t think it’s a long route either. To me, it’s the quickest route. You get them to acknowledge a principle that virtually everyone agrees to (it’s wrong to kill human beings), and then you show them how the unborn qualify as human beings. The tactical part of the two-step process is that you got them to commit to the principle that choice is restricted when it comes to killing human beings. Then, when you prove that the unborn are human beings, they have to acknowledge that by their own moral standards it would be wrong to kill the unborn.
Why change the “the freedom to choose” from specifically speaking about the choice of a woman to choose to abort her child” to the freedom to choose to do whatever? Because the pro-choicer thinks that the freedom to choose trumps the life of the unborn. What I want the pro-choicer to agree to is the fact that there are limits to free choice, one of which is the taking of human life. I can be 99% certain that they’ll agree with me on that point. Once I have their agreement free choice is constrained by the life of another human being, all that remains to be discussed is whether the unborn is in fact a human being. If it is, then the life of the unborn should trump the woman’s freedom of choice in exactly the same way her neighbor’s life trumps her freedom to choose. If the unborn are human beings, then their presence in the womb trumps the woman’s freedom to choose to do whatever she wants with it.
Jason
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December 15, 2010 at 4:45 pm
The fertilized egg is a human being, but it’s not a person. People are opposed to killing other people, not any and all human life (eg, blood cells).
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December 15, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Arthur,
No one who is able to make proper distinctions is opposed to killing human cells (which you called “human life”). Of course, a zygote/embryo/fetus is not the biological equivalent of a human cell.
As for the distinction you make between a human being and a person, this is a potential objection that could be raised. Only those who are well-versed in the abortion debate will raise it, however. For those who do, I have two questions for them:
1. What are the relevant difference between a human being and a human person, such that the former can be killed while the latter cannot?
2. What is the basis for your criteria?
Invariably, different people produce different lists of criteria, but they all have the same feature: they have no objective basis. I deal with this objection in depth in my article on abortion at http://www.onenesspentecostal.com/abortion.htm
Jason
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December 15, 2010 at 6:57 pm
You know I actually find these debates interesting and like to examine the anti-abortion arguments critically (since there always seems to be something off about the arguments), yet I don’t like to do so in a public venue like a blog for fear that I may actually convince someone reading in on a discussion to be pro-choice. In fact on one of my old blogs I went back and forth on this issue a number of times questioning the validity of certain pro-choice arguments and eventually went back and deleted those posts and their discussions because of the fear of convincing someone to be pro-choice who may have accidentally stumbled in on the discussion. Anyway.
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December 16, 2010 at 11:30 am
El Bryan Libre,
I’m not sure why you would be afraid of pro-lifers being convinced of the pro-choice side by reading an informed debate about the topic. If our position is true, we have nothing to fear.
I think the evidence in favor of the pro-life position is so overwhelming that I think pro-lifers would only be strengthened in their convictions by engaging in the debate. Frankly, I think the evidence is so lopsided in our favor that the only people who should be afraid of letting the uninitiated peer into the debate are pro-choicers.
Jason
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December 16, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Because not every debate is equally informed by both sides and not every reader of the debate is equally diligent in following up and examining the arguments. I would just hate to know I was some how responsible for someone feeling justified in getting an abortion merely because I enjoy critically examine arguments even if I agree with what they’re defending.
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December 20, 2010 at 3:09 pm
El Bryan Libre,
But given your rationale, we shouldn’t discuss any controversial topic since readers are rarely informed of both sides of any issue.
But I’m getting the feeling that you are talking about something more specific: critiquing arguments offered in support of the position you support. If so, I don’t think this is a bad practice either. There are good and bad reasons for believing some X. If you expose the bad reasons for believing some X, you are helping other people to not make bad arguments–arguments which will easily get shot down by the opposition, and probably erode the person’s confidedence in their position in the process. Of course, if you are going to critique the bad arguments for a good position, I would hope that you would offer the good arguments for the good position as well. So long as that is done, I think you and your readers should be the better for it.
Jason
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December 21, 2010 at 10:22 am
That’s not really what I was getting at but never mind.
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December 22, 2010 at 10:05 am
Jason,
What point is there in trying to confuse people between “human being” and “person”? You can argue that it’s a scientific fact that a zygote is a human being, and get the other person go silent, but that’s playing semantic games and not changing minds. They may not know the terminology but you need to convince people that the death of a fertilized cell is the moral equivalent of death of a born baby. (This despite such fertilized cells dying all the time, often believed by the woman to be a “heavy flow” when it’s an early miscarriage.) You’d have to convince people that criteria such as intelligence and feelings don’t matter, just human genes, such that the life of a dog or dolphin is equal to the life of a slug or flea. It’s a tough argument to make without relying on religion.
Arthur
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December 31, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Arthur,
I disagree. It’s not a semantic game, and it does change minds. Most people do not make a distinction between persons and human beings because they understand that human beings are persons, so as soon as you establish the humanity of the unborn (in their mind) you have established their moral value. It’s only those who are more philosophically astute that will quibble about the difference, and try to say “personhood” is valuable while “hummanness” is not. If one is talking to a philosophically astute person, then they need to take the argument a step further and show that this is false.
Are you trying to argue that the regular occurrence of a natural death of embryos (miscarriage) somehow justifies abortion in people’s minds? I don’t doubt it, but it only shows how confused their thinking is. That’s like saying people cannot recognize that homicide is wrong since disease regularly claims the lives of human beings.
Jason
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