Arguments for the Pre-Born

If you’ve never seen a 4D ultrasound, it’s truly amazing. There are galleries of these images all over the Web. Most of these images are taken in the second trimester of development. The whole “is it a baby or not” argument seems pretty straight-forward if you look at things logically. What follows is hypothetical dialog between a pro-life and pro-choice person on whether a pre-born child is human.

Unborn vs. Newborn: Which is Human?

After some preliminary discussions…

Pro-Life: “Do you think that newborns are persons?”

Pro-Choice: “Yes, of course. Everyone does.”

Pro-Life: “What are the differences between fetuses and newborns?”

Pro-Choice: “There are many, important differences.”

Pro-Life: “If we look at those differences to see if they are morally relevant then we can answer the question if it’s morally permissible to kill fetuses and not kill newborns.”

Pro-Choice: “Sounds reasonable.”

Pro-Life: “As it turns out, unborns differ from the newborns in just four ways which I pose are not relevant to its status as a human being. Those four ways are Size, Level of Development, Environment, and Degree of Dependency. The acronym SLED is a helpful reminder of those differences.”

• Size: “The unborn are smaller than the newly born. But does size have a correlation to human rights? Men are generally larger than women, does that mean they deserve more rights? Is Shaquel O’Neal more of a person than Hillary Clinton simply because he is larger? Clearly size is not an criteria for determining whether something is a person.”
• Level of development: “True, the unborn are less developed than newborns, but this too is morally irrelevant when it comes to assessing humanhood. A newborn is less developed than a toddler. A toddler is less developed than an adolescent. An adolescent is less developed than an adult. But all are considered equally human.”

  Is a child of four, for example, less of a person because she has not yet developed her sexual organs? Is a retarded child whose brain function is less than his classmate still not equally human? These absurd conclusions follow from defining persons based on what they can do rather than what they are.

  If you follow that line of thinking, we’re creating newer robots that can behave like people. Are they considered persons? If personhood is only a developing, gradual thing, then we are never fully human because we continue to grow intellectually and emotionally. As Albert Schweitzer said at age 70, ‘I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.’

  It follows, then, that the ability to perform human functions is not a necessary condition for human personhood. People who are unconscious do not have the present capacity to perform personal acts. We don’t kill them because of it. Nor should we kill the unborn.

• Environment: “True, the unborn is located in a different place, but how does a change in location suddenly change a non-human entity into a human one? Did you stop being human when you walked from your house to the car? From the kitchen to the den? Clearly, where one is has no bearing on who one is.”

  A child in the incubator of her mother’s womb is no less a child than the one being sustained by neonatal technology. I know, for example, of a baby girl named Rachel who was born at 24 weeks gestation. At the time of her birth, she weighed less than a pound and could fit into the palm of your hand. The hospital staff worked heroically to save her life and now she is a healthy toddler.

  But let’s assume that instead of saving baby Rachel’s life at 24 weeks, the doctor came into her room and killed her while she was resting in her father’s hand. We would consider that an outrage, wouldn’t we? But do you know that the same baby can be killed through legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy simply because she is located six inches away in her mother’s womb?

  Ladies and gentlemen, you do not stop being human simply because you have a different address.

• Degree of dependency: “If viability is what makes one human, then all those dependent on kidney machines, heart pace-makers, and insulin would have to be declared non-persons. There is no ethical difference between an unborn child who is plugged into and dependent upon its mother and a kidney patient who is plugged into and dependent upon a kidney machine.”

  Siamese twins do not forfeit their right to live simply because they depend on each others’ circulatory systems.

  We can take this a step further. Imagine that you are stranded in the woods one freezing night in January, but you have plenty of warm clothing. While searching for help, you encounter a lost toddler wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

  Scantily dressed, he will freeze to death within the hour if no one helps him. Realizing this child depends totally on you for his survival, you promptly excuse yourself from having any moral obligation to him. In fact, you go one step further. You feed him to the wolves because, after all, he cannot survive without you. Obviously, you wouldn’t do that. Neither would any abortion advocate I know.

  In fact, the most strident defender of abortion would do exactly as you or I would do in that situation: She would pick the child up and wrap him inside her own jacket, using her own body to sustain him. She would remain with him all night if need be, despite inconvenience or hardship until he was delivered safely to his parents. She would protect the child precisely because he depends solely on her for survival. It would not matter that he was an unwanted intruder or an uninvited guest.

  And yet when it comes to the woman’s own unborn offspring, the moral logic of abortion advocates is that she has no responsibility to the child precisely because it depends on her for protection. In other words, he can be legally killed because of his need. This is absurd.

Pro-Life: “We can see, then, that the unborn child differs from a newborn child in only four ways—size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency—and none of those differences are good reasons for disqualifying it as fully human.”

Pro-Choice: “You know, I’ve been listening to you pro-lifers for 30 years. I’ve had people shove rosary beads at me, tell me I was going to burn in hell, and even had evangelicals praying for my soul. But this is the first time I have ever heard one of you right-to-lifers explain why you believe what you believe. I guess I will have to give it some thought.”