Objection #3: A Woman Has the Right to Do What She Wants With Her Own Body
First, this objection is prima facie
false. A woman cannot do whatever she wants with her own body, and
neither can a man. There are plenty of laws which restrict our freedom
with what we can do with our own bodies (e.g., drug laws). More to the
point, laws always restrict what we can do with our own bodies when what
we are doing brings harm to another individual. This is exactly what is
happening in the case of abortion, where the mother’s decision not only
brings harm to her unborn but brings the life of her unborn to an end.
Second,
this objection begs the question in assuming there is only one body
involved. But it should be obvious there are two: the mother’s and the
unborn. While the mother’s body is certainly involved, it is not the
mother’s body that is being aborted. After all, the woman survives the
abortion while the unborn doesn’t. This fact is again confirmed by
science. The unborn from conception has a totally unique, individual,
and separate genetic code. The unborn has a separate central nervous
system, may have a different blood type and, in the case of a boy, a
different gender. In other words, a pregnant woman does not have four
arms, four legs, two heads, or a penis when she is pregnant with a boy.
There are two bodies involved, not one.
Therefore,
the question is not what a woman can do with her own body but rather
what she should be permitted to do with the body and life of her unborn.
Objection #4: Abortion is Legal. Roe v. Wade is the Law
First, the fact that something is legal does not make it moral. What makes a civil law good is its being based on a good moral
law. Laws against murder, rape, and stealing are good laws because
these acts are genuinely morally wrong and should be legislated against.
In other words, the moral law should influence our civil law, but our
civil law does not necessarily correspond to the moral law.
Second,
there are plenty of issues which used to be legal but were also
immoral. A case in point is the practice of slavery. Slavery was morally
wrong even when it was legal. If a slaveholder were to argue, “Slavery
is legal. Dred Scott v. Sandford
is the law,” this would completely miss the point. Likewise, to say
abortion is moral because it is legal is also misguided. This commits
the is/ought fallacy. Just because abortion is allowed, it doesn’t follow that it ought to be.
Objection #5: Abortion is a Woman’s Issue. Men Should Stay Out of It
First, “arguments don't have penises, people do.”[6]
A pro-life woman could just as easily present the scientific data and
philosophical arguments in defense of the unborn. This is a classic
example of an ad-hominem fallacy. It attacks the person rather than the
argument and is sexist in nature. In short, “gender is absolutely
irrelevant to whether the pro-life position is correct.”[7]
Second, if men cannot speak on abortion then it would seem to follow that we should overturn Roe v. Wade since this court case was decided by nine male Supreme Court justices. In addition, if we are going to be consistent, all male lawyers who work for Planned Parenthood or the ACLU on abortion-related issues should be fired.[8]
Second, if men cannot speak on abortion then it would seem to follow that we should overturn Roe v. Wade since this court case was decided by nine male Supreme Court justices. In addition, if we are going to be consistent, all male lawyers who work for Planned Parenthood or the ACLU on abortion-related issues should be fired.[8]
Objection #6: You Can’t Legislate Morality
First,
every law legislates a moral point of view. Laws against murder,
stealing, and littering legislate the moral point of view that murder,
stealing, and littering are wrong and should be prohibited and penalized
by law. With regards to abortion, both pro-life and pro-choice
advocates are attempting to legislate their beliefs. Pro-life advocates
want to legislate their belief that abortion should not be permitted
because they argue that abortion takes the life of an innocent human
being without proper justification. Pro-abortion choice advocates want
to legislate their belief that abortion should be permitted because it
is fundamentally an issue of women’s rights. The question is, “Whose
belief is correct?” and “Whose belief should be legislated?” Regardless,
neither side is in a morally or legally neutral position.
Second,
because life begins at conception and the unborn deserve to be
protected, it is pro-abortion choice advocates who have legislated their
belief onto 50,000,000 unborn human beings since Roe v. Wade.
This legislation has ended in their death. I cannot think of a more
radical form of legislation. In reality, it is the pro-abortion choice
position which legislates their morality on the weakest and most
defenseless members of the human community.
Objection #7: There is No Consensus on the Abortion Issue
First,
an absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth. The fact
that people may not agree on an issue does not mean there is no truth to
be discovered, no right or wrong answer. Women's rights, slavery, child
labor, and a host of other issues have been argued, debated, and fought
over, by all walks of people from all levels of education and all
facets of religious belief or non-belief. But we wouldn't conclude from
this that these issues do not have morally correct answers. In fact,
most people in our country today would say that these particular issues
have been successfully resolved, though they were certainly
controversial in the past. By the same token, the issue of abortion is
an objective moral issue which has a correct moral answer.
Unfortunately, while we used to discriminate on the basis of gender and
race, we now discriminate on the basis of size, level of development,
environment, and degree of dependency.
Second,
if there is no consensus on the abortion issue, what follows from this?
It is hard to understand why the pro-abortion choice position should be
considered the default stance. This is far from clear, if not downright
counterintuitive. It seems the default position would be to err on the
side of life. Regardless, it is impossible for the government to take a
morally or legally neutral stance on this issue: either the government
will allow abortion or it will not. So simply saying “there is no
consensus on the abortion issue” is not very helpful in resolving
anything.
Objection #8: Don’t Like Abortion? Don’t Have One. Stop Dictating Your Belief
First,
the statement “stop dictating your belief” is self-refuting. If
dictating a belief is wrong, then one shouldn’t be dictating the belief
that it is “wrong to dictate belief.” In other words, the person making
this statement is doing the very thing they are telling you not to do: dictating their belief.
Second,
this position commits the subjectivist (or relativist) fallacy. The
subjectivist fallacy occurs when an objective truth claim is treated as
if it were a subjective preference. Exposing this fallacy is easy if we
simply change the moral issue under discussion: “Don’t like slavery?
Don’t own a slave! But stop dictating your belief on me” or “Don’t like
rape? Don’t rape anyone! But stop dictating your belief on me.” Of
course, this is ridiculous. Those who object to the immoral acts of
slavery and rape are arguing that slavery and rape are objectively
wrong. Therefore, it is completely inappropriate to respond as if they
are making subjective preference claims, i.e., “I don’t like slavery” or
“I don’t like rape.” Likewise, the pro-life position argues against
elective abortion because abortion takes the life of an innocent human
being without proper justification, and this is objectively wrong.
[6] Francis Beckwith, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice (New York, NY: Cambridge University, 2007), 127.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Klusendorf, The Case for Life, 183.
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