A Message To the “Pro-life” Movement: Keep Your Faith Off My Lawn
Each year the so-called “pro-life” movement further encroaches on what I believe should be an irrefutable right to all women: the right to have an abortion. It's either an egregious attempt to inject faith-based ideology into law which has no place in any nation that takes the separation of church and state seriously, or it’s an exercise in poor reason. Despite the colorful language of many pro-life activists, abortion is not a black and white issue, and it is most definitely not a matter of life or death in the usual sense. As we all know from an almost daily barrage of billboards, bumper stickers, and TV commercials, at the very heart of the pro-life movement is the idea that the abortion of a fetus is murder. Proponents of banning abortion equate the procedure with the pre-meditated snuffing out of an innocent life. In fact, some even object to words such as “procedure” or “fetus” and consider “killing children” to be a more accurate description. I argue that this stance, beyond being flawed, is inherently faith based and that anyone who believes in the separation of church and state cannot in good conscience support the illegalization of abortion.
Before we can pick apart the pro-life argument, we must first better define it. It tends to follow something like this: At the moment a human egg is fertilized, known as the moment of conception, a human being is created. This human being, while nothing more than a few cells, will begin to grow, mature, and eventually be born an infant. Because murder is immoral for reasons that are obvious and need not be discussed here, abortion is equally immoral as to kill a fetus is to kill a human being. This argument is either fundamentally religious or inherently flawed because the idea that a self-aware, conscious human is equivalent to a single celled organism, or even a moderately developed fetus, requires one of three interpretations of this argument to be true. The first is the most commonly stated as it has its roots in many prevalent religions. This is the idea that at the moment of conception an eternal human soul is created, and by aborting a fetus you essentially kill that soul or at least deprive that soul of its right to live as a human being. Because science has never found a single piece of evidence, let alone anything that resembles proof, of any kind of a soul, it is strictly a religious belief to proclaim that such things exist and need protection. As a species, we certainly have something unique on this planet: the wondrous and amazing state we call consciousness, but this is nothing more the end result of the elaborate synaptic network of neurons that compose each of our brains. There is not a single shred of empirical evidence that souls, afterlives, or any other such things exist. Because this is the case, how could anyone who believes in the separation of church and state rationally put fourth laws based on this obviously religious argument? They couldn’t. At least, they shouldn’t.
If the pro-life argument is not taken religiously there remain two final secular interpretations, both equally illogical, that attempt to convince us that abortion is immoral. The first and most popular is the idea that because a fetus can turn into a self-aware human being it is therefore equal to a self-aware human being. I call this the “future people” argument, and it is a logical fallacy. What might happen is not equal to what has happened, and “can” does not equal “must” or “should.” The argument that by killing a fetus you are essentially killing a future John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., or some other person that while not existing now will soon exist is frankly, ludicrous. If one accepts this line of reasoning then one must also accept that every sexually active person on this planet commits murder hundreds of times a day by choosing not to procreate with every person they encounter. Following this line of reasoning, I heartlessly murdered over six “future people” in the line at the ATM this afternoon alone! After all, I could have impregnated three separate women, possibly creating over six separate future human beings. By not acting I have prevented these future people from being born. They will never know what it is to live. They will miss out on the joy of a their first crush, the beauty of a sun rise, and the excitement of a thunderstorm. Am I a serial killing sociopathic murderer? Should I feel a great loss? I’d say, that on a whole, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding no.
The only remaining possible interpretation is that a fetus in an instant of time is equivalent to a self-aware human being. I’d like to claim that only a fool would say that a futureless fetus, perhaps infected with a disease destined to cause the termination of its incubation, is equal to a living, breathing, self-aware human being without the invocation of a soul or the “future people” argument. It’s pretty clear that a fetus does not exhibit any of the unique traits that make humans different from what we call animals. I’d even go so far to say that an adult dolphin or chimpanzee is probably magnitudes of times more human-like than a human fetus, though not being a biologist I cannot make such claims for certain. Yes, a fetus at one point has arms, legs, eyes, and a brain, but so did the bacon you ate for breakfast this morning. (In fact, many mammalian fetuses are nearly identical during these early states of development.) A fetus does not have likes, dislikes, friends, foes, intellectual pursuits, tennis lessons, aspirations, hopes, or fears. If you insist on some metaphorical idea of a soul, that at the very least each person has some essence that makes then unique, separate from something like a cow or a tree, that this unarticulable thing is what humanness is, then a fetus does not have it.
As the latter two interpretations of the pro-life argument don’t add up under the slightest of inspection it’s clear that they are simple after thoughts designed to rationalize pre-existing religious ideology. The entire argument is like a house of cards, ready to collapse given the slightest breeze of reason. So this I have to say to the pro-life movement: Keep your faith off my lawn. I can deal with your beliefs, but I shouldn’t have to live by them.
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Another essay I wrote for my Phil. of Religion course that I thought I would share.
Before we can pick apart the pro-life argument, we must first better define it. It tends to follow something like this: At the moment a human egg is fertilized, known as the moment of conception, a human being is created. This human being, while nothing more than a few cells, will begin to grow, mature, and eventually be born an infant. Because murder is immoral for reasons that are obvious and need not be discussed here, abortion is equally immoral as to kill a fetus is to kill a human being. This argument is either fundamentally religious or inherently flawed because the idea that a self-aware, conscious human is equivalent to a single celled organism, or even a moderately developed fetus, requires one of three interpretations of this argument to be true. The first is the most commonly stated as it has its roots in many prevalent religions. This is the idea that at the moment of conception an eternal human soul is created, and by aborting a fetus you essentially kill that soul or at least deprive that soul of its right to live as a human being. Because science has never found a single piece of evidence, let alone anything that resembles proof, of any kind of a soul, it is strictly a religious belief to proclaim that such things exist and need protection. As a species, we certainly have something unique on this planet: the wondrous and amazing state we call consciousness, but this is nothing more the end result of the elaborate synaptic network of neurons that compose each of our brains. There is not a single shred of empirical evidence that souls, afterlives, or any other such things exist. Because this is the case, how could anyone who believes in the separation of church and state rationally put fourth laws based on this obviously religious argument? They couldn’t. At least, they shouldn’t.
If the pro-life argument is not taken religiously there remain two final secular interpretations, both equally illogical, that attempt to convince us that abortion is immoral. The first and most popular is the idea that because a fetus can turn into a self-aware human being it is therefore equal to a self-aware human being. I call this the “future people” argument, and it is a logical fallacy. What might happen is not equal to what has happened, and “can” does not equal “must” or “should.” The argument that by killing a fetus you are essentially killing a future John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., or some other person that while not existing now will soon exist is frankly, ludicrous. If one accepts this line of reasoning then one must also accept that every sexually active person on this planet commits murder hundreds of times a day by choosing not to procreate with every person they encounter. Following this line of reasoning, I heartlessly murdered over six “future people” in the line at the ATM this afternoon alone! After all, I could have impregnated three separate women, possibly creating over six separate future human beings. By not acting I have prevented these future people from being born. They will never know what it is to live. They will miss out on the joy of a their first crush, the beauty of a sun rise, and the excitement of a thunderstorm. Am I a serial killing sociopathic murderer? Should I feel a great loss? I’d say, that on a whole, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding no.
The only remaining possible interpretation is that a fetus in an instant of time is equivalent to a self-aware human being. I’d like to claim that only a fool would say that a futureless fetus, perhaps infected with a disease destined to cause the termination of its incubation, is equal to a living, breathing, self-aware human being without the invocation of a soul or the “future people” argument. It’s pretty clear that a fetus does not exhibit any of the unique traits that make humans different from what we call animals. I’d even go so far to say that an adult dolphin or chimpanzee is probably magnitudes of times more human-like than a human fetus, though not being a biologist I cannot make such claims for certain. Yes, a fetus at one point has arms, legs, eyes, and a brain, but so did the bacon you ate for breakfast this morning. (In fact, many mammalian fetuses are nearly identical during these early states of development.) A fetus does not have likes, dislikes, friends, foes, intellectual pursuits, tennis lessons, aspirations, hopes, or fears. If you insist on some metaphorical idea of a soul, that at the very least each person has some essence that makes then unique, separate from something like a cow or a tree, that this unarticulable thing is what humanness is, then a fetus does not have it.
As the latter two interpretations of the pro-life argument don’t add up under the slightest of inspection it’s clear that they are simple after thoughts designed to rationalize pre-existing religious ideology. The entire argument is like a house of cards, ready to collapse given the slightest breeze of reason. So this I have to say to the pro-life movement: Keep your faith off my lawn. I can deal with your beliefs, but I shouldn’t have to live by them.
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Another essay I wrote for my Phil. of Religion course that I thought I would share.