#752 Persuading a Pro-Choice Person

Dr. craig’s response

Donald, your wife’s tearful reaction to your reasoned arguments suggests to me that there is a whole lot more going on here than a political disagreement. There may be deep wounds that your wife experiences that shape her thinking. Could she have had an abortion before you two met? Could she have been raped or sexually abused as a young girl? You are dealing with a volatile situation here that requires great sensitivity. Rather than being concerned about how to persuade her to adopt a pro-life view, you may want to simply ask searching questions to try to get her to unburden her heart and reveal why she really believes what she does. As a philosopher and not a counselor, I can at best address the arguments pro and con that you and she have discussed.

Many years ago I had a debate with the prominent secular philosopher Richard Taylor. Over dinner the subject of abortion rights came up, and Taylor condemned in the strongest terms the practice of abortion on demand. What Taylor clearly understood is that abortion is not fundamentally a religious question but an ethical question, and as a secular ethicist he was strongly opposed to it. I suggest that you try to help your wife see that this question is not fundamentally religious and that therefore providing legal protections for unborn children is not an imposition of one’s religious values on secular society.

It seems to me that there are two questions, the answers to which will determine one’s position on abortion rights. (1) Do human beings have intrinsic moral value? And (2) Is the developing fetus a human being? The first question is philosophical, and the second is biomedical. Neither is a religious question.

The answer to (1), I think, is, “Yes, human beings do have intrinsic moral value.” Human beings do not have merely extrinsic value, as things to be used, but rather are intrinsically valuable, as ends in themselves. In any case the Declaration of Independence is committed to the intrinsic value of human beings: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So our nation is founded upon the intrinsic value of every human being.

The answer to (2) is indubitable, “Yes, the developing fetus is a human being.” A fetus (Latin for “little one”) is a biological organism which is neither canine nor feline nor bovine nor anything but a member of the human species in the early stages of development. It follows that this little one has intrinsic moral worth and therefore is invested with fundamental human rights, the first of which, according to the Declaration, is the right to life. Abortion is, then, a form of homicide.

Now your wife agrees with my answer to (2). The fetus is “a child, a human being.” I suspect that she also agrees with my answer to (1) for whatever reason. But then it follows that concern to provide legislative protection for the child’s right to life is not at all forcing Christian beliefs on secular society. Richard Taylor would have scoffed at such a suggestion.

The question then becomes whether the fetus’ intrinsic right to life is overridden by some higher moral principle. Abortion on demand in the absence of such a justifying moral principle would be a violation of the human rights of the unborn child. Your wife seems to recognize the necessity of such a justifying principle, for “She believes that a child's right-to-life is superseded by the mother's right-to-choose whether to have the baby.”

But why does she think that the mother has that right, which, is in effect, the right to kill her child, another human being distinct from herself, and why think that such a right supersedes the child’s right to life? I don’t see any reason to think that a person does have a right to commit homicide against an innocent human being, much less that that right supersedes the child’s acknowledged and inherent right to life.

Now you press the question, “why it isn't ok to end the life of a one-year-old on the same grounds.” Your wife’s answer that “the baby in the womb is biologically reliant on the mother and that the mother must sacrifice her own nutritional/mental health, financial/career opportunities etc.” is not convincing. The idea here seems to be that the mother’s convenience trumps the child’s moral right to life. Again, I just don’t see that anyone has a right to live a life free of sacrifice, much less that such a supposed right supersedes another person’s right to live, so that one would be morally justified in killing the other person in order to avoid personal sacrifices. As you say, enormous sacrifices are required of young mothers of little children, and yet the law will not countenance mothers’ killing their children on such grounds. Anybody who thinks that raising young children is easier than pregnancy has probably never had kids! Yes, a woman with an unwanted pregnancy is being required to make great sacrifices; but that is not an argument that she has a right to a sacrifice-free life or that any such supposed right justifies killing another innocent human being. To think that it does leads, as you point out, to absurd consequences like the legality of killing toddlers.

Your wife’s final point about the need for the state to provide care for young children sounds to me like a little more than an excuse for her pro-choice views. Why wouldn’t the logical conclusion be that the state should provide such services rather than that mothers should be allowed to have their unborn babies killed on demand? In any case, why think that it must be the state that provides such services? There are abundant services available through private charitable organizations, and I have witnessed firsthand the help given to young mothers by right to life pregnancy centers. How can we seriously maintain that the evil of poverty is greater than the evil of mass homicide of innocent persons? Shall we avoid poverty by killing off the persons likely to become poor?