Focusing on the key issues the usual “hard cases” pushed by pro-abortionists go flat. What about the humanity of the unborn? Do they not have a say in their own death? Who is defending their right to live every single day? It is established from a medical point of view that the unborn really is human and also how bad the usual pro-abortion arguments are as we legitimately substitute “unborn baby” with a two-year-old (“2yo”) in the following arguments, therefore undercutting the gut-wrenching heart tugs that pro-abortionists use (the informal logical fallacy is argumentum ad misericordiam, Appeal to Pity):
A 2yo is so disruptive and causing such heartache for his solo mother that she wants him killed, and people support her “right to choose” to kill her own child in the following ways (paralleling many “pro-choice” arguments):
How dare you pass judgment on the woman, when you have no idea what she’s going through?
You’re a male, so you have no right to comment.
It’s the right of every 2yo to be wanted.
No one’s forcing you to kill your own 2yo.
Keep your church out of my home!
We’re not pro–killing-2yos, we’re pro-choice.
We want to make 2yo-killing safe, legal and rare.
If we make laws against this, then those who are rich enough will be able to hire a hit man to kill the toddler, while the poor could not afford this, so such laws would discriminate against the poor.
Unless you are prepared to adopt this child, you have no right to tell the mother that she should not kill her.
If we don’t make it possible for the mother to kill her 2yo safely, then she’ll do it unsafely and possibly put her own health in danger.
Laws against 2yo-killing would violate the woman’s right to privacy, which judges tell us is in the US Constitution.
It’s speciesist to give a Homo sapiens 2yo so much more protection than a chimpanzee 2yo.
You’re opposed to killing 2yos only because you’re a religious fanatic.
The child was conceived by incestuous rape, and her existence is a continual reminder to her mother of what happened, so she should die because of her father’s crime.
Stem cells could be harvested from this 2yo that could help cure many horrible diseases and disabilities—you religious fanatics want to stop this scientific research and cut off all hope of a cure for Alzheimer’s, heart disease, Parkinson’s, quadriplegia and diabetes.
Despite the pro-choice movement’s mantra of “women’s equality,” their ideas are a rebirth of the same demonic ideas that justified slavery, namely the dehumanization of an entire class of human beings based on randomly selected criteria for human value—criteria that is not value-giving in the first place.
So how do we account for this human equality that we all claim to care about? Only one way. Amidst our countless differences, there is only one thing that all human beings have in common: a shared human nature. If we don’t ground human value in our shared human nature, but rather in our differences, then we open the door to justifying all sorts of horrible actions to dehumanize others who don’t meet our subjective criteria.
If you care about human equality, the pro-life position is your only option because it says all human beings, whether born or unborn, are equal in value and dignity and ought to be treated as such.
So what would Jesus do?
Like He handled the adultery case ..
" ..Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And again He bent down and wrote on the ground.
When they heard this, they began to go away one by one, beginning with the older ones, until only Jesus was left, with the woman standing there. Then Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are your accusers?Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared.
" Now go and Sin No More"
The last line is important because He is pro life . See Psalm 139; Genesis 1:23 - " Go forth and Multiply "
God says that life is in His hands. He takes strong issue with those who believe they have the right to murder innocent children. In fact, God brought harsh judgment upon nations and Israel who offered their babies to false gods (2 Chronicles 28:3 - "and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom ( In Jerusalem) and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel."
Jeremiah 19:5- "They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind"
Ezekiel 20:31- "When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day")
Why do we imagine He is not equally outraged when we offer our babies to our gods of culture, money, fame, or convenience?
It is actually possible to make the case for abortion purely on Biblical grounds too. For example, authorship of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes is usually attributed to King Solomon, and he seems to make the point that it is sometimes better to end a pregnancy prematurely than to allow it to continue into a miserable life.
This is made clear in the following verses:
"Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But
better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun." Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
Here Solomon appears to argue that ending what might turn out to be a painful existence might be a good thing. In other words, he seems to be saying that the quality of a potential life, rather than its sanctity, is what matters.
And Solomon was not alone in this argument. Consider the words of another Old Testament character Job, a man of great faith and wealth, who after experiencing a series of personal disasters, complained that he would have been better off if his life had been terminated as a fetus:
"Why then hast Thou brought me out of the womb?
Would that I had died and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been, carried from womb to tomb." Job 10:18-19
Once again, there seems to be a strong argument here that the quality of a life is as important, if not more important, than the act of being born. Indeed, we could claim that the Bible supports ending a pregnancy in the face of a life without quality.
There is also one passage in which a Jewish king, Menahem, someone who might therefore be assumed to be acting in the name of God, does the following: ‘….starting from Tirzah, Menahem attacked Tiphsah, all who were in it, and its territory. Because they wouldn't surrender, he attacked it and ripped open all the pregnant women.’ (2 Kings Chapter 15 verse 16)
So if Menahem did this, how can abortion be wrong?
It may also be significant that abortion is not specifically condemned in the Bible.
And in the book of Exodus, the punishment by law for causing a woman to miscarry was a fine. So although the fetus was considered to have the protection of the law, causing the death of an unborn child does not seem considered to be as serious as other forms of killing.
Remembering Jesus's teaching of agape, perhaps ending a pregnancy might be the most loving thing to do in certain circumstances. The founder of Christian Situation Ethics, Joseph Fletcher, certainly thought so.
Plus, if God has given us free-will, why does He then try to stop us from exercising that power to make important beginning and end of life decisions, about matters like abortion, the use of fertility treatment, and euthanasia?
The history of the pro-life movement in the USA is pretty despicable, by the way.
For example, in the 1980’s and 90’s, a fundamentalist anti-abortion Christian organisation called the Army of God were responsible for 8 murders, 41 explosions and 173 arson attacks at abortion clinics.
Although abortion has been legal in America since 1973, it is the most regulated procedure in the US, and - thanks to the pro-life movement - some states force women to have a compulsory ultrasound scan and to listen to a doctor describe what can be seen in the scan before they can get an abortion. Some US states also require women to wait an extra 48 hours for an abortion after they have formally requested it. During the 1980’s, one US state forced doctors performing the procedure to tell their patients that ‘the unborn child is a human life from the moment of conception’.
Plus, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans in Louisiana with devastating effects. Some pro-life Christians saw this natural disaster as a punishment from God because Louisiana has 10 abortion clinics and 5 are in New Orleans. The shape of the Hurricane was also compared to a 6 week old fetus.
Overall, I therefore tend to concur with Malise Ruthven, who once wrote of Christian fundamentalists that they "have had a baleful influence on American foreign policy, by tilting it towards the Jewish state, which they eventually aim to obliterate by converting righteous Jews to Christ. They have damaged the education of American children in some places by adding scientific creationism, or its successor ‘intelligent design’ to the curriculum. They inconvenience some women, especially poor women with limited access to travel by making abortion illegal in certain states. On a planetary level, they are selfish, greedy and stupid, damaging the environment by the excessive use of energy and lobbying against environmental controls. What is the point of saving the planet, they argue, if Jesus is arriving tomorrow? "
