The morality of abortion is an incredibly tough nut for me to crack. Much of the discussion typically involves things like the nature of life, what it means to be a human being and when it should be permissible to take a human life. Those are all complicated things to be sure and I shall try and illuminate each point to lay out why I believe abortion to be by and large an immoral choice.
To my way of thinking life is a sacred thing. Everything that has life on this planet ultimately comes from God. He created the universe and all of its parts. As such, his fingerprints are on everything, living and non-living. When he was done with the work of creation he gave humanity dominion over it and charged us with taking good care of it. That charge carries with it a great deal of responsibility. Now of course as limited creatures we can’t control everything, but where we can we should exercise great care with the resources available to us. I think that’s especially true where living things are concerned, since as yet we have only a very limited ability to return life when it has been taken. That’s true whether you believe in a higher power or not.
A huge part of this discussion needs to be about when a person becomes a person. What you usually hear from my “side”, the religious camp, is that personhood starts at conception. On the other hand, the pro-choice side often refers to an unborn baby simply as a fetus. While of course that’s an accurate word for what it is, it seems to me to be an effort to control the language. Of course the pro-life camp does that too (I believe the current term is pre-born) and I don’t think that either approach is beneficial to the discussion. What I do know is that science is consistently pushing back the date at which a viable birth can occur. Currently the earliest point at which a baby is considered viable is twenty-three to twenty-four weeks. The jury’s out on whether or not it feels pain. We can’t be entirely certain what (if anything) is going on in the mind of that child. But to look at it and decide that it doesn’t have a right to live is, one would hope, difficult for everyone involved. When I see pictures of a baby at that stage I see a human baby, not a fetus. I won’t argue that a blastocyst should necessarily have the same rights that I believe a baby at say twenty weeks should have, but if an abortion were to be considered after the first trimester it would raise red flags for me.
And as human beings, I believe that we are the pinnacle of created life. I suppose that sounds more than a little arrogant. After all, we occupy only a very small part of the universe and there may well be thousands of other creatures out there far superior to man. But it’s hard for me to make assumptions based on things that may of may not exist. According to my faith, something that informs everything I do, the idea of man as the ultimate creature is central. We are told that we are created in the image and likeness of God. I don’t think that this particular debate should get sidetracked on to whether or not that means that God looks like the stereotypical old man with a beard, but to put it succinctly I don’t believe that that is what it means. What that means to me is that we are the most like God of any other creature. That lends a great deal of value to all human lives, a value that I personally believe to be equal across the board. No one human is more intrinsically valuable than any other. Of course one of the wars that man has fought throughout history is that very one. Some men see themselves as superior to others. Slave trade is based on that idea. My ancestors didn’t believe that Africans were actually men. For me it’s not all that big a leap to the pro-choice lobby which seems to be pushing the idea that the fetus isn’t really human. Therefore what you’re aborting has no value, or at least less value than the mother. I have a big problem with that.
So for the most part I believe that abortion is immoral because what you’re doing is taking the life of a fellow human being. One who has no ability to defend themselves and who has no say in the matter. This is a person, created in the image and likeness of God; a person who is filled with potential, good and bad, and who should have the opportunity to live that potential out. As true as that is though, I also believe that there are times when it is morally acceptable to take the life of another. Such a choice should always be difficult, though at such times one rarely has the luxury to sit and contemplate. The seemingly obvious instances would be when the mother’s life is in jeopardy, when the baby is extremely ill, and in cases of rape or incest. The more I think about the last two, the less moral those decisions seem to me and I hope to put “feet” on that as this progresses.