“You Have Appealed to Caesar; To Caesar You Shall Go”

I may not be a woman (or perhaps I am; after all, I am no biologist), but as a one-time fetus and a full-time human, I have some things to say about abortion. While I am a Christian, and in fact a Catholic, and my beliefs go even farther than the arguments below (say, for example, on contraception), those arguments presented here are founded on Natural Law. Natural Law holds that there are universal moral standards that are inherent in humankind throughout all time, and these standards should form the basis of a just society. Natural Law is a philosophical concept; ideas like Justice, Equality, and Mercy cannot be based on or derived from science.

Apart from religious arguments, abortion stands as an offense to human dignity. It reduces what is essentially a human being to the level of a material commodity, to be disposed of at the owner's convenience. This has happened in history before. It is called slavery. The current legality of abortion is not a good argument in itself; slavery, segregation, and internment camps were all once legal in the United States.

 A fetus has more than simply human DNA, as a tumor or any other growth or a cell on its own may have. The fetus is developing (if it is not damaged or interfered with) in the direction of life independent of the mother’s physicality. Euthanasia (if it has a justification - which is itself a debatable point) is used because the body is dying and has a tendency towards death. The normal fetus is growing and has a tendency towards birth. The comparison is inexact.

But, it has been argued, the fetus is not a fully developed person. But it is a human being, albeit a human being at a very early stage of development. To kill an innocent human being, no matter its stage of strength, dependence, or intelligence, is murder.

But, it has been argued, a fetus is simply part of a woman's body, and a woman has the right to do with her body as she chooses. If a fetus is simply another part of a woman's body, it is a part that somehow has half of another human's DNA. In other words, a different human body. How it gets there is the responsibility of both the male and female partners.

But even so, it has been argued, a woman's uterus is her own, and she can decide what is in it. This is true. But in that case, she and her partner are responsible for preventing conception, either by refraining from sex or by birth control, and seeing that both comply. If we treat a pregnancy like a disease, we should go all the way: as we refrain from overeating to prevent diabetes or heart disease, so the circumstances for a pregnancy must be regulated by the persons involved. This is taking responsibility along with the right.

But, it has been argued, a woman may become pregnant through no agency of her own. Birth control might fail, or she might be raped. In that case, she is left with an unwanted pregnancy; may she then have an abortion? Is it justice for the innocent to die? It is a hard thing (no one said doing the right thing is always easy), but even in the case of rape the destruction of an innocent life is not justified.

But, it has been argued, the situation may arise when the pregnancy compromises the mother's health. What about abortion then? This is a highly debatable area, where hard decisions about life and death must be made with fear and trembling between a woman and her doctor. Harsh necessity drives it, not simple convenience. If the fetus itself is dying with no hope of survival, that could necessitate an abortion as well. It is not abortion on demand then; it is a situation where abortion may demand itself.

Abortion, and its twin at the other end of life, euthanasia, are the thin edge of the wedge chipping away at human rights. It is defining worth by capabilities, by material prospects to be gained. It is reducing a human being to a commodity or a convenience; an object; a non-person. It leads to the slave block, the gas oven, and the mass grave.

Many people want to be the voice of the voiceless and powerless. They try to speak for the trees, for the animals, for the planet. People who are anti-abortion speak for another vulnerable group, a group nearest to us by our human nature: the unborn children of our own species.

I don’t think my stand of being pro-life will surprise either of the two readers of my blog. But these are the reasons behind my position.