May 1, 2013 at 8:30 am
As the president of
Secular Pro-Life, I have been asked to present the non-religious case against abortion. But actually, you’ve probably heard it already. Many people who hear the secular arguments against abortion simply fail to recognize them as secular, because they expect pro-life apologetics to have a religious source. Expectations powerfully color the way we see reality. Discard these expectations, however, and you will soon find that
most arguments against abortion do not require the existence of a god.
We start from a premise that is shared by many religions and by secular humanism: the lives of human individuals are exceedingly valuable. A religious person might express this concept as the “sanctity” of life, while a secular person might refer to the possession of fundamental human rights. The core value judgment is the same.
We also make a
factual assertion that human individuals begin their lives inside the womb, when sperm meets egg. I began my life as a single-celled zygote; so did you. The scientific consensus on this point is overwhelming. Frankly, denying that life begins at conception is on par with denying the theory of natural selection; the evidence is that strong. And what’s more, the leaders of the abortion rights movement know it. While some rank-and-file abortion advocates will insist that the unborn aren’t alive, or are mere “blobs of tissue,” you will not hear such ignorance from the heads of abortion advocacy groups. Nor will you hear it from
abortion doctors. Intellectually honest people on both sides
agree that abortion kills a living human individual.
The question raised by abortion is whether the living unborn human being is part of the human community, deserving of rights like older humans; or whether living unborn human beings should be treated differently, as objects rather than as persons.
Abortion supporters have suggested various justifications for the latter approach. None are convincing. In every case, a consistent application of the justification would allow the killing of some human beings outside the womb.
Consciousness
The most common justification for abortion is that unborn children are unconscious, at least in the early stages of pregnancy when most abortions are done. Of course, you are unconscious every night when you go to sleep. People who use this argument do not actually believe that the right to life depends on consciousness. Probe more carefully, and they will clarify that they feel the right to life depends on an
inherent capacity for consciousness. But don’t unborn children have that capacity? Consider a woman in a coma, who is expected to come out of the coma in a few months. Is the unborn child’s situation appreciably different? In both cases, consciousness is not present in the moment—there is only a potential for consciousness. If that is a good enough justification for killing a child in the womb, and we’re going to be consistent, then the comatose woman is also a non-person who can be killed “on demand and without apology.” That can’t be right.
Bodily autonomy
Another common abortion argument is the appeal to bodily autonomy; we’ve all heard the saying “my body, my choice.” This is sometimes articulated as a belief that in order to have rights, you must not be dependent upon another body for survival. But as with the consciousness argument, a consistent application of this rule would threaten rights of
some born persons.
Other times, the bodily autonomy argument is expressed in terms of consent; you cannot use another person’s body without their permission, and if a woman does not want to be pregnant, the fetus does not have that permission. If the only way to stop the fetus’ use of its mother’s body is to kill it, so be it.
That argument misses an important point: except in rape situations, the mother had a role in causing the unborn baby’s dependence in the first place. In that light, it seems unfair to revoke consent—especially when doing so will
kill someone!
When pro-lifers make this point, we are usually accused of being
anti-sex and using pregnancy as a “punishment.” That’s untrue. It’s like saying that if you oppose drunk driving, you’re anti-beer! Have your fun—just don’t put the lives of others at risk.
Women’s Health
Next, we have the argument that abortion is necessary to promote women’s health. If abortion is not available on request, they say, women would rather risk harm themselves than allow their child to live. In support of this theory, they point to the “bad old days of back-alley abortion,” when tens of thousands of women died annually. This argument is powerful because it appeals to the same value that the pro-life movement does: a desire to save human lives. The problem is that the women’s health argument has no basis in fact.
In the late 1960s, Dr. Bernard Nathanson co-founded the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Law, which now goes by the name NARAL Pro-Choice America. Nathanson was an abortionist. An atheist, he became pro-life when improved ultrasound technology convinced him of the humanity of the unborn child. (He converted to Catholicism in his old age, and
died in 2011.) During his years as a pro-life atheist, he shared his insights into the early abortion movement—in particular, the messaging it used to shape the abortion debate. One key tactic was to conjure abortion statistics out of thin air. In
Aborting America, Nathanson wrote:
It was always “5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.” I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the “morality” of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?
So what are the actual numbers? According to the
National Center for Health Statistics, 39 women died from illegal abortions in 1972, the year before
Roe v. Wade. Maternal deaths from abortion haven’t been in the thousands since the 1930s, before the advent of antibiotics! For perspective, the CDC reports that
12 women died in
legal abortions in 2009; that number is almost certainly low, because many states (notably California) do not report to the CDC.
Gender equality
Finally, abortion advocates resort to an argument of brute force. Yes, unborn children are human beings. Yes, abortion kills them. But abortion is necessary for gender equality: the lives of the unborn are “
worth sacrificing,” and we must “
be prepared to kill” for the cause.
The fact that this horrific view is being entertained at all actually encourages me. I believe that these are the dying gasps of a pro-abortion movement that simply has no good arguments left.
As a woman, I do not want my worth to be based on my power to destroy the life of a defenseless child. And I’m convinced that as long as abortion is accepted, society will never address the true causes of gender inequality.
Conclusion
This article has reviewed just a few of the secular arguments against abortion. In contrast, purely religious arguments are fairly limited in number; you can argue that abortion violates a divine commandment, or displeases God in some way, or interferes with an act of divine creation. In my experience, even devoutly religious pro-lifers view these purely religious arguments as secondary. The secular case for life is the
dominant case for life!
Let us again turn to Dr. Nathanson. His testimony makes it clear that abortion was very deliberately framed as a “religious issue” from the beginning, in order to silence important pro-life voices:So why does this violate our expectations? Where does the expectation come from, that a belief in God is necessary to oppose abortion?
We fed the media such lies as “we all know that opposition to abortion comes from the hierarchy and not from most Catholics” and “Polls prove time and again that most Catholics want abortion law reform.” And the media drum-fired all this into the American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favor of abortion are enlightened and forward-looking. An inference of this tactic was that there were no non-Catholic groups opposing abortion. The fact that other Christian as well as non-Christian religions were (and still are) monolithically opposed to abortion was constantly suppressed, along with pro-life atheists’ opinions.
It worked then, but it won’t work for much longer. Pro-abortion leaders are
worried that the Millennial generation is rejecting abortion. Polling confirms their fears. And nearly a quarter of Millennials have no religion.
In short, the most pro-life and least religious generation is poised to take over the country. The “religious issue” framework will be completely untenable in such a climate.
Secular Pro-Life is leading the way into a new era of pro-life advocacy. If you like what we’re doing, please
join us and
support the cause of life.
Kelsey Hazzard is the founder and president of Secular Pro-Life. She received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
