If you are just dying to be disappointed about our future, then try talking to college students about abortion. You may find that your last hope in reasonable arguments about “when life begins” or not using “abortion as birth control” will quickly go out the window. This single issue has become so divisive that those who are “pro-choice” are unwilling to yield any ground in their argument, and there no longer seems to be a stopping point. Once the act of abortion is justifiable, the only time it can’t be performed is immediately after the child is born.
While it might seem extreme to the average American, many young college students firmly believe that a human being receives fundamental human rights when—and only when—they have taken their first breath outside of the womb. I have heard this response countless times in response to questions like, “When does a child get human rights?” Or “When would it be wrong for a parent to kill their own child?”
Many pro-aborts are smart enough to see the “trap” that is inherent to those types of questions. If they say that a child receives the right to life at any point while they are in their mother’s womb, they will reveal the arbitrariness of their beliefs and struggle mightily to identify when and why. Second trimester? Heartbeat? When a baby is able to feel pain? And why? What is so special about these particular points in development? So, they often just bite the bullet and take an unimaginably barbaric approach, but hopefully because they have never really thought about the issue (and not because they are actually that hard-hearted).
Now, there certainly are reasonable counter-arguments to support that “life begins at first breath.” However, they will rarely make a difference with most pro-choicers. But to be thorough, they can be summarized as follows.
a. If a person is only worthy of protection when they can breathe on their own, what about a person on a breathing machine? Or a polio victim in an iron lung? Or an astronaut tethered to the space station? Or a deep sea diver whose air line is attached to and controlled by the ship?
b. What is so unique about breathing air on your own? Surely we all can appreciate that while children are in utero, they are essentially “breathing” (i.e. receiving oxygen) through the umbilical cord.
c. If a 24-week premature baby is born and breathes air on its own outside of the womb, how is it more worthy of life than a 40-week full-term child inside the womb that is further developed?
But, as I said, these arguments usually fall on deaf ears. So I thought of another way of getting to the issue, grisly though it may be.
A Novel but Morbid Argument
Consider this hypothetical: a person is jogging on a rural highway and discovers a dead body. No one knows about the body but them. They can do anything to that body and no one would ever know. Would it be wrong for them to dismember that corpse? Burn it? Bury it? Would those things be crimes? Would those acts be immoral?
The answer is yes to both questions, of course! It would be wrong to cut, burn, or harm the corpse in any way, even though the person is dead. There are few who would argue otherwise. In fact, there are many laws on the books against defiling or desecrating a corpse.
So, if it is wrong to do damage to a dead person’s body, why would it not also be wrong to do damage to a fetus’ body? A fetus is actually even more alive than a dead body. They, after all, have a beating heart, brain activity, moving limbs, are growing, and have an entire life ahead of them. And yet, they are chemically burned or literally dismembered. So why is it wrong in one instance, but ok in another?
Hence, if someone claims that it is only wrong to harm the body of a baby after they have taken their first breath of air outside the womb (which is absolutely not a fringe position), then simply ask them if it is wrong to harm a dead person’s body. If they say “yes,” they are admitting that we should not do damage to another human body. If they say “no,” then yet another aspect of their depravity will be on full display.
Now, I appreciate that this argument may not get very far. But at least it has the advantage of requiring one to imagine the kinds of horrible things that happen to the unborn when they are aborted. Generally, no one wants to imagine that, much less see visualizations of it.
In order to cut through the incredibly calloused skin that has formed around this issue, the Pro-life movement will undoubtedly need to get punchier and more visceral. Perhaps, this hypothetical is one more arrow in the quiver that we can use to highlight the hypocrisy, hubris, and hard-heartedness of the “pro-choice” crowd.
Photo Credit- Smithsonian Institute.