The Personhood of the Unborn

One

Trying to find a difference

We’ve been meditating on the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, and that brings us to the scourge of abortion that so many leaders and states are literally hell-bent on protecting and promoting. 

Now throughout human history, every time one group of people has wanted to violate another group of people, they justify it by trying to find some way – however far-fetched – they can claim their victims are inferior to themselves – that their victims are sub-human, not human persons. 

Racism in the nineteenth century had these absurd attempts to show that the skulls of African Americans, and even the Irish, were somehow different, less evolved, than the rest of the population. Nazis, of course, used all kinds of bogus sophisticated-sounding arguments to convince people that the Aryan race was superior, and the Jewish and Slavic race was inferior.

But of course, there was no foundation to any of it. The Irish and the Africans and the Jews and the Polish people – and all the other races – were just human. And when you have humans, you have persons that you are morally bound to respect.

Now, of course, the people who want to continue making war on the unborn keep trying to find some key moral difference between babies in the womb and everybody else. They’re looking for something different about babies that will make it legitimate to slaughter them.

But there is no such difference. Because everyone knows those kids in the womb are living human persons with a complete and unique genetic identity. 

And that means they are persons who deserve our respect and love.

Two

Just like you in basic needs/physically

Pro-abortionists will constantly pretend there’s something different about the unborn. They keep trying to find some way to justify treating the child in the womb as less than a person. But it won’t work.

For instance, they’ll say, “You know, the fetus is just a blob of tissue.” 

The proper response to that is, “So are you! So is everyone! We’re all made up of a large number of cells – but those cells are organized into a living thing – and that’s certainly true of the fetus. If you are a blob of tissue organized as a human being, so is the unborn child.”

Or they’ll say, “But the baby can’t survive on its own! It’s a parasite!”

Listen, there aren’t many of us who can survive on our own. Except for a few hard-core survivalists, most of us depend on other people for our nutrition and shelter.

If someone says that to you, that the unborn fetus can’t survive on its, you should respond to that person, “How long would you survive on your own, without the help of others, if the power went out in your city and the water department could pump water and no trucks delivered food to your store? You’d survive about 4-5 days without water. So, then leave the kid alone.”

Maybe they’ll say, “The fetus isn’t even conscious, so how can it be a person?”

Sure, but you’re not conscious when you fall asleep every night. Does that give someone the right to kill you? 

No, it won’t work. Kids in the womb are the same kind of thing as you are. They’re just a little smaller. And we don’t want to go around judging people’s value by their size. 

Three

Extenuating circumstances

It also won’t work to justify abortion by saying that the circumstances surrounding the child’s birth and conception aren’t ideal.

Maybe the pregnancy is the result of an outrage committed against the woman. That’s terrible – but you can’t kill one person to make up for the crime of another person.

Maybe the child is being born into a difficult situation. But we don’t want to say that living in a difficult situation makes life not worth living.

Otherwise, we’d have to say every hero doesn’t live a meaningful life – since what makes someone a hero is that they have to deal with difficult situations. And, actually, heroes are the paragon of living meaningful lives.

Maybe the pregnancy is going to be very medically complicated for the mother. But you can’t kill an innocent person just to make things safer for someone else.

The circumstances surrounding a pregnancy may not be ideal. But actually, life is very rarely ideal. And we don’t run from life when it’s difficult – we face it, and we try to be grateful for it, as the gift it is.

If we do that for ourselves – and we should – how can we not do that for our children?

Four

If there’s a pregnancy, then new life is already in the world.

One of the stupidest things to say to justify an abortion is, “Sometimes, it’s just better not to bring a new life into the world.”

Listen, if there’s a pregnancy, the new life is already in the world. Because the mother, and her womb, and the baby inside her womb, are in the world. A mother’s womb isn’t some portal to another dimension – the baby’s already here.

The question isn’t, “Are you going to bring new life into the world?” If you’re pregnant, you already have. Now the question is, “Are you, and the people around you, going to celebrate this new life that has arrived already, and that we’ll get to meet soon?”

And for all of us, the first thing we hear when we find out a woman is pregnant, regardless of circumstances, is, “Congratulations.” 

Because new life – even in non-ideal circumstances – is always a gift to be celebrated.

Five

How bad these arguments are

The pro-abortion arguments are so hideously bad, that often people won’t even resort to them. Instead, they’ll say something like, “Listen, don’t tell me what to do! It’s my choice!”

But of course, any thief, killer, or drug addict could say the same thing.

But the point is that usually, arguing isn’t going to stop the pro-abortionists – because abortion is so obviously evil, that most proponents of abortion won’t even rise to the level of argument, because they know it’s a losing argument.

And that means we have to pray and love and be generous – and also never stop reminding the world that children are beautiful, that a life with kids to love and serve and sacrifice for is a rich life, that we’re there to help.

And it also means we have to keep working politically so that we can reduce the temptation to make an irrevocable mistake. 

We have to keep working for laws that make it harder to wage this war on our children and our future.