Physicians for Life's Fallacious Anti-Abortion Arguments Part 3

I am continuing my rebuttal of the Physicians for Life (PFL) article, “In Defense of Life: Rebuttals to Abortion Arguments.” In Part 1, I addressed the arguments directed at the bodily autonomy of pregnant people. In Part 2, I addressed arguments directed at prenatal personhood and considered the ethics of forcing one’s religious morality on others. While writing this post, it became obvious that I was not going to be able to mop up the rest of PFL’s arguments. It also became obvious I needed to write something that was more reflective after I was finished with the argumentation. Therefore, as it stands now, I will be writing two more posts in response to this article. This post will cover arguments related to the rights of self-determination, equality and privacy. Part 4 will hopefully wrap up the rest of the arguments. Part 5 will deal with the personal reflections I had while writing these posts.

Section 6 meant to address the popularity of the pro-choice stance. It’s a bit of a word salad. It is also out of date. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a clear majority of the public supports legal abortion in cases where pregnant people do not wish to be pregnant. This appears to be a significant improvement, but it also still means the public still views the permissibility of abortion through the lens of their judgments about pregnant people.ⁱ Among other things, this means we still have a long way to go before people with uteruses are recognized as fully human.

Let’s move on to the meat the PFL’s contention: “We all oppose ‘choice’ in the case of someone wishing to commit rape or wishing to beat up family members. ‘Choice’ is not an applicable concept when there are victims.” I absolutely agree here. The problem with PFL’s argument is that it identifies the victim incorrectly. If the pregnancy is unwanted, it is the pregnant person who is the victim. It is the pregnant person’s body that is being used without consent. And if abortion is prohibited, it is the pregnant person whose rights are violated.

Section 7 presents arguments meant to respond to the pro-choice advocate arguing, “I believe women should have a ‘choice.’” Their first response is that they are choosing to kill. But oddly, as part of this argument, PFL asserts that 90% of people having an abortion felt they were forced into the abortion and regretted it. Tellingly, they give no source for this assertion.

The reason they give no source for the assertion is because it is a lie. In The Turnaway Study, Diana Green Foster reports only about 1% of people seeking abortions in her study reported feeling coercion from others to have the abortion. None cited this as the main reason for having the abortion. This is consistent with other studies and the fact that abortion clinics assess pregnant people to ensure they are making the decision of their own free will. Furthermore, five years after the abortion, 95% of the study’s participants felt having the abortion was the right decision.ⁱⁱ

PFL then alleges “choice” is just a way of society telling pregnant people to deal with the unwanted pregnancy by getting rid of it so society does not have to give them the support they are entitled to. Then they cite Feminists for Life of America, an oxymoron if there ever was one, to much the same effect. These are odd assertions to make considering the slave monger party is also the party that wants to cut whatever support pregnant people can get from society.

Again citing Feminists for Life, PFL tries to address so-called informed choice material required by some states. It cherry picks a quote from the Supreme Court decision in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that state-mandated material given to the pregnant person seeking an abortion is not “always relevant to the women’s decision, and may serve only to confuse her and heighten her anxiety.” It then accuses the court of patronizing the pregnant person’s ability to decide and forces pregnant people to make their decision in ignorance.

But read in context, the Thornburgh decision does no such thing. The decision explicitly states, “A requirement that the woman give what is truly a voluntary and informed consent, as a general proposition, is, of course, proper and is surely not unconstitutional.” Where the statute under contention went too far was in mandating the pregnant person be given information “not to inform the woman's consent but rather to persuade her to withhold it altogether” and that the mandated information be given “irrespective of the particular needs of the patient.” Rather than patronizing the pregnant person, the Court ruled the state was doing the patronizing and ordered it to stop.

PFL then encourages the slave monger to ask whether the pro-choice advocate supports abortions for sex selection. In the context of the United States, this is a red herring. Several studies of the reasons for having an abortion have been done over the years, and sex selection is not a factor. There is no evidence sex selection abortions is a problem in the United States. So basically the slave mongers are trying to rely on people’s discomfort with a non-existent problem to sneak through a general ban on abortion.

Next, PFL quotes Miriam J. Barth (without citing a source) to the effect that it is “sad” that “radical feminists” see abortion as necessary to women having the right to self-determination. I am not exactly sure what point the PFL is trying to make with this quote, or how it responds to the pro-choice advocate saying, “I believe women should have a ‘choice.’” It does not help their case. Just because something is sad does not necessarily mean it should be illegal.

In any case, however “sad” it may be, “radical feminists” are absolutely right that abortion rights are necessary for female-bodied people to have the right to self-determination. The Turnaway Study provides several lines of evidence showing how having an abortion vs. being refused one impacts the lives of women. On the physical level, those denied an abortion were more likely to have serious complications as a result of their pregnancy, an effect that carried over to subsequent pregnancies. Overall, those denied an abortion were less healthy than those who were able to obtain it. Those who are denied abortions may also have a higher risk of death from the pregnancy than the general population (146-150). Call me a radical feminist, but I think it is self-evident that living is a necessary precondition for the right to self-determination.

Women who are denied abortions significantly downgrade their aspirations. “[D]enying women wanted abortions causes them to scale back their plans for the coming year, while allowing women to have a wanted abortion enables them to set more aspirational plans for the coming year…. Women are changing their plans and dramatically scaling back their non-child-related plan in response to being denied a wanted abortion” (168). Even with these lowered aspirations, those denied an abortion were less likely to achieve those goals (169-170). “Women denied abortions tend to scale back their career and financial expectations, realizing that having a child—or another child—will affect their life trajectory. Women know that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term will limit their other accomplishments” (170).

In the longer term, those who were denied an abortion became more likely to raise their children alone. Their employment situation is more erratic than those who had an abortion, and it takes four years to catch up, with the expected negative impact on their families’ economic well-being. Those denied an abortion were far more likely to depend on welfare benefits, including food stamps and WIC. They are more likely to live in poverty, and even after five years were more likely to report they do not have enough money for basic expenses (174-177). On top of a 78% increase in past due accounts, those who were denied an abortion also had increased incidences of evictions, bankruptcies, court judgments, and loan defaults (179-180).

Being denied an abortion also has ramifications for future relationships. For example, only 28% of those denied an abortion described themselves as being in a good relationship after two years compared to 47% who were able to get an abortion (235). Even more worrisome, those denied an abortion were more likely to be tethered to abusive partners, often because the partner’s income is their main source of survival. Not surprisingly, those who were denied an abortion were more likely to be physically assaulted by their partner than those who were able to have an abortion (232).

Note I am not saying that those who are denied abortions cannot or will not succeed. The Turnaway Study gives a number of examples of women who succeed despite being denied an abortion. However, a common theme of those successes was that these women had excellent support systems, usually a family that had the means to help. And arguably they would have succeeded much faster had they gotten the abortion they sought because they would not have had to face the socio-economic obstacles associated with being forced to bear and rear a child before they were ready. But for most female-bodied people, most of the time, abortion rights are necessary to fully exercising the right to self-determination.

Shifting away from the Turnaway Study, it has been shown that homicide is a (if not the) leading cause of pregnancy-related death. Often, they are murdered by their intimate partners. Obviously, we cannot how many murdered pregnant people wanted or planned to have an abortion. Still less, we cannot know how many of them would have gotten an abortion had they known they would be murdered. Once again, being alive is a necessary precondition for the right to self-determination.

PFL then returns to slut-shaming, arguing the real choice happens in the bedroom. Female-bodied people are urged to work out an understanding with their partner such that pregnancy is prevented in the first place. In any case, they should not “take out their frustration on a helpless little child.” I can only quote the absurd remark that follows: “Often, abortion advocates portray women as weak, vulnerable wimps who must give men all they want (blame men for their problems); then they turn around and demand that women are totally in charge of their destinies with total ‘control over their bodies’ (blame their babies for their problems) because they allow the abortionist (usually a male) to violate their bodies and destroy their preborn babies. The abortion advocates cannot have it both ways!” I can only at best guess what they are trying to say here.

So, where to begin? As I noted in Part 1, Physicians for Life are against abortion even in cases of rape, a fact we will deal with more fully later. As we will also see, these slave mongers are against abortion in cases where birth control failed. Logically, this means it does not matter what the female-bodied person does. What we have here is a case where the slave monger places the entire onus on female-bodied people to not get pregnant, and then say it does not matter what they do because if they get pregnant through no fault of their own, they are still going to be forced to gestate. And then they accuse the pro-choice side of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Forgive me if I’m not impressed.

What I would really like to say here is that the slave mongers at PFL need to take off the rose-colored glasses. Rape happens. So does reproductive coercion. People don’t always keep their agreements. And even when both parties honor their agreements, accidents happen. There is no reversible birth control that is 100% effective, 100% foolproof, and 100% tamper proof. People cannot always afford the most effective birth control, and the cheapest methods are also the least effective ones. Do pro-choice advocates say that female-bodied people are weak to the point they have to give male-bodied people whatever they want? No, they just happen to live in the real world.

If these arguments do not work, PFL suggests asking pro-choice advocates why they fight against laws requiring informed consent. This was partly answered above in the discussion of Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The short answer is we do not oppose medically sound information being given to patients seeking an abortion. What we oppose is state-mandated interventions intended to intimidate pregnant people from having an abortion. We oppose states requiring abortion providers to tell lies about abortions causing breast cancer or mental health issues. We oppose mandating medically unnecessary procedures and TRAP laws.

If none of these arguments against choice work, the slave mongers ask what pro-choice advocates do besides providing abortions. Well, let’s take a look at the service categories Planned Parenthood provides beyond abortion, to take an example: birth control; emergency contraception; general health care; HIV services; LGBT services; men’s health services; patient education; pregnancy testing and services; STD testing, treatment, and vaccines; and women’s services. (So much for the remark that their income comes from the number of abortions they do.) Pro-choice advocates also tend to advocate for living wages and strong social safety nets so people who decide to have children are able to care for them. They also tend to advocate expanded medical coverage of pregnancy, up to and including Medicare for All so that people who decide to carry a pregnancy remain healthy and give birth to healthy babies. They also tend to support comprehensive sex education and no out-of-pocket cost for contraceptive coverage to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. They also tend to fight against pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. They also tend to advocate for paid family leave so parents can bond better with their newborns. I could go on and on, but this should be enough to get started.

Moving onto section 10, the pro-choice advocate is said to ask how women can have equality if they cannot control their reproductive lives. PFL counters with questions like how female-bodied people are seen as needing surgery to avoid their second-class status and why they should have to become like men to be successful. These are strawmen. No one is saying any of this. As detailed above, in terms of just physical health, lowered aspirations, economic well-being, and future relationships, having a child one is not ready for has long-term ramifications on the ability of female-bodied people to live their lives on their own terms. Pro-choice advocates are not saying access to abortion is the only thing they need to overcome second-class status; but it surely is part of the puzzle.

PFL cites the oxymoronic Feminists for Life saying if there are barriers to equal participation of pregnant people and new mothers, that is the fault of society. I agree. But who are the people working to maintain the second-class status of female-bodied people? That would be the so-called pro-life party, as perfectly encapsulated in this cartoon:

 

 

The next section tries to address the right to privacy. Physicians for Life contend that the abortion debate is about whether violence is done, and if so privacy has nothing to do with it.

First, let me note that I may not be the best person to address the right to privacy as it relates to abortion. Though the right to privacy surely applies to abortion, I consider it too thin a thread to hang the legal right to have an abortion on. Nor am I the only pro-choice advocate to think there are stronger grounds to affirm the right to an abortion. Ruth Bader Ginsberg argued abortion rights are more properly situated in equal protection. Other arguments have been offered to ground the right to an abortion in bodily autonomy,ⁱⁱⁱ limits on the duty to aid others, and so on.

I myself think abortion rights should be grounded in the Thirteenth Amendement. The argument is simple and elegant. Prohibiting abortion makes the pregnant person the state-mandated slave (or, if you feel this word is too harsh, the involuntary servant) of the prenate. This is clearly prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. Full stop.

Having said that, Physicians for Life is just plain wrong that the debate is about whether violence is done. An induced abortion forcibly removes or expels the prenate from the pregnant person’s body. No knowledgeable pro-choice advocate would deny this.

The abortion debate is about whether the pregnant person can be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. It’s not about whether violence is done; it’s about whether it is justified. Pro-choice advocates argue, generally speaking, that the violence is justified and that the pregnant person cannot be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. This being the case, the abortion decision is in fact a matter of privacy.

PFL would then ask the pro-choice advocate whether the right to privacy was absolute and whether that right exceeds another person’s right to live. PFL is begging the question of whether the prenate is a person, an issue I already dealt with in Part 2. Having already conceded that I think the right to privacy was a thin thread to hang abortion rights on, I am not going to contradict myself here. However, I think it can still be argued that, given current medical technology, abortion is covered by the right to privacy. I will concede that, generally speaking, the right to privacy does not outweigh a person’s right to life. I will even go so far as to stipulate prenatal personhood for this purpose.

What, after all, is the right to privacy? I think a good definition of the right to privacy is to be let alone by other people and/or the government so long as you are doing nothing wrong. This may not align precisely with the legal definition, but it does seem to be something like the definition most people use in their everyday lives. Already, we can see why, generally speaking, the right to privacy does not outweigh another person’s right to life: unjustly depriving someone of their right to life is wrong. But it is also why we can see that there are some cases where the right to privacy does outweigh another person’s right to life.

Recall my argument for the permissibility of abortion roughly runs as follows. In an unwanted pregnancy, the prenate is using the pregnant person’s body without consent. Because of this, the pregnant person is permitted to use any necessary means to end the nonconsensual use of their body, just as we are permitted to use any necessary means to evade/escape rape, slavery, kidnapping, involuntary scientific experimentation, and forced organ donations.

For a moment, let’s focus on forced organ or tissue donations. I have cited the case of McFall v. Shimp several times in my arguments on abortion. In this case, McFall had a blood condition and required a bone marrow transplant to live. Shimp, McFall’s cousin, consented to an initial test that indicated his marrow was compatible. It was only when Shimp refused to undergo the confirmatory test that McFall sued, asking the court to compel Shimp to undergo the confirmatory test and donate his bone marrow if compatibility was confirmed. Ultimately, the court ruled that, however morally detestable Shimp’s refusal to donate his bone marrow to McFall may be, he was doing nothing legally wrong and was to be let alone. Shimp’s right to privacy in this case did outweigh McFall’s right to life.

One could argue that in the case examples I used in my argument, these are not matters of privacy. If I killed such a perpetrator, I could still be charged with murder and I would have the burden of proof that I acted in self-defense. Further, much of the case would probably center around whether it was necessary to kill the offender. This much is true, but the reason is that there would be questions about whether the perpetrator was in fact trying to do these things and whether it was necessary to kill the offender.

This is not the case with abortion, particularly when procured before viability. In the case of the prenate, that they are using the pregnant person’s body is beyond the shadow of a doubt. By seeking an abortion, a pregnant person has proven they do not consent to that use.^iv There are simply no means of ending a pregnancy before viability without it resulting in the death of the prenate. Lacking any means of transferring the prenate to another person or an artificial womb, the question of necessity is settled. If stopping a rapist always and everywhere meant killing them, then necessity would not even come into play in my case for self-defense. The only thing I would have to prove is that the offender was really trying to rape me, i.e., trying to use my body without consent. Always and everywhere, the prenate is using the pregnant person’s body. Always and everywhere, a person seeking an abortion does not consent to the use of their body by the prenate. Before viability, the necessity of killing the prenate is unambiguous. There is clearly no question about whether the pregnant person is doing something wrong, so the decision to have an abortion is covered by the pregnant person’s right to privacy.

As stipulated in my essay, once the fetus becomes viable, things become more complicated as the necessity of killing the fetus becomes questionable. Let us be clear here. If the pregnant person no longer consents to the pregnancy even past viability, they still have the right to use any means necessary to end the nonconsensual use of their body by the prenate. This part is beyond question.

However, once the fetus becomes viable, options that will not necessarily kill it, like inducing labor and C-sections, become available. In the discussion of necessity, I argued that is not required to take heroic measures to avoid killing the offender. As applied to ending an unwanted pregnancy, this means if inducing labor or having a C-section is riskier than having an abortion, an abortion may still be considered necessary.

At the time I wrote the essay, I admitted I was not a medical expert and could not answer the question of risk definitively. However, the question of just how risky in terms of death from various forms of late-term abortions, inducing labor, and having a C-section came up in the comments. Finding these statistics does help me to start answering the question of necessity. So, let’s list the mortality rates:

• There are 8.8 deaths per 100,00 live births. This is the baseline.

• There are 4.9 deaths per 100,000 dilation and evacuation abortions.

• There are 9.6 deaths per 100,000 for instillation methods of abortion.

• There are 60 deaths per 100,000 for hysterotomies and hysterectomies.

• There are 13 deaths per 100,000 C-sections.

I could not find any readily available death rate for inducing labor. I found that inducing labor increases the risk of fatal embolisms and postpartum hemorrhage, but not a solid deaths per 100,000 cases of induced labor. I would presume that heightened risks of potentially fatal complications translates into at least a slightly higher risk of death than the baseline, but I cannot verify it. Nor do I know how the potential benefits weigh against the risks. So I will stipulate for the sake of this discussion that inducing labor is no more risky than the baseline.

Looking at these statistics, two things stand out. First, a C-section is far riskier than the baseline. A pregnant person cannot be required to have a C-section in an effort to avoid the death of the fetus. However, a D&E is still far less risky than the baseline, and presumably inducing labor. In terms of my argument, an abortion can still be considered necessary because the other options would be considered heroic. A pregnant person does nothing wrong in requesting a D&E, and properly trained personnel do nothing wrong in providing it. And this falls within the right to privacy.

I have already dealt with section 12 in part 2, so before closing this post, I will comment on section 13. In response to the pro-choice argument, “The government should not interfere in this highly personal issue,” PFL responds by saying the real issue is about the government preserving and protecting life. This response still begs the question of whether the prenate has the right to life in the first place, which, as I explained in part 2, they have failed to show. Beyond that, it also begs the question of whether an abortion unjustly deprives the prenate of their right to life, assuming they have it. PFL does not even try to make a case here. In light of these two basic, fundamental failures, PFL’s assertions about what the “real issue” is falls flat.

Perhaps realizing this, PFL urges slave mongers to divert to the issue of the government paying for abortions. They think they have caught pro-choice advocates in a contradiction. Pro-choice advocates are said to both want the government stay out of abortion but also pay for it. However, a pro-choice advocate would be more likely to actually say something like, “The government should not interfere with decisions pregnant people make about their pregnancies.” Once the strawman has been dealt with, the apparent contradiction disappears.

I should note here that not all pro-choice advocates think the government should pay for abortions beyond the normal rape and maternal health exceptions already contained in the Hyde Amendment. One can hold without contradiction that abortion should be legal but that it should not be paid for using taxpayer money. They are in fact separate issues.

While I can only speak for myself, what follows is the general sense I get from those who do advocate the government should pay for abortions. Abortion care is health care. I have already already discussed some of the findings from The Turnaway Study regarding the health effects of being denied a wanted abortion. I have also shown that even late-term abortions are far safer than childbirth. In this post, I have not discussed the effect being denied an abortion has on children (those who already exist, the one the pregnant person is forced to bear, and/or future children). Spoiler alert: It’s not good.

Furthermore, the earlier one has an abortion, the easier and safer the procedure. But as The Turnaway Study notes, “Needing time to raise money to cover travel and procedure costs was the most common reason for delay among our study participants, with nearly two-thirds of women who showed up close to the clinic’s gestational limit reporting such costs as a reason for delay” (65).

So it is in everyone’s best interest that the government pay for abortions should the pregnant person decide to have one. But more than that, as I already mentioned, pro-choice advocates tend to advocate expanded medical coverage of pregnancy. I myself advocate Medicare for All, so that everyone can receive the medical care they need regardless of their individual situations and choices.

 Edited on 2 Nov 2021 to fix bad hyperlinks.

iPollitt, Katha. Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (p. 46). Picador. Kindle Edition. Pollitt appears to be dealing with attitudes toward the reasons pregnant people abort in general, and not just legal permissibility. It is possible, and even likely respondents who think abortion should be legal for people simply not wanting to be pregnant would still disagree that it is morally permissible. Therefore, I am not going to attempt a reconciliation between the Kaiser survey I cited and Pollitt’s figures.

iiFoster, Diana Greene. The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion (p. 42-43, 124-126). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

iiiManninen, B.. “Rethinking Roe v. Wade: Defending the Abortion Right in the Face of Contemporary Opposition.” The American Journal of Bioethics 10 (2010): 33-46.

ivA slave monger may try to appeal to implicit consent, but Holly M. Smith refuted that notion nearly forty years ago. It is sufficient to say that in a case of a theoretical argument the pregnant person consented by having voluntary sex and an actual person saying here and now they do not consent, the actual person wins.

Physicians for Life's Fallacious Anti-Abortion Arguments Part 2

I am continuing my rebuttal of the Physicians for Life (PFL) article, “In Defense of Life: Rebuttals to Abortion Arguments.” In Part 1, I addressed the arguments directed at the bodily autonomy of pregnant people. In this post, I am going to address the arguments made about personhood and the ethics of forcing one’s religious morality onto the general public.

My position on prenatal personhood has not changed since my “Why Abortion is Permissible” essay. I still have not found a satisfactory account of personhood that establishes that the prenate is a person with the same right to life as you and me. Likewise, I still have not found a satisfactory account of personhood that establishes prenates are not persons with the same right to life as you and me.

One thing that does strike me about debating prenatal personhood is that, especially for the slave mongers, “personhood” serves as a secular stand-in for ensoulment. This is partly because the anti-abortion stance is pushed almost entirely by religious conservatives, the vast majority of whom would argue God gives people their souls at conception. Or, if one argues that abortion is permissible to a certain point of pregnancy (e.g,. the “quickening”), that person often means this is the point where the prenate has acquired personhood, or in religious terms, a soul. And, usually, a religious person who believes that one acquires a soul either at birth or sometime after birth, if they object to abortion at all, do so on grounds other than prenatal personhood. Physicians for Life, perhaps inadvertently, makes this connection in its article, when it states, “It may not be possible to prove that personhood or 'ensoulment' begins at conception; however, you cannot prove that personhood does NOT begin at conception.”

It also seems to me that even though those who are nonreligious and do not believe in the soul are also, in a sense, using personhood as a secular stand-in for ensoulment. Let’s take Bob Seidensticker’s spectrum argument. If someone has been debating abortion long enough, they will sooner or later run across some variation of the saying, “An acorn is not an oak tree.” Seidensticker develops this saying by pointing out that there are many instances where we know there is a spectrum, and that the thing on one end of that spectrum is certainly not the same thing as that on the other end. While we may not be able to pinpoint exactly where on the spectrum something becomes the other thing, that does not invalidate the fact that, for example, an acorn is not an oak tree. He suggests, and later develops the thought that personhood is an emergent property, rather than an inherent one. But in doing so, he is taking a position that is not that far from what traditional Christianity has said about ensoulment for more than 1900 years.

Given the quasi-religious nature of the term “personhood” and its beginning, I am going to engage the personhood portions of PFL’s article using both secular and religious arguments. In doing so, I am not saying I can prove that God exists, souls exist, and that they are acquired at a particular point. Nor am I making an argument that they do. I am taking this approach for two main reasons. First, I am engaging the slave mongers on the basis of common ground. Second, since I am going to engage the ethics of forcing one’s religious stances on the general public, the contrast between my religious views and the slave mongers is relevant to that discussion.

So, let’s start with defining what a person for the purpose of this essay. A person is a being whom, for whatever reason, it is presumptively wrong to kill. With this definition, I want to highlight two aspects. First, this does not assume that only humans, or even that humans in all stages of life are persons. If that “whatever reason” applies to other species, whether on Earth, other planets, or other dimensions, then those species would be also be persons. It also means that the “whatever reason” has to exist for the individual member of the given species. So if that “whatever reason” does not apply to, say, prenates, then it would not be presumptively wrong to kill them.

Second, to say it is presumptively wrong to kill a person is not the same thing as saying it is always wrong to kill them. It does mean that: 1) if it is presumptively wrong to kill such a being, then such killing has to be justified and 2) the reason for the wrongness of killing such a being is not “because [insert situational circumstances].” In other words, it is not presumptively wrong to kill non-person beings, although there may be reasons other than personhood that will generate moral outrage in the killing, (e.g., excessive cruelty). So if we were to determine that, say, infants, are not persons, and we still want to say killing them is wrong, we would have to do it on grounds other than personhood.

But it also means that killing persons is not always wrong either. It simply means the general rule is that killing a person is wrong. Killing a person may be justified, as in cases of self-defense or the execution of murderers. What this means is that even if we determine it is presumptively wrong to kill prenates, this would not in itself settle the abortion debate. We would still have to determine whether abortions are justified.

In “Why Abortion is Permissible,” I wrote that I believe that humans probably do not acquire personhood until birth. I base that position on Scripture, especially Genesis 2:7//Moses 3:7//Abraham 5:7 and 3 Nephi 1:13. This is consistent with the scriptural view that the “breath of life” is what distinguishes the living from the dead (e.g., Genesis 7:22, Job 33:4, Psalm 104:29, Ezekiel 37:10, and obliquely Ether 15:31). Exodus 21:22-25 only mandates a fine for causing a miscarriage while applying lex talionis should further injury befall the pregnant person. Numbers 5:11-31 prescribes a ritual whereby a jealous husband may make his wife undergo a trial by ordeal that, if she fails, results in her womb discharging and her uterus dropping, with no concern over the fact this will result in a miscarriage if the wife is pregnant. Finally, all those passages that require being born again as a condition of salvation (e.g., John 3:3, Mosiah 27:25, Moses 6:59) presume one was born the first time around. From Genesis to The Articles of Faith, Scripture shows a remarkable lack of concern for prenatal life, especially if we are meant to believe a person has a soul from the moment of conception.ⁱ

This scriptural view comports well with reason. It seems absurd that God would bequeath a soul on a newly fertilized zygote when 73% of them will not survive implantation and be flushed out in the next menstrual cycle, and up to 3% more will not make it until birth under normal circumstances. I believe God is rational, and it staggers the imagination that God would be so wasteful in distributing souls.

Furthermore, ensoulment at conception raises unanswered questions. Consider monozygotic twins, where one zygote is split either naturally or artificially into two or more embryos. If ensoulment occurs at conception, that naturally leads to the conclusion that each of the identical twins split the one soul between them. Yet it is usually maintained identical twins are separate persons with their own souls. However, this requires mind-boggling ad hoc explanations when the simpler explanation is that ensoulment occurs sometime after conception.

Or consider tetragametic chimerism, which occurs when two fraternal twins merge into one embryo. If ensoulment occurs at conception, that naturally leads to the conclusion that the tetragametic chimera has (at least) two souls. I have yet to get a straight answer from a slave monger to the question of how many souls a tetragametic chimera has. Hydatidiform moles also form from fertilized eggs, which, if ensoulment occurs at conception, would mean it would be presumptively wrong to kill them. Yet not even the most extreme slave monger goes this far, although they can not give me a straight answer to why hydatidiform moles are not persons.

The simplest answer that would account for all these phenomena is that the earliest point ensoulment happens sometime after conception, and probably sometime after implantation as well. It also seems most reasonable that if ensoulment does occur before birth, it would happen at some point where it is clear the fetus will be born and survive in the natural course of events. Anencephalic fetuses and sirenomelic fetuses, to cite two examples, probably do not have souls.ⁱⁱ

With these preliminaries out of the way, let us turn to the PFL article. In section one, the first argument is the slippery slope argument that if you can not pinpoint exactly when you became a person, you need to accept that you were a person from the moment of conception. This argument is handled quite readily by the spectrum argument outlined above. But given the preliminaries I have established, we may be able to say more.

Recall my definition of a person is a being that is presumptively wrong to kill for whatever reason. Also recall that the “whatever reason” which makes a being presumptively wrong to kill may or may not apply to the being at all stages of the being’s life. The implication of the slippery slope argument presented here is that merely being human is the “whatever reason.” However, this raises all sorts of questions that the slave mongers have problems answering without ad hoc explanations. For example, what about hydatidiform moles, which are also began with fertilization and also has nothing added to it except what is provided by the person with a uterus’ body and the time to grow? But if it is not presumptively wrong to kill the hydatidiform mole, that would suggest that merely being human is not the “whatever reason” that makes something human a person.

My religious mythology points both to the “whatever reason” and provides the cut off date for when a human becomes a person. In the creation stories recounted in the books of Genesis, Moses, and Abraham, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. Adam had a human body, but it was not a living soul until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. When Jesus told Nephi that he would come into the world the next day, Jesus’ body already existed in the form of the fetus in Mary’s womb. It was not until birth Jesus came into the world.

Obviously, you do not have to accept my religious beliefs in this matter, and I certainly do not expect Physicians for Life to accept my religious beliefs, either. But this is an exercise you can perform for yourself. If I were to ask you what makes a person a person, most of you would probably respond with a list of traits, e.g., intelligence, sentience, consciousness. Or you might respond by saying it is the physical structures of the brain which gives us intelligence, sentience, consciousness. Or you might have some other response. I am not going to dictate your “whatever reason.” However, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that however you answer my question, your “whatever reason” either developed or was acquired sometime after conception. And this would mean even though you have been human since conception, you were not always a person.

In the next argument, PFL points out that we can treat fetuses and even directly operate on them for conditions such as spina bifida. It urges the slave monger to ask who the patient is in such cases. I honestly do not see the relevance here. Since I have never reviewed patient listings for such cases, I cannot answer that specific question. However, I have taken my dogs to the vet, and it has always been the dog that is identified as the patient, no matter what vet I go to. Does this mean my dog is a person?

I would leave my answer at that, but there is something I want to highlight about this argument. We should ask the counter question, “How does the doctor get to the fetus to operate on it?” The answer, of course, is through the pregnant person’s body. Notice how the pregnant person is totally ignored here. It’s almost like only fetuses exist according to Physicians for Life. This is a theme we will return to.

Physicians for Life next urges the slave monger to ask pro-choice advocates if they can provide a description of what it means to be viable. Yes, I can—when the lungs are formed enough that the prenate can breathe on its own outside the womb. I call this natural viability because it is the definition that does not rely on medical technology to make it true. Medical viability is defined as the point where, given advanced medical technology, at least half of neonates born at that stage will survive. While I have reservations about this definition, I am not going to challenge it in this essay.

Either way, I am not sure what point PFL is trying to make here. My guess, based on the next question, is that the question is directed toward late-term abortions, which are rarely performed and then for reasons of extreme fetal abnormality or because of serious threats to the health or life of the mother anyway. In the United States, late-term abortions are usually limited to those reasons, thus asking about viability is a moot point. In terms of personhood, the question would only be relevant for those for whom the “whatever reason” applies to pre-viability prenates anyway.

The next argument goes directly into late-term abortion territory by asking pro-choice advocates to consider the case of two people with uteruses, both of whom became pregnant the same day. One gives birth at six months to a premature but healthy (unlikely, but I will grant it for the sake of discussion) baby. The other decides a week later (apparently just because this person is a heartless bitch) that they do not want to have a baby. Then the pro-choice advocate is asked why the first person could not kill the newborn but the second person could be allowed to abort.

For one answer, see the section addressing viability in “Why Abortion is Permissible.” Does PFL seriously think pro-choice advocates have never thought about the question? I’m guessing these slave mongers figure that even if the pro-choice advocate does not believe the personhood does not begin at conception, surely they would have developed or acquired personhood by viability.

Physicians for Life does not want the slave monger to accept the answer that one is born and the other is not on the grounds that this is merely a difference in location. But in my religious beliefs, and speaking directly to personhood, the born infant has acquired a soul while the fetus has not. So for me to say because one is born and the other is not does not just indicate a difference in location. It indicates a difference showing that it is presumptively wrong to kill the infant while it is not presumptively wrong to kill the fetus.

For section one of the PFL article, I have presented, as much as possible, answers to the slave mongers’ arguments with both secular rebuttals and responses derived from my religious beliefs. The secular responses show their arguments do not prove anything about prenatal personhood, while the religious responses help provide the basis for a later argument down the road.

Section two has only one argument, which is meant to address the pro-choice argument that no one can say with certainty when a fetus becomes a person. I quoted this section above while discussing personhood and ensoulment. Acknowledging that ensoulment at conception cannot be proven, the slave mongers’ argument is to “err on the side of life.”

At first glance, this argument seems reasonable enough. But in fact, the argument is deceptively cruel. Let me explain.

What does it mean to err on the side of something? To err on the side of caution means not to take unreasonable risks so we are not injured or killed. With regard to people, it means to give a person the benefit of the doubt in dubious situations. For example, in criminal law, if jurors find a reasonable doubt in the prosecutor’s case, they have the duty to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt, that is, to err on the defendant’s side and find them not guilty. If someone tells you a story that is not intrinsically implausible, you tend to believe that story unless and until presented with evidence the story is not true. Not only is this simpler than radical skepticism, but erring on the side of the storyteller’s truthfulness helps build personal relationships, while explicitly or implicitly accusing the storyteller of lying without evidence assaults their dignity for no good reason. To err on the side of love is to treat others how you would like to be treated instead of what you think they deserve. In short, to err on the side of a person is to respect that person’s rights and dignity.

This is not what Physicians for Life is asking you to do if you doubt prenatal personhood. What they are asking you to do is side with may-or-may-not-be-a-person prenates against unambiguously-a-person pregnant people. What they are asking you to do is deprive pregnant people of their rights, including but not limited to: their right to life, liberty, and security of person; their right to be free from slavery; their right to be recognized as a person before the law; their right to equal protection under the law; their right to be free from torture; their right to bodily integrity; and their right to decide when and if to have children. And they are asking you to do this even though the pregnant person has done nothing wrong, and in cases of rape, even though it is the pregnant person who has been wronged.

Erring on the side of life would be valid if the prenate had an independent existence and all one had to do is let it be for it to develop on its own. But this is not the case, and once again PFL totally erases pregnant people as if they did not exist, did not have rights of their own, and did not have interests of their own. To “err on the side of life” in this case is to deny the personhood of the pregnant people.

When it comes to may-or-may-not-be-a-person prenates and unambiguously-a-person pregnant people, it is clear whose side we should err on: pregnant people.

Section three is meant to address the pro-choice arguments that prenates may be humans, but not necessarily persons. Here, I am going to combine and respond to both tactics pressed here because they are both the same tactic with different follow-up questions. Both tactics encourage the slave monger to detail the differences between a human and a person. Then based on the assumption that the pro-choice advocates responses are also applicable to born people or fails to actually distinguish humans from persons, asks questions like, “What other groups of persons can be killed for any reason?”

I will engage in some “philosophical mumbo jumbo” for a moment, despite the slave mongers’ desire to avoid it. It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on what exactly constitutes a person. One thing we can be pretty sure about is that human and person are not necessarily synonymous. I am not merely talking semantics here. We can easily conceive of non-human persons and it would not violate the law of noncontradiction. Even if we cannot easily define what a person is, if characters like Kal-El, Spock, Legolas, or E.T. really existed, we would have no problem identifying them as persons. Setting aside these fictional characters, serious arguments are being made that other existing species qualify for personhood, especially bonobos and orca. Indeed, traditional Jews, Christians, and Muslims certainly believe in a non-human person: God. Still, the only beings universally recognized as persons are members of Homo sapiens. Does this philosophical reflection get us anywhere here? Perhaps. I would suggest that even if we cannot necessarily agree what a person is, we would know a person if we interacted with one, once communication barriers like language differences were overcome.

This leads to a practical thought experiment that I think will help answer the questions PFL want the slave mongers to press. Take any ten beings that are universally recognized as persons with the right to life. Now consider a newborn infant and a fetus. For the purpose of this experiment, the infant is not unambiguously a person, that is, an infant's status as a person is questionable. As in real life, the fetus’ status is not settled either. What do all the beings who are unambiguously persons have in common? All are homo sapiens, most certainly. All were conceived by a sperm combining with an egg (at least so far), most certainly. They were all also actually born.

Now, it is easy to see that prenates and infants both have the first two things in common with beings universally recognized as persons with the right to life. Infants, however have that third thing in common with unambiguously recognized persons, whereas prenates do not. Therefore, a neonate, even one born after only 23 weeks gestation, is a person with the right to life, while the prenate, even at 23 weeks gestation, is not. Birth does intrinsically change things.

On the religious level, my answer is fairly simple. A person is a being that has a soul. Not all members of the human species have souls, because souls are acquired at birth. And the answers to the questions flow naturally from there.

I am going to skip the next section for now since it has nothing directly to do with prenatal personhood. Section five presents the pro-choice advocate saying, “The fetus is a potential life.” I do not see this happening very often, and when it does, “life” is usually used as a synonym for “person.”

In any case, the slave monger’s response is to point out such a saying would be insensitive and belittling to a person who has suffered through a miscarriage. And for once, PFL is absolutely right. Any person saying something like this to someone who lost a wanted pregnancy should be chastised. One does not have to believe the prenate is a person to comfort and aid a person who lost a pregnancy they wanted.

As a side note, it is interesting that this is the only place in the entire article where Physicians of Life actually treats pregnant people as human beings. Apparently pregnant people are only persons if they want their pregnancies and would grieve their loss. Either way, the argument itself does not say anything about the personhood of the fetus.

The next argument is that dogs produce dogs, whales produce whales, and nobody has any problem recognizing this. Why do pro-choice advocates have problems recognizing the fetus is a human being since it was produced by human beings? I have no problems in saying that a dog zygote is a potential dog. We just do not have separate terms for dog zygotes as we do with acorns and oak trees. A dog fetus is a potential dog the same way a human fetus is a potential human being. But until personhood is actualized for the human, it is not a human being.

At this point, I am going to skip over the other arguments and address section twelve. I have already dealt with section nine in Part 1. I will come back to the skipped sections in later post(s).

Section twelve deals with the religious argument. Specifically, it is attempting to answer the pro-choice advocate arguing against imposing religious morality on people.

First, let’s get the outright lie out of the way. Susan B. Anthony did not call abortion “child-murder.” If she had an opinion on (the legality of) abortion, she kept it to herself. She was far more concerned that laws about abortion were being promulgated even though those most directly affected by those laws (i.e., women) had no vote on those laws.

Speaking of which, one thing really struck me when I first read Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. The opinion gave a historical overview of anti-abortion restrictions. Interestingly enough, there were few legal restrictions on abortion until the birth of feminism and anti-abortion measures became more restrictive the more traction arguments for women’s suffrage gained. I cannot definitively say whether this association is causal or casual, but I am convinced that it is not coincidental.ⁱⁱⁱ

PFL does make the point there are also atheist and agnostic slave mongers, but let’s face it, the anti-abortion movement is driven primarily by religious people. Atheist and agnostic slave mongers are so few in number there would hardly be an abortion debate at all without religious conservatives driving it.

Medical textbooks do not define whether something is presumptively wrong to kill, so PFL’s contention they need only consult one instead a church to see if abortion is violently killing a person is merely begging the question.

Now we come to the final question of this section, which directly ties to their main argument: “Would a religious argument favoring the legalization of abortion be treated the same way as a religious argument opposing it?” PFL acknowledges there are religions that allow pregnant people to have abortions. And I certainly do agree that the majority of laws are based on some moral code. But then it goes on to make the absurd argument that legalizing abortion forces immorality on them.

This is why I detailed my religious beliefs in an essay that is already overly long. It should be obviously, painfully clear that my religion supports abortion rights. So let’s say I became king of the world and proclaimed that henceforth and forever abortion is to remain legal. What am I forcing you to do? Nothing. What am I prohibiting you from doing? Nothing. Which of your rights am I violating? None.

So if I were to stake my case for legalized abortion on my religious beliefs, would it be treated differently than a religious case against it? I presume my argument would be treated more favorably, but not because it is a religious argument. It would be treated more favorably precisely because my religious beliefs about abortion forces nothing on no one. Even if my religious beliefs were dismissed by others as crazy, they would acknowledge my beliefs hurt no one.

In contrast, if PFL successfully imposes their religious views into law, it forces pregnant people to gestate, effectively making them state-sanctioned slaves to the prenate. In addition to violating the rights I outlined above, it does so regardless of the pregnant person’s religious beliefs about prenatal personhood. If a pregnant person’s religious beliefs require them to have an abortion in certain cases, PFL would outright violate that person’s freedom of religion. And that would require a damned good secular case if we are going to accept a mass violation of pregnant people’s rights, something PFL does not have.

In my next post, I am hoping to mop up the rest of PFL’s argument, but that will depend on long that essay is. I am hoping that, at most, I will need only two more posts to completely deal with the PFL arguments. Please continue to bear with me.

 [Updated 14 Dec 2020; 22 June 2021; 30 June 2021; 26 Oct 2021]

iI am, of course, aware of Scriptures or at least interpretations that may indicate ensoulment happens sometime before birth. It is not my intent here to do more than lay out a general outline of the scriptural case for ensoulment at birth. However, I will note that seemingly contrary passages, even if granted, do not require us to push ensoulment back to conception.

iiIt is not my intent to lay out all the fetal abnormalities that would probably prevent ensoulment given this reasoning. It should also be pointed out that even my stance that ensoulment occurs at birth can be problematic under this reasoning as well. For example, there are numerous birth defects where the infant would not survive for long after birth but for modern medicine. One could ask whether such infants were given souls only after modern medicine made it possible for them to survive. Scriptures like Leviticus 27:6 and Numbers 3:15 may reflect a certain amount of uncertainty given this problem.

iiiKatha Pollitt makes the connection between the anti-abortion stance and “women’s growing freedom and power.” However, she does not make a specific link between Women’s Suffrage and the criminalization of abortion in the late 19^th century. Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (pp. 32-33). Picador. Kindle Edition.