For the past year and a half, I have spent Saturday mornings escorting clientele past the protesters at a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic. Texas being the state in which Roe vs. Wade originated, it seems only appropriate that I should observe here the passions which the debate over abortion inflames. I have heard countless arguments for and against a woman’s right to abortion, and while my pro-choice* stance has only solidified, I can’t help but notice the prevalence of flawed arguments on both sides of the debate. While both the pro-life and pro-choice movements often insist their views are self-evident, any examination of the prevailing argument quickly shows abortion rights to be anything but a black and white issue.
The standard pro-life argument is some version of “it is immoral to kill an innocent human being - abortion kills an innocent human being - therefore, abortion is immoral.”[1] This argument makes two implicit assumptions – that a zygote, an embryo and a fetus are all human beings privy to the same rights as you and I, and that it is always immoral to kill a human being. As easy as it is to confidently make these statements, neither is indisputable.
The claim ‘zygote equals human being’ assumes life begins at conception – an opinion often paraded as biological fact. Clearly the zygote has the potential of becoming a fully functioning person, but to use this as evidence of life beginning at conception is scientifically invalid. Any biologist will assure you life begins long before conception. A zygote is alive not because of its future potential but because it meets the basic definition of life.[2] Then again, so do sperm, an egg and for that matter most cells in my body. I have a feeling what the pro-life side means is that a zygote is alive and a potential new person. But in the same way that sperm and egg represent this potential after they join, so too do they represent it as a distinguishable pair. The idea that the zygotic stage definitively represents the beginning of a new person is a philosophical opinion – not a medical fact.[3] The same definitions used to argue this threshold is crossed at conception because of the zygote’s unique genetic code could be used to define viability or birth as the critical point due to the fetus’ self-sustainability.
As tempting as it is to oversimplify the debate to biological definitions of life and arguments for and against its binary nature, this would be to miss the point entirely. The issue at hand is whether or not a future-person is privy to the same rights and protections as you and I. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that preserving a single-celled organism which is neither aware nor capable of living outside of its host does not justify forcing a woman to endure an unwanted pregnancy, regardless of its potential. As to when that critical threshold is crossed (quickening? viability? birth?), the opinions are as varied as those who hold them[4]. The pro-life side needs to stop insisting on something with which we all agree (that a zygote is alive) and begin trying to convince us that it is equal in significance to a baby.
I am curious to know the pro-life position on some of the issues which declaring a zygote to be a human being would yield. Would each miscarriage be investigated to ensure it wasn’t the result of some (accidental?) action taken by the woman? If it turns out that it was the result of such an action, would the woman be indicted for manslaughter/murder? Will birth control (which through secondary effects ensures that the small percentage of eggs which are ovulated and potentially fertilized are flushed from the body[5]) become illegal? What about IUDs, the world’s most common form of reversible birth control[6], which make no effort to stop fertilization – only implantation?[7] How about in vitro fertilization - if I extract and fertilize six eggs in a Petri dish and only one implants itself in the uterus[8], have I committed five murders? Every pro-lifer to whom I’ve ever spoken has insisted on an exception in cases in which one must chose between the life of the fetus and that of the woman...if they are to be protected equally, why allow that exception?
Please note – I am not suggesting that abortion be legal because of regulatory complications (this constitutes the weakest rationale for any argument) – I am stating that there is more to the issue than meets most eyes. Using a formal definition of life is insufficient – the question is not one of biology (at what point does life begin?) but rather one of philosophy (at what point has a person been created?)
The first part of the argument (“abortion kills a human being”) is plenty disputable, but shocking as it may seem, so is the second (“killing an innocent human being is immoral”). Let’s not pretend that we live in a society in which we don’t sacrifice the innocent on a regular basis in the name of what we perceive to be a greater good. Have we ever gone to war thinking the innocent would not die? Is anyone actually naive enough to believe that capital punishment executes only the guilty? Would you support a tripling of your taxes to ensure fewer people died for a lack of health care?
We go to war knowing innocent people will die because we believe their death will serve a larger purpose. So too do we sentence to death those we consider guilty knowing a certain percentage will be later exonerated[9]. We prefer financial freedom to a horrendously inefficient system designed to reduce deaths. Each of these are passively justified examples of the innocent being sacrificed in the name of a perceived greater good. We don’t like to think of the lost life as being that of an innocent fetus, but if all life is equally valid, what is the difference? What the pro-life side should argue is why freeing a woman from her unwanted pregnancy is not enough of a justification to warrant what they perceive as murder. Again – shades of grey creep into the conversation.
Of course, refuting the simplified arguments of the opposition doesn’t justify abortion – so why am I pro-choice? To me, this philosophical question comes down to one of privacy. At no point have I ever said I think a woman should have the right to extinguish that which grows within her – only the right to remove it. As an example, I see no legal rational for post-viability abortion, only for early delivery at which point the future of the baby is no longer a burden to the woman’s privacy. I cannot justify forcing someone to serve as host to any being – living or otherwise. Find a way to nurse an embryo to “birth” or to perform fetal transplantation and abortion can slip into the recycling bin of history.
In the same way that declaring a zygote to be a human being requires a rethinking of laws, so too will insisting that once removed, the state assumes its responsibility. Can a woman who insisted on the removal of a viable fetus be held responsible for its care? Can she request the euthanasia of a viable fetus with an ailment which will render its life short and painful? In the same way that the simplified claims of the pro-life side yield shades of grey upon closer inspection, so too do those of pro-choicers.
If there is one thing of which we can be certain, it is that the controversy surrounding abortion rights is one of a series of ethical debates which will emerge as science continues to blur the distinction between alive and inanimate. Stem-cell research, animal-human hybrids and cloning are all windows into what the future debates will be. Much as this one, they are touted as discreet subjects[10][11][12], - much as this one, further inspection shows that they are not. Life is full of black-and-white issues, but despite endless efforts, I have yet to hear a coherent explanation as to why abortion is one of them.
----------------------------------------------
* The labels pro-life, pro-choice, anti-choice and pro-abortion are classic examples of political framing. In the same way that I object to the term pro-life, I realize that those opposed to abortion-rights object to the term pro-choice. For ease of writing, I have decided to use the terms pro-life and pro-choice with the understanding that just like the issue at hand, they are controversial.
