Actually the arguments for owning slaves and the argument for the right to abortion are actually analogous.
1. Both dehumanize an entire class of people as less than humans: Blacks in one, and the unborn . In the other.
If the unborn can be 'dehumanized' then presumably they should be regarded as human from the moment of conception.
Okay. So consider the following thought experiment (originally conceived by the bioethicist George Annas and which can be found in one of Michael Sandel's books):
There is a fire in a fertility lab. The emergency services are faced with a straight choice between saving a tray of 20 fertilized human embryos or a five year old child.
Someone who believes what you do would be committed to saving the embryos, to prevent a greater loss of human life, which seems odd to say the least.
Secondly, it is true that a fetus very quickly begins to look human in its development. However, the cerebral cortex of the fetus is insufficiently developed to register pain until the 18th week of the pregnancy. So appearances can be deceptive. Many would not consider the fetus to have any moral status up until that point (though the law in many countries regards feticide as a criminal offence) because it is not conscious and has not yet developed a nervous system that would make it capable of experiencing pain.
A possible response to this that someone opposed to abortion might fall back on is that the newly fertilised egg is still a
potential human individual and that it is wrong to kill any being with this potential. However, it is not the case that a potential something should enjoy the same rights as an actual something.
For example, some readers of this post may have the potential to become Prime Minister one day, at which point they will enjoy special rights and privileges e.g. police protection/bodyguards. But it would be absurd to say that right now they have the
right to a bodyguard because they are a
potential Prime Minister. So even if a fetus is a potential human being this does not entail that it should be entitled to the same rights that we have.
On the issue of potentiality, Jonathan Glover has this to say in his book
Causing Death and Saving Lives:
'The problem with using the foetus's potential for developing into a person as an anti-abortion argument is that this suggests that the person it will become is what is really valued. It is hard to see how this potential argument can come to any more than saying that abortion is wrong because a person who would have existed in the future will not exist if an abortion is performed. I would not be here if my mother, when pregnant with me, had opted for abortion. But equally I would not be here if my parents had used an effective contraceptive. It is hard to see how the potential argument can succeed against abortion without also succeeding against contraception. And even those who are against both normally want to say that abortion is worse than contraception.'
Moving on, you seem to be opposed to late stage abortion. But these are rare. The overwhelming majority of abortions (over 85% of those performed in the USA, for example) take place during the first trimester, that is, when the fetus is less than 13 weeks old. It is also worth noting that some fetal abnormalities cannot be detected exept through amniocentisis, a procedure which is unsafe until after the 15th week of pregnancy at the earliest.
Now on to Roe v. Wade. Here is Carol Sanger writing about the aftermath of this ruling in her book
About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First-Century America (Sanger is a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School)
:
'There was...a massive decline in maternal mortality and obstetric injury. Thirty-nine illegal abortion deaths were reported in 1972, nineteen in 1973, and three in 1975; emergency rooms saw far fewer cases of sepsis and uterine perforation from illegal abortions. All this shows how differently women were able to proceed with their lives on account of the decision in Roe v. Wade.
In the preface to the same publication, Sanger also remarks that:
'This is not to say that a woman's life necessarily proceeds exactly as it would, had there been no pregnancy and no abortion, though many lives do. For some women, abortion registers as a profound loss, the date or a projected birth date reflected upon, sometimes commemorated, for years to come. For many others, the core reaction is one of relief and the welcome return of the preferred (at least for now) non-pregnant self that almost got away. Still other women experience both relief - the most widely reported emotion following abortion - and some form of regret and or wistfulness, not about the decision itself, but because the circumstances around the pregnancy - partner, finances, obligations, plans - were just not right enough to proceed.'
In other words, it is simply not the case that a decision to abort is typically an unreflective one made by promiscuous women who are often teenagers (many undergoing the procedure are actually older married women who already have children). Often it is seen as the least worst option. And as Sanger points out elsewhere in her book, when it is a teenager who becomes pregnant, it is, in fact, often the 'good girl' who finds herself in this position.
Although abortion has been legal in America since 1973, it is the most regulated procedure in the country, and 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 (might entail having to pay for an overnight stay somewhere). And 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’. The famous American cartoonist called Gary Trudeau had his popular cartoon strip ‘Doonesbury’ temporarily banned from some US newspapers when he took on the topic of abortion and rightfully satirised those states that create these obstacles Those strips are not difficult to locate online.
Lastly, it has been suggested that devolving decisions to the US States may not necessarily turn out to be a bad thing. I am not so sure. Recently, I have been doing some research on sex offences in the USA prior to 1967. At that time, fornication was illegal in many states (and still is in Idaho and Mississippi). Punishments ran from a ten dollar fine in Rhode Island up to five hundred dollars and two years' imprisonment in Alaska. For homosexuality, the penalties were also variable, ranging from imprisonment for one day (New York), to life imprisonment (Nevada), with many states favouring minimum/maximum jail terms of five years. Meanwhile, in Indiana, solo masturbation was an offence considered to be as serious as sodomy and was subject to punishment on the same terms, and in six states, 'cohabitation' (defined as consistent nonmarital intercourse with the same person) was also deemed to be criminal.
Wonder if we may end up with the same inconsistencies if Roe v. Wade gets repealed. If so, poorer pregnant women may be financially unable to travel to a state where the law still allows her to obtain a termination.
Will leave it there. In spite of all the above, I am not suggesting that abortion is ever a good thing, though in cases of severe fetal abnormality it undoubtedly is. It is more that I have never come across pro-life arguments that are logically coherent, well-supported empirically, and that are based on something other than fideistic terms of reference.
In any case, Biblically based pro-life arguments are specious because a much stronger case can be made for abortion rather than against it on the basis of that particular text.
abcnews.go.com