We have a hard time understanding how the Germans allowed the Holocaust to take place. How could people so easily and so readily disregard the humanity of an entire group of people? How could they so callously kill millions of people? How could so many people who disagreed with the actions of the state stand by and do nothing? It’s not that hard to see how, really.We are also guilty of killing millions of people. Over 60 million, in fact. Each year in the United States, we murder approximately one million babies. Our law and our people have dehumanized them. We have taken away their right to life, and allow them to be murdered at will. We call it a “choice.” We call it a “right.” We call it “healthcare.” We call it “reproductive freedom.” The euphemisms never end, and all are necessary to hide our evil and barbarism.
In some ways, what we are doing is morally worse than what transpired in Nazi Germany. Unlike the Nazis, it’s not our government who is in control of the slaughter. It’s ordinary citizens! And we’re not murdering strangers, as they did. We are murdering our own children. Moms and dads are killing their own children. Arguably, that makes us more evil than Nazi Germany. We are guilty of our own holocaust: a holocaust of the unborn.
We are not morally enlightened. We are morally blind. We need to repent.
Thinking to Believe 
March 17, 2025 at 2:16 pm
shouldn’t it be – “They need to repent?” where “They” are the ones that support abortion on demand.
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March 17, 2025 at 3:21 pm
Yes, but I am referring to the nation as a whole.
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March 17, 2025 at 4:56 pm
Dear Jason,
I hope you are well.
It’s not uncommon for Christian sects or individual churches within them to hold strong views about the unborn.
I am against men’s involvement on this issue as they don’t carry babies for nine months as pregnant girls and women do if they go to full term.
I am against the use of abortions as a method of birth control. However, I think it’s morally wrong to force pregnant females to go to term when:
1) under the age of 16;
2) the pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk;
3) the pregnancy happened after a rape;
4) the child will have a hard and short life of suffering due to medical conditions.
Only women can have a true understanding of the impact of any single or several of the factors I’ve listed above.
I’m sure that it’s wrong to make girls and women feel guilty for terminating their pregnancies for any of the reasons I’ve listed above.
There may be other valid reasons for abortions that I’ve not thought of as a man.
Best wishes,
Dinos Constantinou
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March 17, 2025 at 8:27 pm
Dinos, arguments do not have penises or vaginas. Females can and do make the same arguments I make against abortion, so the focus should be on the arguments rather than the sex of the person delivering the arguments. I’m sure you wouldn’t oppose men who argue against wife abuse, female genital mutilation, or sex slavery, so why be opposed to men who argue against abortion but not be opposed to men who argue against these other women’s issues? Men should be involved in the debate because men help create the human beings being murdered by these women. It’s our progeny, too. Also, it is the role of men to be protectors. In this case we are protecting small, innocent, defenseless human beings.
And if you were truly against men’s involvement in this issue, your response should be silence. Instead, you have inserted your male opinion into the fray. You don’t oppose men speaking on this issue. You simply oppose men speaking against abortion. You support men speaking in favor of allowing women to abort their babies.
Of your four exceptions for abortion, only #2 is morally defensible because in that instance the purpose is not to take the life of the child, but to save the life of the mother (and it’s better to act in such a way so as to save one life than lose two). The others are not morally defensible if you understand the pro-life logic. The reason we are opposed to abortion is because abortion is murder. It takes the life of an innocent human being. Does the baby cease being an innocent human being if the mother is under 16? Does abortion do something different in that case? Does the baby cease being an innocent human being because of the way in which it was conceived? Does the baby cease being an innocent human being because it has a terrible or terminal medical condition? The answer is clearly no in all such cases, and therefore abortion is morally indefensible in those situations as well. Those circumstances may be more emotionally difficult, but they are not more morally difficult. The moral issue is simple: It’s wrong to murder innocent, defenseless human beings.
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March 20, 2025 at 8:42 am
“Each year in the United States, we murder approximately one million babies. Our law and our people have dehumanized them.”
I think we can both agree that it’s immoral to deliberately and unnecessarily kill a person. The problem here is that you appear to be equating a single cell with a baby—actual personhood—even though it lacks a brain or even the ability to feel pain. Yet I’m sure you don’t equate a single sperm or ovum with personhood, even though they are also alive, and the difference between the two separate gametes is hardly different from the two sex cells merged into a zygote, right?
Meanwhile, those of us you accuse of “dehumanizing” zygotes recognize that a single fertilized cell is only a potential human being that has virtually nothing in common with an actual baby (just as sperm and ova are a potential human being that has virtually nothing in common with an actual baby). Consciousness and the capacity to suffer are two of the most important definers of personhood. Without that, a zygote is little different than a skin cell we blithely shed each and ever day without a second thought.
Furthermore, we recognize that bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right. We believe it is the most fundamental right, and nobody’s need to use your body to survive can take precedence over your right not to be so used. That’s why it’s considered immoral to force a person to give blood, even to save the life of another person. It’s also why we require prior consent even to take the organs from a corpse, even to save the life of another person.
So you think our stance is immoral for prioritizing bodily autonomy over the life of a single cell, and we think your stance is immoral for prioritizing a single cell over bodily autonomy. How can we determine who’s right?
We can’t. Morality is based on values, and different people have different values. So when it comes to positions that are in direct conflict, like abortion rights, what is the solution? Is it for one side to force the other side to submit to its morality? Or is it for both sides to agree to disagree and neither impose its morality on the other? Just as you would surely be horrified if the government forced you to, say, donate a kidney in order to save someone’s life, forcing a woman to carry an unwanted embryo to term could be equally as horrifying. So if it makes sense for you to have the right to choose whether or not to donate a kidney, doesn’t it make sense for a woman to have the right to choose whether or not to get an abortion?
That’s why the right to an abortion is so critical: if the government can force someone to carry an zygote to term, then why couldn’t it force you to donate a kidney? By not letting people make choices about their own bodies, you’re providing justification for such a draconian world.
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April 14, 2025 at 12:39 pm
I think you have a flawed understanding of what makes someone a human. It’s not the number of cells they have, or what sort of functions they are able to perform at present. What makes someone a human is their biology. Human beings are distinct, living organisms with human DNA that are able to direct their own development toward maturation. That’s why it is an indisputable scientific fact that each of us is a human being from the moment of conception onward.
No, sperm and ovum are not human beings. They are parts of human beings. Only when they fuse together do they form a new, whole organism. We should not confuse parts for wholes. Skin cells and sperm are parts of a whole human being, whereas a zygote/embryo/fetus is a whole, distinct human organism. So a zygote is not a potential human being as you have aid, but a full human being with the potential to develop through all stages of life.
The problem with your view is that you view human beings functionally rather than ontologically. You assign value to certain human functions, rather than to the kind of being that humans are. There are a myriad of problems with this, but here is one of the most important: If humans are not valuable because of the kind of being they are, then none of us are actually valuable. Human value is a fiction. While you may subjectively consider someone valuable because they exhibit function X today, if we stop valuing function X in the future, then such a person would lose their value. Another problem is that the functions people choose as value-laden are arbitrary and subjective. They seem to be chosen specifically to exclude the unborn. Finally, many of the functions deemed to make someone a “valuable person” would exclude all sorts of people that we think have a right to life. For example, if consciousness gives us value, then newborns, sleeping people, and people in a coma have no right to life.
Bodily autonomy is not without limits. And in the case of abortion, the moral problem is that we are not just talking about one person’s body. We are talking about two persons’ bodies. One person wants to kill the body of another person. Your bodily autonomy does not give you the right to murder another person because they are in a location that is inconvenient to you. If the unborn were not human, then I would agree with you that this is an issue of bodily autonomy. But if I am right (and I am) that the unborn are full members of the human species with intrinsic moral value, then we are talking about murder, and bodily autonomy does not give anyone the right to murder.
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July 27, 2025 at 8:45 am
“I think you have a flawed understanding of what makes someone a human. It’s not the number of cells they have, or what sort of functions they are able to perform at present. What makes someone a human is their biology.”
By that logic, every skin cell we shed is a human, because it contains human DNA and can theoretically be cloned into a full organism. You arbitrarily stop at “zygote” and declare that this is magically different. Why? Because your ideology tells you so.
“Skin cells and sperm are parts of a whole human being, whereas a zygote/embryo/fetus is a whole, distinct human organism. … So a zygote is not a potential human being as you have said, but a full human being with the potential to develop through all stages of life.”
You have to know this is simply not true. A zygote lacks a brain, nervous system, heart, circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system, etc., etc. Most importantly, it lacks ANY capacity for consciousness, which is the very core of defining personhood. In fact, a zygote lacks EVERYTHING required to become a human being EXCEPT DNA and potential (given sufficient nutrition and suitable environment). An ovum also has that EXACT SAME POTENTIAL, only it needs just one ingredient more: a sperm cell. That’s it. That’s the ONLY difference. Yet you conflate that tiny difference to being worthy from going from disposable cells to personhood?
How can that possibly make sense? You and I both know that the difference between two separate gametes and a single zygote is virtually INSIGNIFICANT compared to the difference between a zygote and a fully developed, born baby constructed of TRILLIONS of differentiated cells.
Calling a zygote a “full” human being is as nonsensical as calling an acorn an oak tree. Yes, the acorn has the “potential” to grow into a tree, but you and I both know you can’t build a treehouse in an acorn. Potential ≠ actual.
“The problem with your view is that you view human beings functionally rather than ontologically. You assign value to certain human functions, rather than to the kind of being that humans are.”
Your “ontology vs. function” distinction is meaningless when talking about personhood. We assign moral value to people precisely because of qualities like consciousness and the capacity to suffer. Without that, a zygote is morally indistinguishable from any other clump of cells. If consciousness didn’t matter, we’d treat a brain-dead corpse like a “person” just because it still has human DNA and human organs.
“if consciousness gives us value, then newborns, sleeping people, and people in a coma have no right to life.”
A newborn has a functioning brain and can feel pain. Someone sleeping or in a coma has a functioning brain and a continuous identity—they are not an inert ball of undifferentiated cells. A zygote has none of that.
“Bodily autonomy is not without limits. And in the case of abortion, the moral problem is that we are not just talking about one person’s body. We are talking about two persons’ bodies. One person wants to kill the body of another person.”
Of course bodily autonomy has limits, but forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will is not a minor limit. It is the most EXTREME possible violation of bodily autonomy. You’re literally forcing someone to use their body as life support for another, and you wouldn’t accept that violation for anyone else—not for a stranger, not for a dying child who needs your kidney, not even from your own corpse after you’re gone. Why should pregnancy be the one magical exception?
“If the unborn were not human, then I would agree with you that this is an issue of bodily autonomy. But if I am right (and I am) that the unborn are full members of the human species with intrinsic moral value, then we are talking about murder, and bodily autonomy does not give anyone the right to murder.”
Murder is a legal term that presupposes personhood. You don’t get to assume the very thing you are trying to prove. If you want to call a single cell a “person,” you need to justify why that cell counts as a “person” while the millions of cells you lose every day do not. Furthermore, you need to justify how ANYONE can be forced to act as a life support for another person without that being an authoritarian nightmare.
This is why I know that I am in the right, not you. But unlike you, I don’t seek to force others to follow my personal beliefs. If a woman were to get pregnant and not want to have a child, I would NEVER force her to have an abortion. I would only ever give her the CHOICE to have the baby or not. I would trust her to make the right choice for herself. You, OTOH, would BAN her from having an abortion. You would strip her of that most precious human possession—bodily autonomy—and force her to become a gestation machine with no rights to determine her own fate. That is as evil as slavery…something we fought a civil war to abolish.
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July 30, 2025 at 12:26 am
Derek,
If you stick a human skin cell into a womb, nothing will happen. If you stick a zygote into a womb, in nine months you’ll be delivering a baby. Why? Because the two are qualitatively different from one another. It’s a difference between part of an organism and a whole organism. Being pro-life is not about ideology, but biological truths.
You say I have to know it’s not true that a zygote/embryo/fetus is a whole, distinct human organism because “a zygote lacks a brain, nervous system, heart, circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system, etc., etc.” Why on earth would you think that what makes something a whole, distinct organism is an organ count? Do you know anything about embryology? Do you expect that humans are just supposed to pop into existence fully formed? Of course not, but while they are developing, that does not make them any less human, and certainly not any less of a whole organism.
You wrote, “Most importantly, it lacks ANY capacity for consciousness, which is the very core of defining personhood.” No, that’s not the core of defining personhood. It’s only core for a functionalist view of human beings, which you just take as a fact. And I should point out that the embryo does have the capacity for consciousness. All human beings do, even if they have not developed the ability to exercise that capacity yet. There’s a difference between a capacity and the exercising of that capacity.
You write, “An ovum also has that EXACT SAME POTENTIAL, only it needs just one ingredient more: a sperm cell. That’s it. That’s the ONLY difference. Yet you conflate that tiny difference to being worthy from going from disposable cells to personhood?” Please read an embryology textbook. There is a world of difference between an ovum and a zygote. Reproductive cells, just like skin cells, are mere parts of a whole organism. A zygote is an entirely different kind of thing. It’s not a part of a whole. It’s a whole new organism that is capable of directing its own growth toward human maturation.
Then you say, “How can that possibly make sense? You and I both know that the difference between two separate gametes and a single zygote is virtually INSIGNIFICANT compared to the difference between a zygote and a fully developed, born baby constructed of TRILLIONS of differentiated cells.” It seems that your comparison is about what something looks like. You reason that since both an ovum and a zygote are small, and since neither looks like a mature human being, therefore neither is a human being. On this logic, since a newborn looks very different from you and me, it’s not as human or as valuable as you and me. Why think that being human is about what you look like or how you function at the moment? It’s so arbitrary and subjective.
You write, “Calling a zygote a ‘full’ human being is as nonsensical as calling an acorn an oak tree. Yes, the acorn has the “potential” to grow into a tree, but you and I both know you can’t build a treehouse in an acorn. Potential ≠ actual.” You have a strange definition of “full.” Once again, you seem to define it in terms of what something looks like. Being a human being is not a look-like thing. It’s a be-like thing. A zygote is a full human being in the sense that it has everything it needs to develop itself to maturation. Obviously it will look different as it matures, just as an acorn will look different as it matures. Indeed, even born human beings look quite different as they continue to mature.
I noted that you have a functionalist view of human value rather than an ontological view. Your response was, “Your ‘ontology vs. function’ distinction is meaningless when talking about personhood. We assign moral value to people precisely because of qualities like consciousness and the capacity to suffer. Without that, a zygote is morally indistinguishable from any other clump of cells. If consciousness didn’t matter, we’d treat a brain-dead corpse like a “person” just because it still has human DNA and human organs.” I don’t even know where to begin. My distinction is absolutely meaningful. You are simply begging the question by assuming the truth of the functional view rather than arguing for it. You say “we assign moral value to people precisely because of qualities like consciousness….” Who is the “we”? Functionalists! Not all people. Ontologists would not assign moral value to human beings because of a certain function they are able to perform. We expressly deny that this is the locus of human value. Instead of arguing for your position, you just assume it and call the whole debate meaningless.
When I point out that if consciousness gives us value, then newborns, those who are sleeping, and those in a coma have no value, you respond by saying “A newborn has a functioning brain and can feel pain. Someone sleeping or in a coma has a functioning brain and a continuous identity—they are not an inert ball of undifferentiated cells. A zygote has none of that.” See how you move the goalpost? Consciousness gives value until it doesn’t. When consciousness is absent, you find something else to ground value in – this time having a specific organ and the ability to feel pain – anything that will allow you to justify not killing the born while still being able to kill the unborn. Either consciousness is the heart of personhood and value or it is not. Quit moving the goalpost to justify abortion.
You bring up bodily autonomy and describe the mother as providing life support for the child. Clearly you are appealing to Jan Narveson’s famous violinist thought experiment. The problem is that it’s comparing apples to oranges:
No, murder does not presuppose personhood. Many states have homicide laws that includes killing unborn children (humans who are not persons on your view).
Frankly, I don’t care to call anyone a person. “Personhood” is a made-up category intended to devalue some human beings.
You are absolutely right that I would take away a woman’s choice to murder her own child. Only a barbarous and morally evil people would allow such a thing in the name of “choice” and “bodily autonomy.”
Jason
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August 30, 2025 at 10:09 am
“See how you move the goalpost? Consciousness gives value until it doesn’t. When consciousness is absent, you find something else to ground value in”
Hmm, you seem to be deliberately trying to conflate consciousness as the CURRENT state of one’s awareness with consciousness as the CAPACITY for awareness, information processing, sensation experience and intentional response as a way to make it appear that I’m committing the moving the goalposts fallacy. It should be clear that I’m referring to the LATTER meaning. The consciousness of a sleeping brain is STILL THERE, merely “on hold” temporarily while the brain goes about its normal daily maintenance requirements. I would NEVER consider a sleeping person to be dead or lacking personhood, and of course I would consider it murder to kill that person. That much should be obvious.
However, if that person were irreversibly brain dead, I—like most people—would consider him no longer a person, specifically because he has no consciousness, no mind, no memories, no core of what makes a person. That’s why we permit the cessation of fluids and nutrition to allow the brain dead to die. It’s only the CONSCIOUSNESS (including consciousness that is temporarily on hold, if I need to make that clear again) that matters for how we identify personhood. A body without consciousness is just a lump of meat. It’s why we bury or cremate the dead and keep the memories, rather than maintain ongoing relationships with the corpse.
That’s why I say the ONLY measure of personhood that makes sense is functional, based on consciousness. I don’t even know how one would determine a definition of personhood based on a “kind of being that humans are,” as you call it. You then appear to agree that gametes are NOT worthy of personhood because they only have half the DNA of a full human being, but as soon as they come together and fuse into a single cell with the full compliment of DNA, BOOM! they’re suddenly deserving of personhood. But then you say a skin cell with a full compliment of DNA doesn’t deserve personhood because you can’t stick it in a womb and have it gestate. Okay, then if it’s not the DNA that bestows personhood, but the potential to become a human being, then how do you exclude sperm and unfertilized ova from personhood? How does the “kind of being that humans are” happen? More to the point, how do YOU know? How can you even measure such a thing?
Sorry, but your “ontological” view of personhood sounds about as arbitrary, subjective and immeasurable as one can get. At least with consciousness we have SOMETHING we can use to differentiate us from, say, a bacterium. Come on, on some level you must realize that what I’m saying makes far more sense.
Here, let me give you an example to perhaps make it clear to you that you don’t really consider fertilized eggs as human beings: Imagine you’re in a fertilization clinic. Down one corridor is a crib with a sleeping baby. Down a second corridor is an insulated canister containing 10,000 frozen embryos. For some arbitrary reason (a fire, a time bomb, whatever) you realize you only have enough time to rescue ONE of the two. Which do you choose?
Virtually EVERYONE given this choice chooses to save the baby, and I suspect you would too. Why? Because we instinctively, intellectually and morally know that a single zygote—or even 10,000 of them—does not carry the value of personhood.
“The baby was not inserted into your womb against your will or without your knowledge by a doctor while you were asleep. You engaged in an act that you know is intended to create children.”
So what? When I eat food I am engaged in an act that I know is intended to nourish me. If I were to contract food poisoning from that food, should doctors refuse to treat me? What difference does it make whether sex exists to create children? Should a woman who is raped be forced to carry her rapist’s child to term? She didn’t willingly engage in sex; it was forced upon her. Are you saying she should lose her right to bodily integrity TWICE? Or do you make exceptions for abortion in the case of rape? But then if it’s murder for a woman to have an abortion after having sex willingly, but it’s NOT murder for her to have an abortion if she was raped, how do you square that? The embryo dies either way.
Do you see what a mess you get when you try to impose your opinion on morality on other people who don’t share your beliefs?
“Frankly, I don’t care to call anyone a person. “Personhood” is a made-up category intended to devalue some human beings.”
The term “personhood” is useful to distinguish from merely “human,” since it helps avoid confusing cells that are human but not persons (which includes gametes and skin cells) with cells that are humans. It has nothing to do with devaluing human beings.
And just to be clear, ALL words are made up.
“You are absolutely right that I would take away a woman’s choice to murder her own child. Only a barbarous and morally evil people would allow such a thing in the name of “choice” and “bodily autonomy.””
What you are doing is EXACTLY the thing you just accused me of, only in reverse. You’re using the term “child” to a single, fertilized cell in order to conflate it with killing a born baby.
We clearly see the world very, VERY differently. Yet I would NOT impose my ideology on you, while you WOULD impose your ideology on everyone. That is the creepy, arrogant and dangerous nature of Christian nationalism that those of us who are not Christians find horrific and un-American.
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