Difficult Questions for Pro-Choice Persons

(The Augustine Club, Columbia University, NY, 1990)

Question 1.
I assume that you think that we human beings have human rights. Your position, in fact, is that
among the rights a human being has is the right to control one's reproduction. Well, at what point
do you think that a human being, with human rights, comes into existence? Is it at birth, or earlier?
I could ask the question more concretely of you yourself: you have human rightsdid
you acquire them only when you were born? Surely you must have had them earlier, since
premature babies are human beings with human rights, and the only difference between, say, a
baby who is born prematurely by two weeks, and one who is still in the womb two weeks before
term, is that the one is inside its mother, and the other is not; and the one that is inside, if taken
out, will live just as much as the one born prematurely.
Then is it at what is called "viability" that you acquired human rights, that is, when you
were capable of remaining alive, if you were taken out of your mother? Or do you think it
happened when your brain waves were first detectable (at about 6 weeks after conception)?
For the moment, I'll put aside the obvious objections to these criteria; for the question I
really wish to pursue is the following. Whatever answer you giveviability, brain waves,
whatever--Why don't you oppose abortion after this time? I don't mean, simply, "why don't you
refrain from seeking an abortion for yourself, or for a friend, after that time". I mean, rather, "why
do you do nothing to stop those human beings with human rights--as you have concede--from
being killed"? It is your view that, after viability, say, the fetus is a human being with human
rights, equal in dignity and importance to you and me. There are 150,000 abortions in this

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country each year after viability. This is, on your account, a massive violation of human rights.
Why do you do nothing at all to stop this? You are pro-choice, yes, but you are pro-choice, I
presume, only for abortions which are not, on your account, violations of human rights.
Do you do nothing because you do not wish to impose your views on others? But of
course then I could ask of you why you ever act morally, since that will always require that you
impose your views? When you act against racism, for example, you similarly impose your view on
others who disagree. Is it that you are uncertainyou merely believe abortion is wrong after
viability, but you have little confidence in your belief? I wonder whether you truly have little
confidence in itand, if you do, whether you are at all justified in having little confidence. And I
would note, furthermore, that this "lack of confidence" of yours, and thisshall we sayparalysis
that you suffer, in not doing anything about what, on your account, is a gross violation of human
rights, is itself a consequence of legalized abortion, of the abortion mentality, and constitutes an
argument against legal abortion--because legal abortion has clearly numbed your moral
sensibility, and that of others as well.
Butreturning to the line of argumentsuppose it is the case that you lack confidence in
your belief. I fail to see why that should hold you back, if the other person is not more certain.
And I don't think it is the case that people who seek abortions after viability, or the physicians
who do them, are more confident that what they are doing is right, than you are that they are
wrong. Or perhaps it isn't a matter of confidence at all, but you simply regard your view about
when a human being with human rights comes into existence as somehow something "purely
subjective". But then, I wonder: why isn't your view about born human beings having human
rights similarly "purely subjective"? If the view that rights begin to exist at a certain time is purely

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subjective, then the view that they continue to exist after that time must also be purely subjective.
But then it seems that you do not really believe that there are such things as human rights, and, in
particular, you cannot really believe that there is such a thing as a right to privacy or a right to an
abortionand your lack of confidence, and paralysis, in opposing those who would abort human
beings after viability, should, at least, be matched by a similar lack of confidence, and paralysis, in
opposing those who would prevent abortion before viability.
If you are to be consistent, your confidence in working for legal abortion before the time
you think a human being comes into existence, cannot be greater than your confidence in
working against legal abortion after the time you think a human being comes into existence--that
is, if your view that viability marks the transition from not having rights to having human rights,
is anything other than a mere rationalization.

Question 2.
Pro-choice people argue that the lack of consensus about when life begins implies that abortion
should be legal until birth. By why only until birth? Why not after birth--that is, why do we not
allow infanticide? My concern is: what keeps us from legalizing infanticide? Is it only because there
happens to be a consensus that infants are human beings with human rights? But what if that
consensus should change? And it is not naive to suppose it might change. There have been many
cultures throughout history which have condoned infanticide, just as many cultures have
condoned slavery and human sacrifice. There are philosophers who have argued that there are no
good reasons for favoring abortion but opposing infanticide. And reasoning like that used to

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support abortion has already been used in many cases to argue for infanticide of Downs
Syndrome children.
Well, suppose this way of thinking did become more widespread, and a sizable section of
our population began to think that it is unfortunate but necessary at times to kill newborn infants.
There would no longer, then, be a consensus. So would you concede that the lack of consensus on
infanticide implied that infants should not be protected from killing--that the parents should have
the right to decide, that it's "their decision", not anyone else's?
If you do concede this, then I would urge that it's not clear that you have any moral
principles at allsince it seems you are willing to give up your moral beliefs, if enough people
disagree with you. You would be, in effect, hostage to how others think. But if you wouldn't
concede thisif you deny that a lack of consensus that it is wrong to kill infants would cause you
to acquiesce in legalized infanticide--then why do you concede that a lack of consensus about
preborn children implies they should not be protected? To put the point another way: if you lived
in the United States in the 1950s, say, when abortion was considered as abominable as infanticide
is today, you presumably would have denied that the wrongness of abortion hinged upon the
consensus against it. So similarly you should deny today that legalized abortion follows from a
lack of consensus against it.

Question 3.
But in general, why does any position, rather than any other, follow from a lack of consensus?
Suppose someone were to argue as follows: "There is a lack of consensus about when human life
begins; therefore, abortion should be prohibited throughout pregnancy." Why is this argument

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any more, or less, reasonable than the argument that:"There is a lack of consensus about when
human life begins; therefore, abortion should be allowed throughout pregnancy?"
If the former argument is a non sequitur, then so is the latter. It might be thought that,
given a lack of consensus, the "easier" of two alternatives should be adopted, and it is easier on the
woman to allow abortion than to prohibit it. But this consideration begs the question, by
assuming that there is just one human beingthe mother alone and not the childwith respect
to whom we should judge the "ease" or "difficulty" of the two options. You might as well just argue
outright, without this talk about "lack of consensus", that abortion should be legal--because only
the interests of the woman need be considered. But if this is your view, then you very well cannot
turn to the pro-life person and insist that it is wrongheaded for him to press for the illegalization
of abortion, given a lack of consensus on the matterbecause, again, you favor its legalization,
given a lack of consensus, which is no more reasonable or unreasonable than favoring
illegalization, given a lack of consensus.

Question 4.
You hold that women should be free to choose what they think is right regarding abortion: if a
woman's conscience tells her that abortion is in her case permissible, then she should be free to
choose to have an abortion. This position has plausibility, because it seems to show respect for the
woman's conscience. But I wonder whether this is just an appearance. What do you think about
cases where the woman's conscience tells her that abortion is not a good thing--because she thinks
she is killing her babybut she wants an abortion anyway. Why should these abortions be allowed?

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You may object that these cases are rare, but in fact they are very common. Various polls
have repeatedly shown that about 50% of Americans think that abortion is tantamount to murder,
and this figure holds for women as for men; so we might expect that about half of the women
seeking an abortion believe it is tantamount to murder. If you are still not convinced, and think
that it would hardly be possible for a woman to seek an abortion on those terms, then you should
consider the ample testimonial evidence to the contrary. For example, consider these passages
taken from a book written by a pro-choice author (The Ambivalence of Abortion, by Linda Bird
Francke):
(1) "At first I decided to keep the baby. I had had a prior abortion, which I hadn't
told my husband about, which depressed me very much for months later....This
time I couldn't help thinking it was a human being, a living being. At first my
husband wanted to keep it, but as the weeks went by...he changed his mind. The
new baby would interfere with everything. We want to move to the West Coast,
for example. We were convinced that the abortion was the best thing rather than
the right thing. If you asked me how I felt about abortion I would say I was
against it. I feel very hypocritical."(pp. 140-141)
(2) "Women undergoing second-trimester abortions have cause to be disturbed.
In many hospitals, for example, the fetus is expelled (the medical jargon is
'slipped') and left lying on the bed until the afterbirth is also expelled. There is a
natural curiosity for the women to look at the fetus, a curiosity the nurses try to
squelch. 'We tried to avoid the women seeing them,' says Norma Eidelman, who
worked for a short time with second-trimester patients. 'They always wanted to

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know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It was better for the
women to think of the fetus as an 'it.'"(p. 53)
(3) "I really suffered from that. I was very much against abortion at the time. I
thought I was killing a living thing. And it didn't help much to overhear them
talking in the hospital when I had it, saying, 'Oh, it's a baby boy.'"(p. 120)
(4) "I come in tomorrow. I'm going to go through with it. I hope I feel better than
I do today. I love the baby. I love my husband. I just think it would be better for
him if I have the abortion. I'll get over it. I'm sure there'll be a lot of times when
I'll think about it, but we got so many problems now. So many. I know I can have
another baby someday. But it's this one I love now. I just love her so much .... "(p.
134)
(5) "When I see people having babies now, I envy them. I don't want to ever have
another abortion. It's a very frightening thing. The injection hurt a lot. But mostly
I thought about the baby when they were doing it. I thought, I'm killing another
human being, but then I'd remember that it wasn't even formed yet. I had two
sides going in my mind against each other."(p. 272)
In cases such as these, respect for the woman's conscience won't justify the abortion, but
just the opposite: we would show respect for her conscience by opposing the abortion, just as her
conscience does. And if we allow abortion in such cases, we allow people to do what they think is
tantamount murder, and clearly to have large numbers of citizens commit what they believe is
murder will destroy the moral fabric of our country. (This point holds whether abortion really is
tantamount to murder or not: what is important is that many people think it is.) So shouldn't

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even someone who was "pro-choice" agree that it would be preferable to try to screen out cases of
this sort, say, by asking a woman seeking an abortion to sign a statement saying that her
conscience tells her there is nothing wrong with the abortion?
Of course, this is not being done now. The counselors at abortion clinics don't screen out
these cases, since such their role is largely that of trying to quell any concerns a woman might
have about her abortion. Clinic counselors tend to view these doubts of conscience as a nuisance.
They think that the feelings of guilt are the problem--not the action which occasions the guilt. But
we might even argue, from the fact that about half of the women who seek abortion think it is
tantamount to murder, that abortion should be completely illegal. It hardly makes sense to keep
legal a practice which tempts people so violently to override their own consciences, to their own
and to society's detriment.

Question 5.
Pro-choice people claim that the current law about abortion in our country--or perhaps we
should say the absence of law--allows everyone to follow his or her own conscience: people who
are pro-choice can procure abortions, if they wish; and people who are pro-life are free not to
have an abortion, if they wish. After all, there are no compulsory abortions in this country. "If
you're against abortion," as the bumper sticker reads, "don't have one." But are pro-life people in
fact allowed to act in accordance with their convictions? Did Roe v. Wade merely open up a space
for a view that had no standing before--the view that abortion is in some circumstances permissible-or did it completely replace one view, the pro-life view, with some other view opposed to it--so that

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pro-life people could complain, with justice, that some alien and unjustified view has been imposed
upon them?
Suppose there were a society in which it was forbidden to come to the assistance of
children below the age of 7, when they were being attacked or were in danger. Suppose I lived in
such a society, and I saw a 6 year old child drowning, but I couldn't act to save him, since I was
prohibited by law from doing so, and I would have to spend years in jail and pay huge fines if I
disobeyed.
It would obviously be false to say that, in such a society, I was free to live in accordance
with my conviction that children are precious and have dignity. But similarly it is false to say that,
in our society, pro-life people are free to live in accordance with their conviction that unborn
children are precious and have dignity. The reason for this is that, if I believe that another human
being has dignity, then that belief implies that I help him and save him from harm. But people
who believe that unborn children are precious and have dignity are forbidden to act this way on
their behalf. What I wish to draw your attention to in this regard is a very important sort of
reasoning, which lies at the center of moralityI mean the process by which we reason from our
particular case to all similar cases, and conclude that all such cases should be treated in a similar
way.
For example, suppose I fall sick and spend a week in the hospital, and I notice how
thoughtless and inconsiderate some people are towards me. It is the most natural thing in the
world, and correct, to draw a general conclusion from this, and to decide that all sick persons
ought to be treated in a certain way. Again, suppose I am a parent, and I notice how important it
is that my child learn to read wellthis might lead directly to my taking a more active interest in

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my child's school, because I see that other children are exactly like my child, and it is equally
important that they, too, learn how to read. Finally, suppose I am a pregnant woman, or the
husband whose wife is pregnant, and I am pro-life, and I see the dignity and preciousness of my
child in the wombso that I would resist to the death anyone who threatened to harm that child.
By a process of reasoning like that in the other two cases I mentioned, I should conclude that any
child in utero is equal in dignity and preciousness to my own, and that I should work to prevent
the destruction of such children.
So the question I wish to pose to pro-choice people is the following, conditional question:
If you were pro-life, then wouldn't it be right for you to be concerned as well for other unborn
children, and not just for your own? Wouldn't this be consistent with everything else you know
about morality? (After all, it would be absurd to suggest that you were in favor of "the right to
choose" only for yourself, and not for people similarly situated, generally.) If you grant, then, that,
if you were pro-life, you might very well try to stop abortions, say, by sidewalk counseling, or
pickets, or even rescues, then you must admit that these activities are part of the pro-life view,
and, if you hold, furthermore, that both pro-life and pro-choice views should be allowed,
shouldn't you oppose any restrictions on these sorts of pro- life activities?

Question 6.
How should we regard a forced abortion of a pro-life woman's fetus? This happens, of course, in
China every day. It also happens occasionally in the United Statesthere have been several cases
reported of husbands or boyfriends who in effect force a woman to have an abortion, either by
coercing her to go to the clinic (these cases are perhaps not so rare), or by attacking her directly.

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For example, one jealous husband, after he found out that his wife was pregnant by another man,
tracked her down when she was in her 7th month, and violently reached up into her uterus and
caused a fatal miscarriage. Another man beat a pregnant woman on the belly with a baseball bat to
kill the unborn child. (These cases are grotesque, but what an abortionist does differs only in
manner, not in end.) Should such men be prosecuted for murder?
If the law concerning abortion should be designed so that "everyone can act in accordance
with one's own beliefs", then presumably just as the law lets some people procure an abortion,
because their beliefs allow it, so it should let the women in these cases, if they are pro-life, bring
charges of murder, because their beliefs require it. So our view ought to be that, if a man were to
force a pro- life woman to have an abortion, the man should be liable to prosecution for murder.
In fact, the California Supreme Court recently rule in just this way: it decided that an assault on a
pregnant woman that kills her fetus, even before viability, is murder. But if this is our view, then
we may ask: How can the question of what the man didwhether he committed a murder or not-depend upon how someone else besides the victim, the woman, happens to regard the action?
And how can the woman's mere assessment of the status of the fetuswhether she regards it as a
human being or not--change the fetus's status, from being something who can be a murder victim
(if the abortion is forced), to being a mere lump of tissue (if the abortion is voluntary)?
Or, if the woman's belief that what the man did was equivalent to murder is enough
reason to prosecute him for murder, then why isn't it the case that the woman who believes her
abortion is murder but goes ahead with it anywaythe cases of guilty conscience we discussed
before--why shouldn't such women similarly be liable to prosecution before the law? For what
could possibly be the difference between her husband or boyfriend killing the child, against her

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will, and an abortionist killing the child, against her conscience? But if you find these
consequences objectionable, and so you wish to say, instead, that a man who forces a pro-life
woman to have an abortion cannot be prosecuted for murder: then clearly your are maintaining
that the law should not allow the woman to "act on her own beliefs", since she believes that her
child was murdered, but she cannot prosecute for murder. What you are saying, then, is that the
woman's child can have no greater status than a piece of property, even if the woman, her
husband, and all her family are pro-life.

Question 7.
Suppose a man and woman have intercourse, she becomes pregnant, and the man, who is pro-life,
thinks of the fetus as a human being, but the woman gets an abortion. Why is the abortion not
tantamount to murder in this case? Why is it only the female parent's opinion which determines the
status of the child?
Both man and woman are parents, and the woman carries the child. Yet surely to be a
parent, a generator of the fetus, a procreator, is to have a closer relationship to the fetus than
merely to contain the child physically. And we can raise the question, again, of whether in fact
such a husband is allowed to live out his pro-life convictions in our society. It is not even clear
that the husband is "free not to have an abortion", as the bumper sticker alleges, if his wife wants
to have one. What if his wife is set on aborting every one of his children?
You might say, in response, that it's the husbands fault if she is, because he should have
been careful not to marry anyone who would do such a thing. But suppose his wife didn't have
those beliefs when they married, but later changed her mind. You might say, then, that he should

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simply divorce her, if he does not like what she is doing. But why is the burden only on him? Why
can't we say, similarly, to the wife, that her husband's opinion ought to have equal importance
with her own, so that if they can't both agree to procure an abortion, then she can't get one-- and
if she doesn't like that, then she should not have married him, or should get a divorce?
But suppose--to continue an earlier line of thoughtthat the reason the woman has sole
right to decide to have an abortion is that the status of the fetus somehow depends upon how she
chooses to regard it: thus, the fetus is not a child until the mother decides that it is, say, at some
point later in pregnancy. But then a consequence of this is that the man, through having
intercourse with the woman, does not conceive a child. Rather, he conceives only a fetus, and the
fetus at some later point becomes a child, only because of the woman's deciding that it is. But then
the man's role in intercourse is not a cause of a child. He brought into existence only a fetus, and
it was the woman's decision to "continue the pregnancy through term" that made it a child.
But if so, it is not clear why the man should have any responsibility for the child. How
could the woman bring a claim for paternity support against him? After all, he could rightly reply:
"You decided to regard the fetus as a child; so the child is your responsibility." In short, here is the
dilemma: It is often claimed that the right to an abortion is a part of the right to control one's own
reproductive life. But then it seems that the decision to abort should be made jointly, by both the
father and mother. If we say that the mother alone can decide to have an abortion, then we ought
equally to grant that the husband alone can decide that the pregnancy should end in abortionat
least he should be able to decide that he "aborts" the child, in the sense that he would have chosen
abortion (if the woman had agreed), and so he has no responsibility to care for the child.

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So it seems that either we grant the father an equal role in the abortion decision, or we
must conclude that fathers cannot be held responsible for their offspring. If total responsibility for
abortion rests with the mother, then total responsibility for birth should rest with her also. (This
question points to the connection between the practice of abortion and paternal irresponsibility.)

Question 8.
Suppose a woman who wanted an abortion were first to observe her unborn child through
ultrasound technology. In such images, the hands and feet of the child are typically discernible,
and even within the first trimester, it is common to see the unborn child sucking his or her
thumb. I ask the pro-choice person: Why aren't such images shown to woman, as part of informed
consent preceding abortion?
You might respond that the images are not relevant, but how do you know whether they
are relevant to her or not? I think, rather, your view is that such images are too relevant, that very
few women who saw them would choose to have an abortion. If this is your view, it is in fact
confirmed by experimental data: studies have shown that a kind of rudimentary mother-infant
bonding takes place when pregnant women are seen ultrasound pictures and listen to their
unborn child's heartbeat. And this is the reason why ultrasound facilities have two sets of
explanations, one for women who are seeking abortions, another for women who are carrying the
pregnancy to term.
Now, would you oppose a law requiring that a pregnant woman see ultrasound images of
her fetus before she gets an abortion? Or let's make the law weaker: it merely requires that she be
given the option of seeing those images. If you oppose such laws, then how are you pro-choice

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rather than pro-abortion? Again, is it because you think that many women would be swayed from
having an abortion? But then either you are imposing your views on them (because you have
decided in advance what sorts of considerations they should take to be important), or you are
pro-abortion rather than pro-choice (because you think that the most important thing is that the
women get abortions, not that they choose to get them on the proper ground).
And why isn't your position manipulative and deceitful? In general it is deceitful to
withhold information from someone, if you know that, if you released it, the other person would
act very differently. For example, if I am a physician and I know that a certain operation has some
chance of causing paralysis, and I know that my patient may very well not agree to have the
operation, if he knows this, and I don't tell him, then I have deceived and manipulated him. And
this seems to be how pro-choice people act, who are opposed to informed consent.

Question 9.
If you think abortion should be allowed, can you consistently maintain that there any human rights
at all? Human rights are presumably rights that belong to us in virtue of our being human--that is
why they are called "human" rights. They are prior to decision or convention, precisely because
they depend upon our nature. We have them simply because we are human beings, not because of
an acquired characteristic or accomplishment. But if the fetus has no rights, then there are no
human rights, because the fetus is clearly a human being, and if there were rights that followed
from simply being human, the fetus would have them. If there are no human rights, then of
course the so-called "right to privacy" or "right to an abortion" is also not a human right.

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So you cannot consistently deny the right to life of the fetus, and assert the right to
privacy of the mother. Talk of brute power, or domination, or "getting your way", if you wish, but
don't misuse the language of human rights, which you in practice reject. In fact we need to ask the
more fundamental question: What distinguishes a claim of expediency or self-interest from a
claim that one has a right? You claim that there is a right to an abortion, but why should anyone
believe this? Why aren't you just saying: "I want this, so you should give it to me?" (And it is a
curious fact that the idea that there is a right to an abortion seemed to arise at just the same time
as the sexual revolution. Before 1970, no one had ever asserted that there was a right to an
abortion. From the point of view of history, it might appear that this rights claim has more to do
with the people conceiving a child in circumstances in which a child would be unwanted--and
abortion happens to be an effective remedy. But this is far from establishing any "right".)
But what is a right? Exactly how many rights are there? Why is the right to an abortion
one of these rights? Can you give an argument for your view, or is it mere assertion? How
can there be a human right that only women have, but not men? Are there any other rights that
only one sex possesses? And if abortion is a "necessary evil", as it seems almost everybody grants,
and hence in some sense wrong, then--to raise a question that Lincoln asked Douglas about
slavery-- how can there be a right to do a wrong? Are there any other rights that we know of that
have this feature?
But suppose we say that the so-called "right to an abortion" is not a human right, prior to
convention or human decision. It is therefore a consequence of human law: we could even say
that the Supreme Court created this right, in 1973. But if that is the case, then we cannot argue
that abortion should remain legal because there is a right to an abortion. That would be an

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entirely empty argument, equivalent to saying that "abortion should be legal because abortion is
legal."

Question 10
Does the following seem to you a reasonable statement of the pro-choice view?:
If each person will only agree to mind his own business, and leave his neighbors
alone, there will be peace forever between us... I am now speaking of rights under
the constitution, and not of moral or religious rights...It is for women to decide ...
the moral and religious right of the abortion question for themselves within their
own limits.... I repeat that the principle is the right of each woman to decide this
abortion question for herself, to have an abortion or not, as she chooses, and it
does not become a pro-lifer, or anybody else, to tell the her she has no
conscience, that she is living in a state of iniquity... We have enough objects of
charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor, and our own
suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people's business.
I arrived at that quotation by taking one of Stephen Douglas's defenses of slavery, and substituting
"abortion" for "slavery"; "woman" for "state"; and "a pro-lifer" for "Mr. Lincoln."
I've done the same with the following response from Lincoln:
The doctrine of freedom of choice is right--absolutely and eternally right--but it
has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that
whether it has such just application depends upon whether a fetus is not or is a
human being. If it is not a human being, why in that case, she who is a human

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being may, as a matter of freedom of choice, do just as she pleases with it. But if
the fetus is a human being, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of freedom
of choice, to say that it too shall not have freedom of choice itself? ... If the fetus is
a human being, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created
equal;' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one human
being's aborting another.
Doesn't the similarity between your defense of abortion, and Douglas' defense of slavery, bother
you in any way? Does it raise in your mind any suspicions at all that you might just be on the
wrong side?

Question 11
There is another argument against abortion, analogous to an argument of Lincoln. Lincoln said,
famously, that "as I would not be a slave; so I would not be a master". He also remarked that,
although he had heard many people defend slavery as a good thing, he had never yet met a man
who wanted to become a slave himself. So we can ask: Does anyone wish that his mother had
chosen abortion for him? And, if not, then how can he consistently wish that any mother choose
abortion for anyone else?

Question 12
Developing the analogy with slavery, we might wonder how abortion is at all compatible with the
idea that all human beings are equal. After all, it is inconsistent with equality that one person have
his fundamental rights conferred upon him by someone else. Indeed, the phrase "conferring

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fundamental rights" has the appearance of an oxymoron. Consider how this worked in practice in
the antebellum United States: when a white man freed a black slave, the black man would be "free"
and enjoy "rights", yet even so, he would not, and he could not, be equal to the white man, for his
freedom was originally granted to him by the white man. The reason for this is that, when one
person grants rights to another, the former is a superior, the latter is an inferior, and they remain
so, in spite of their both having rights, and even if this granting of rights is legally irrevocable.
Similarly, as we saw, in our current practice of legal abortion, the unborn child has rights
only if they are granted by the mother. For if the mother wishes to have an abortion, then the
child has no rights, and its death is considered inconsequential; but if the mother wishes to
continue her pregnancy, then an attack on the child is considered unlawful and even murderous.
Hence the child--and presumably also the adult who grows from the child--has rights only
because they have been originally granted by the mother. But this, as we have seen, is
incompatible with the fundamental equality of all human beings.
As a consequence, even though it may not be consciously recognized or understood, it
must be practically impossible that people who are pro-choice regard the following generation as
equal in dignity and worth to them. And I would suggest that many of the evident problems of the
post-Roe v. Wade generations of children arise from this.

Question 13
Developing the analogy with slavery even more, we can ask: Why isn't legal abortion outright
discrimination? I think "discrimination" occurs in its clearest form when someone bases a decision
about another person's rights, privileges, or position, on some arbitrary and irrelevant feature of

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that other person. In its clearest form, perhaps, discrimination is practiced by one class of human
beings against another, and the class that practices it benefits from it. For instance, if white
persons, for their own advantage, treat blacks differently from whites, and deny them human
rights, privileges, or positions, because of their black skin color, they are practicing
discrimination.
But if we look at legal abortion objectively, doesn't it satisfy this description? By legal
abortion, one class of human beings--born human beings--deny human rights and the protection
of the law to another class of human beings--unborn children--because of a feature inessential to
our humanity, viz. whether one is living inside or outside one's mother's womb. The difference
between being unborn and being born seems just as accidental to a human being as the difference
between having white and having black skin--as does the criterion of viability, which is arbitrary,
external to the unborn child, and a function of the sort of medical technology available in the
mother's community. (Abortion is thought to be justifiable before viability, because up to that
time the fetus is completely dependent upon the mother. But why should someone's being
completely dependent upon another imply that he or she can be killed? Suppose a mother and her
newborn baby are stranded on a desert island. The baby is completely dependent upon her. How
does it follow that the mother has a right to kill the baby?)

Question 14
Suppose we bracket for the moment the idea that the unborn child is a human being with human
rights. Let's suppose that these things are uncertain, which in fact they are not. Even so: wouldn't
legal abortion be contrary to responsible principles of decision under uncertainty? If it were true that

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we "don't know when human life begins," it would follow, of course, that we don't know that the
fetus is not a living human being; that is, we don't know that abortion is not morally equivalent to
murder. But isn't that precisely what we ought to know, before allowing abortion?
An analogy: there is a discarded refrigerator box in my yard; and I wish to practice
shooting with a my new archery equipment. Before shooting arrows at the box, I am both morally
and legally obliged to make sure that there is no child playing in the box, and without this
certainty, I shouldn't proceed. The reason is that it is wrong even to do something which might be
tantamount to killing another. But pro-choice people admit that abortion might be tantamount to
killing another--because they admit that we don't know that life doesn't begin before abortions
take place. So then, until you reach greater clarity, shouldn't you agree that it is morally wrong,
should also be legally wrong?

Question 15
But it is important that we not overstate our degree of ignorance. We know that the thing in the
womb is alive: it has a heart beat from 2 weeks after conception; it has detectable brain waves
from 6 weeks--and abortions don't take place before 6 weeks. So the thing in the womb is, at least,
a living animal. And it might very well, from an early period, be capable of feeling pain--certainly
it moves and responds to stimuli, and movement and perception, it might be argued, must be
couple with some rudimentary ability to feel pleasure and pain. So then, I assume that you think
that people ought to be compassionate towards animals. Perhaps you are even a vegetarian and
opposed to killing animals on principle. How, then, can you consistently support legal abortion?

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In every abortion the fetus is cut into pieces, ripped or torn apart, or poisoned. No one
would want to treat a small kitten or puppy in that manner, nor does the law allow to do so, so why
should we allow anyone to treat immature human beings in that way? Imagine that, instead of
paying money for an abortion, the price was to take a newly born puppy, the size of a peanut, and
put it in a meat grinder. This an action quite comparable to what takes place in an abortion. How
many people would pay that price? Then is it only the hidden character of abortion that makes it
seem acceptable?

Question 16
Why is an abortion traumatic, but an appendectomy is not? If the fetus really is just a clump of
tissue, why should there be any fuss about abortion? Indeed, if an abortion were in reality just like
an appendectomy, how would it be possible for pro-life people to get others agitated about it? The
very fact that there is a dispute at all about abortion seems to show that the pro-life view is correct
and that abortions should not be performed.

Question 17
Why is it that doctors are allowed to do abortions? Even if abortions should be legal, shouldn't they
be performed by some other sort of agent? Just as we do not allow doctors to administer
injections for capital punishment, shouldn't we also bar doctors from doing abortions? The
reason for this is that doctors should not engage in actions that are contrary to the aims of the
practice of medicine, and these are to heal and relive pain. But someone who performs an

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abortion does neither of these things: he kills a living being; creates pain; and acts violently against
the natural process of pregnancy.

Question 18
Suppose a genetic marker for homosexuality is found, and a test is devised for this, and couples
begin to abort fetuses with this marker. Should this practice be made illegal? If so, then why not
sex-selection abortions also? And why not abortions for handicaps? But if some abortions are
wrong and should be illegal, this implies that abortion is not in every case to be allowed simply
because it was decided upon by the mother. But then aren't there also other reasons for abortion
that are clearly unacceptable?

Question 19
Suppose the Supreme Court had decided in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution states that abortion
must be illegal, that any law which allowed abortion was unconstitutional. What would your
reaction have been? But the constitutional basis for a decision of that sort would have been just as
strong as the constitutional basis for the actual holding of Roe., that any law which restricts or
prohibits abortion is unconstitutional.
Suppose that, in decided some case, the Supreme Court decides to dispense with
argument and legal reasoning and instead rolls dice to decide whether a laws is unconstitutional.
Would its decision in that case have had any authority? But what if the Court doesn't role dice but
also gives no constitutional reasons for its conclusion? In fact it gave no reasons in Roe v. Wade:

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the substance of the decision can be summed up in the bald assertions: the right to privacy
contains the right to an abortion; the state has no legitimate interest in fetal life until viability.
But why does such a decision have authority? How does such a decision count as an
instance of constitutional government that is, government in accordance with some previously
agreed upon rules for ordering public life? And why does the mere authority of the Supreme
Court have any weight? Pro-choice people are concerned that the views of a particular religion
not be imposed on the country as a whole, even through legislation. Why is this? Why does this
seem to us to be incompatible with our form of government?
The reason is that such legislation would be based solely on religious authority, and
therefore it would be arbitrary, to someone who was not a member of that religion, and we could
not reasonably expect him to consent to it. For example, if the Pope were to rule that Catholics
must stop eating meat on Fridays, and Catholics who were in the majority in a certain city passed
a law that meat could not be bought, sold, or consumed on Fridays, this law would be arbitrary, to
someone who did not accept Papal authority, and we could not reasonably expect such a person
to consent to it.
But why doesn't an arbitrary decision by the Supreme Court have the same character.
What is the difference, if the authority is religious or secular? The important thing is that, in
both cases, the decision is arbitrary. To this you might object that all Americans do and should
accept the authority of the Supreme Court to decide constitutional matters. But the proper reply
to this is that the Court must give reasons in the exercise of its authority, so that it is clear that the
its decisions are based in the constitution, and not in the opinions of members of the court.

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Certainly the constitution does not give the Supreme Court the authority to decide constitutional
matters apart from any recognizable appeal to the Constitution.]

Questions for pro-life people, and replies

Question 1
Don't your views on abortion depend upon your religious view? But then wouldn't the separation of
church and state require that you not try to make others live by your religion?

Reply to Question 1
Opposition to abortion need not be based on religious views. The most fundamental reason why
abortion is wrong is that it is contrary to the principle of the natural equality of all human beings.
This principle is not religious; in fact, it lies at the foundation of our form of government.
This point may be made clearer if we make the following distinctions. A belief may be
called religious for one of three reasons:
1. it is strongly or passionately held, e.g. we might say that someone believes "religiously"
that smoking is bad for one's health;
2. it has religious content , e.g. it concerns God or the supernatural realm;
3. it is accepted on the basis of a religious authority , e.g. Christians believe that God is a
Trinity of persons because the Bible and the Church teach this.

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Clearly the pro-life view is "religious" in the first sense for many people. But this is obviously a
metaphorical sense of the word "religious", and many political and moral views are "religious" in
this sense. It would be absurd to object to a view simply because it was passionately held.
The pro-life view is not essentially religious in the second sense. Of course it is possible to
state and defend the pro-life view using religious terms, so that it seems as though the view
necessarily has religious content, e.g. someone might argue that all of us are children of God, or
made in the image of God, or the property of God, or that life is a gift of God, so that as a
consequence abortion is very wrong. But the pro-life view can be more than adequately stated
using moral principles that are generally accepted and which even seem to be fundamental in a
free and democratic society. The pro-life view may instructively be compared with the civil rights
movement in this respect: many of the leaders of the civil rights movement were Christian
ministers who argued against segregation and discrimination on religious grounds. Nevertheless,
the reforms they were urging could be defended also on non-religious grounds. In general,
religious people understand justice religiously; non-religiously people understand it nonreligiously. But what counts as justice is the same for both.
It follows that the pro-life view is not religious in the third sense: to see that abortion is
wrong, it is sufficient to use ordinary moral and political reasoning; there is no need to appeal to
special sources of religious insight and revelation, such as the Bible. True enough, the Bible does
teach (through what it implies) that abortion is wrong; likewise it teaches that theft is wrong. And
there are undoubtedly some people who don't steal or seek abortions only because the Bible
teaches this. Yet this fact is irrelevant to the sort of question which must be considered in a debate
about public policy, viz. whether theft is unjust, whether abortion is unjust . Suppose we adopted

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this principle: if the Bible teaches that X is wrong, then we cannot outlaw X, for then we would be
imposing a religious view on society. It would follow, absurdly, that we couldn't outlaw murder,
theft, perjury, assault, and rape, since the Bible teaches that all of these are wrong. But what holds
in the case of these other injustices holds also in the case of abortion. The view that abortion is
unjust cannot be dismissed as "a religious view" simply because the Bible and Christian teaching
hold that abortion is wrong.

Question 2
But religions differ on abortion. Some religions actually would mandate that a woman have an
abortion in certain circumstances, e.g. some rabbis think that a woman is obliged to have an
abortion if her life is at stake. You would be denying religious freedom to people of those religions
if abortion were illegal. If pro-life legislation went into effect, wouldn't ministers and rabbis would
be sent to jail for their views on abortion?

Reply to Question 2
Even religious practices can be outlawed if they bring about serious harm to others. For example,
there have throughout history been many religions which have mandated human and especially
child-sacrifice: an Aztec priest was actually required to sacrifice a human being once a day. But
this practice would be illegal, and should be illegal in our country. Not all religious practices can
be tolerated: those that involve serious injustice must be made illegal.

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If abortion is taking the life of a human being, then it is a grave injustice, and those
religions (and in fact they are very few in number) which actually mandate abortion in some
circumstances would have to be limited by the law in that respect.
In any case it should be noted that there are dozens of priests and ministers who are in jail
right now because of their views on abortion. They believe that their religion requires them to act
in non-violent ways to hinder the practice of abortion. The law currently decides against them
and sentences them to jail. It seems that, unfortunately, disagreement by religious people over
abortion is deep and fundamental, so that however the law is decided, some sincere persons will
end up going to jail. But it is mere self-deception to think that current laws avoid this
consequence.

Question 3
Isn't it ludicrous to say that a newly fertilized egg is a person, equal in dignity and importance to
you and me?

Reply to Question 3
Note first of all that this is not a reasoned objection but rather something like an exclamation. No
doubt some people find this idea ludicrous; but others evidently do not. From these obvious facts
we cannot conclude either that the fertilized egg is a person or that it is not.
In any case, the pro-life position is more accurately expressed as the view that a fertilized
egg is a human being, and that that--namely, its sharing our nature--is what gives even a fertilized
egg a moral significance and indeed a certain human dignity. If by "person" you mean simply a

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"human being," then of course the fertilized egg is indeed a "person"--this is not ludicrous at all. If,
however, by "person" you mean an actually thinking and self-aware being, then of course a
fertilized egg is not a person. But then neither is a newborn baby a person in this sense. And it is
clear that our rights and dignity do not depend upon our being "persons" in that sense.
But that a "fertilized egg" is "one of us"--is a part of the human community--needs to be
approached from the first-person case. You yourself were once an unborn child, before that an
embryo, and before that a fertilized egg. If something had been done to damage that "fertilized
egg", then something would have been done to damage you. For example, an alteration bringing
about a birth defect would have brought about a birth defect in you.
Next approach the question from the point of view of a mother. Suppose you are a
mother looking upon a newborn baby. You reflect on how that baby was moments ago living
within your womb. You reflect on how you were concerned early on in pregnancy with what you
ate, since you were aware that most birth defects arise early on in development. Your thinking
that everything went well for the embryo is just your thinking about the baby before you.
In fact it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to come to regard even a very immature
human being, an embryo or "fertilized egg," as having dignity and great significance. Of course we
know that some people consider it ludicrous to regard a fertilized egg as a human being. But the
real question here is: Must it be ludicrous so to regard it? Is it possible for each of us to come to
regard a human embryo as part of the human community? Is this view of things available to all of
us? And I believe that, upon serious reflection, it is clear that this is possible for us, that this
viewpoint is available to us.

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Question 4
If a fertilized egg is a person, and killing a fertilized egg is outlawed, then some forms of birth
control will have to be outlawed-- the IUD and some forms of the pill--because these work by
killing the fertilized egg. Also, scientific research on human embryos would have to stop."

Reply to Question 4
The argument under consideration is simply this: suppose some method of birth control works by
somehow destroying the early embryo. Wouldn't this method have to be outlawed, if abortions are?
And how could this be right?
But why should we think that all forms of birth control have to be legal, whatever their
nature and however they work? Why should this be a fixed point in the debate? What's so
objectionable about ruling out some forms of "birth control," if they are in fact abortifacient? One
might just as well argue: "abortion is used by many women as a form of birth control; so if
abortions are illegal, then a form of birth-control will have to be made illegal, which can't be the
case."
Again, why should we think that all forms of research have to be legal? There are of
course tight safeguards regarding research on human subjects. What's absurd about extending
this kind of regulation even to experiments on immature human subjects? Note also that there are
very few experiments on human embryos which couldn't be carried out in some other and
essentially equivalent way without employing human embryos at all.

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Question 5
If the pro-lifers have their way, then won't we end up living in a totalitarian state, with Pregnancy
Police checking up on suspiciously missed periods, just as they did in Romania when abortion was
outlawed?

Reply to Question 5
For the most part, people already act as though the unborn child is a human being. Generally, if a
woman decides to "have her baby", she speaks of the child in her womb as "my baby"; she tries to
eat well; she saves the ultrasound picture of her child and shows it to friends; and so on. Indeed, it
is natural and even easy to regard the child in the womb as a member of the human community.
The one exception to this general practice is abortion, in which the unborn child is treated as a
non-entity and a mistake: the fact of its existence is denied, as though it could be taken back or
revoked.
Pro-lifers simply call attention to this self-deception, this inconsistency, and urge that
even unborn children who are unwanted and slated for destruction be regarded as having the
same intrinsic dignity and value as the unwanted child. Thus, it is not burdensome to regard the
unborn child as an equal human being; our society would to a large extent already have achieved
this simply by bringing an end to abortion. Pro-life legislation should be conceived of as the
generalization, to society as a whole, of a way of regarding the unborn that is already practiced by
those who are pro-life. And this way of life is not burdensome.
The objection that pro-life legislation would be totalitarian fails to take into account that
the pro-life movement does not aim merely to pass laws; rather, it is a movement of reform which

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aims to change the mores and culture of our society. In order to evaluate correctly the character of
pro-life laws, it is necessary to imagine them as adopted by a society in which the majority of
persons have freely adopted pro-life mores. For such a society, pro-life laws would reflect their
ideals of the human community and would not be totalitarian.
In any case, it should be noted, out of fairness, that any moral ideal whatsoever could
conceivably give rise either to reasonable and liberal legislation or to bizarre, totalitarian
legislation. It is not a fair objection against a movement based on an ideal, that its aims could be
contorted into a totalitarian cast. For example, concern for the environment is a praiseworthy
ideal. There are liberal laws that might reflect this concern, e.g. a mandatory recycling program.
Likewise there are laws of a totalitarian character which might be devised to further this ideal, e.g.
"litter police", who invade your house and search for non-recyclable containers; or "light bulb
police," who conduct examinations to be sure you never leave light bulbs burning unnecessarily.
Of course such laws are ludicrous, and it would be frivolous to object to the environmental
movement, on the ground that environmentalism must lead to these sorts of totalitarian laws.
Similarly, laws implementing "pregnancy police" are ludicrous, and it is frivolous and unfair to
object to the pro-life movement, on the ground that its ideals must lead to totalitarian laws.
I think we can all agree that totalitarianism is bad; pro-lifers hate totalitarianism as much
as anyone else.

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Question 6
Aren't pro-lifers inconsistent when they say that abortion is tantamount to murder, but then shrink
from advocating the prosecution and punishment of the millions of women who have gotten
abortions?

Reply to Question 6
This is not necessarily inconsistent. There are various ways in which the two views alluded to
might be held consistently:
1. Someone might think that no woman every freely and without coercion chooses to have
an abortion, just as some people maintain that suicide is never a freely chosen act. If this
is the case, the woman's responsibility for procuring the abortion is considerably
mitigated;
2. Someone might hold that a woman who gets an abortion does something seriously
wrong, and is responsible for it, but that the act itself carries with it its own penalty, since
she loses her child in the abortion. It might be thought that any further penalty is
unnecessary;
3. Someone might hold that, although many abortions merit punishment, still, the state's
decision of whether to punish or not should be made with an eye to the common good,
and the common good would not be served by punishing women who procure abortions.
Why? Because if any were punished then all would have to be; but it would be too harsh to
punish all--the cure would be as bad as the ailment. So none should be punished; rather, the
abortionist should be punished as being a sort of initiator of the abortion.

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Question 7
Isn't the pro-life view sectarian? It is a narrow, conservative view, that can only be attractive to
members of the religious right.

Reply to Question 7
Strictly, a viewpoint is conservative if it seeks to preserve the status quo . In this literal sense, it is
the "pro-choice" view, of course, that is conservative, and the pro-life view is, rather, progressive.
The "pro-choice" position wants to preserve business as usual, but the pro-life view aims at a farreaching reform of the ideals and policies of our country.
The term "conservative" could also mean a certain view of the nature and limits of
government--that less government is generally better and that people should be "left alone" as
much as possible. This view, in its extreme form, is often called "libertarianism", and when applied
to economic matters, it is strenuously resisted by those who call themselves "liberals." Yet,
curiously, the "pro-choice" view is conservative in this sense: it is essentially a libertarian view,
since it urges that pregnant women should just be left alone to do what they wish, free from any
government interference, regardless of the nature and character of the act of abortion.
Once again, a view may be called "liberal" rather than "conservative" if it is rooted in
principles and ideals typical of the liberal political tradition. That tradition begins with late
medieval speculation about contract theory and is articulated in modern times by J. Locke and
then (though more controversially) J.S. Mill. Liberalism in this sense is egalitarian and benevolent
. Its central principle is the natural equality of all human beings, and it is marked by the expansion

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(rather than restriction) of the scope of the moral community. Without doubt, the pro-life view is
"liberal" in this sense, and the "pro-choice" view is illiberal. The pro-life view is grounded on the
idea that it is the humanity of the unborn child which makes him or her the equal of anyone else
in society, i.e. it forcefully asserts the natural equality of all human beings. Furthermore, the prolife view aims to extend the scope of moral concern to children before they are born, whereas the
"pro-choice" view is caught up with drawing lines that exclude some human beings from moral
consideration.

Question 8
Well, then, aren't pro-life people inconsistent, and not really pro-life, because although they oppose
abortion, they don't oppose capital punishment or the killing of animals?

Reply to Question 8
It is true that superficially, executing a criminal, slaughtering an animal, and performing an
abortion seem to be of a piece. Each action is an act of destruction; each is an act of harm; each
involves killing a living thing. The question of consistency would therefore seem to be equally
pressing for someone who opposes capital punishment, or who opposes killing animals, but who
is not similarly opposed to abortion.
If it is wrong to kill a guilty murderer, isn't it wrong to kill an innocent and vulnerable
developing human being? If the murderer should be given another chance, shouldn't the unborn
child? If the murderer's life is worth living and not hopeless, isn't the unborn child's also, no
matter how desperate or difficult his or her circumstances may appear? Likewise, if it is wrong to

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kill an animal, isn't it wrong to kill the fetus, which is certainly an animal? If convenience,
comfort, or even serious self interest do not justify slaughtering an animal, how can they ever
justify an abortion? Clearly it is inconsistent to be opposed to capital punishment or animal
killing, and yet to favor the "right to choose."
But a pro-lifer who favors capital punishment, does not recognize animal rights, and
opposes abortion is not in the same way inconsistent. For this combination of views follows
consistently from the adoption of the principle that "it is always wrong to take the life of an
innocent human being." Because it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, abortion
is wrong, since abortion involves the destruction of an innocent human being. Because a criminal
convicted of a capital crime is not innocent, it is not always wrong to take his or her life through
capital punishment. Because an animal is not a human being, it is not always wrong to take the
life of an animal. This is a perfectly consistent set of views, which all can be accounted for given
the stated principle.
Why would it be wrong to kill human beings but not animals? The reason has to do with
equality: a killing is not an act of equality -- the killer is superior, the killed is inferior, because the
life of the killed is controlled by and indeed terminated by the killer. Thus killing is incompatible
with human equality and therefore unjust. Human beings are in fact equal; killing is incompatible
with this equality. But human beings and animals are not equal. Although human beings and
animals are alike in sentience, i.e. they can both feel pleasure and pain, human beings are superior
in that they have superior powers of knowledge and desire, in particular, they have the ability to
reason and the ability to aim at the good of another. So it is not necessary for human beings to
treat animals as equals; in fact, it is wrong for them to do so, since they are not equals.

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The distinction between human beings and animals is important for our purposes
because it makes it clear that human beings are set apart by their capacities and potential. A
human being is a thing which has the capacity to think, which has the capacity to aim at the
complete good of another. Our value as human beings lies in our potential, not in our
achievements. And this is why it is appropriate to think of the unborn child as having value and in
fact as being the equal of any human being. For human equality is an equality in capability of
reasoning, and the unborn child has this capability. True enough, this capability is not at all
realized--but then, neither is it realized in the case of a newborn baby. A newborn baby has no
distinctive human abilities which the unborn child does not have.

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