Abortion as murder

I have had the displeasure of arguing this point live against someone who claimed abortion was a “hidden holocaust”. When I first heard this language and list of grievances against abortion from a respectable person, I was taken aback in surprise. My responses floundered and did not succeed, but I performed no worse than the political class of the US which still is unable to lay this topic to rest.

The sheer persistence of such a topic is evidence to its complexity (certainly not at an intellectual level) but as a social phenomenon nurtured by circumstances, factions and traditions of thought particular to America. For someone who has no relation to this complex ground in which such a preposterous view as “abortion is murder” can thrive, it is dangerous topic to write about. The “mutual respect” that Obama advocates is tricky because it asks the religious faction to respect the other's logic and reason, just as it asks the rationals to suspend judgment on the irrationals—which is something that “reason” can never do, for it judges and explores all things. Obama's words at Notre Dame were a cop out – and I would hope the President does not make a habit of this kind of political compromise.

The crux of the issue is reason versus faith; enlightenment versus dogmatic obscurantism. Yet it is also a red-herring; abortion is a receptacle for an ideological battle which totally exceeds the actual issue at stake. It is a picked bone which has been scraped for meat by two opposed factions for way too long – its gleaming white represents the ravenous hunger of the political animals which circle it more than it reveals anything about the issue itself. At stake is leadership over the pack, not the bone itself.

So the so-called “pro-lifers” use abortion as an excuse to vent angry rhetoric disguised as reasons without revealing their true fear, which in essence is something to take seriously—the intrusion of science and an ethics intervention in the family's nucleus—birth. At core is the deep suspicion that new ways of doing things are dangerous.

On the pro-choice side stand those who believe in the liberal tradition broadly speaking, those who would see liberties expanded and who view the modern era as a time when the shackles of a despotic tradition have been undone: feminism, civil rights, slavery. This faction views change and innovation as crucial to fulfilling the promise of “the pursuit of happiness” for the public.

Clearly the two sides are arguing about different things, although their interests do conflict and force them to keep harping and pressing forth their agenda and it is not something I will address further.

Instead I will expose just one of the many fallacies at play in this view.
Let us suppose that abortion is murder, and the destruction of a fertilized embryo is comparable to murdering an adult person. What are the consequences in policy?

Step 1: Protect conceived embryos

• Ban all abortion and imprison doctors and unwilling mothers for homicide.
• Allow for exceptional cases only in situations where the the birth may lead to the death of the mother (rape should not be grounds for aborting, as one violent crime is not resolved by another)
• In practice, these policies will likely harm the disadvantaged the most, as the better off will be in a position to prevent conception more successfully, and thus avert dealing with pregnancy—or will they?

Step 2: Protect “conception” as such

• Discourage birth control (for if the destruction of a cell is murder, then preventing the “coming-into-being” of an embryo is also a terrible crime—is it not like preventing a person from drawing breath?
• Finally... ban condoms and birth control of all types

Step 3: Forcibly increase conceptions

• How many children have been denied the god-given right of living by selfish people who have chosen not to conceive? If we calculate the amount people who have not been allowed to be conceived since the use of birth control, it becomes clear that we are guilty of an even larger holocaust than the mere abortion of already-conceived embryos. For embryo's are the possibility of a baby and then adult, and an averted conception destroys the possibility of an embryo, and therefore also the possibility of an adult. Clearly then, birth control is criminal in so far as it prevents people from being born who otherwise would have been. Are we guilty of not allowing the discoverer of the cure for HIV to be conceived and therefore born? (To use the poorly thought-out cliché that is frequently emailed around.)
• New policy should be to mandate conception for healthy women in certain ages. The more baby's that are conceived the more good done in the world, as life can thrive and flourish. The European selfishness of having less than one child per couple is a 2nd holocaust which in number has accounted for the destruction of more people than WWII.

Abortion as murder is a logical fallacy. You can no more make this claim, than it makes sense to criminalize not having children as an act of murder for preventing the coming-into-being of a person. An embryo is not a person—it is an embryo, a cell which has the potential to become a person. But an embryo requires 9 months of nourishment before it is born. So a decision needs to be made to carry it out to fruition. And this decision rests on the people who will be responsible for investing and bringing about the transformation from a bundle of cells into a person (mother, father, extended family)—not by a state intent on enforcing the religious dogmas of others.