The Paradoxes of Abortion: Inconsistencies in the Pro-Life Position

Stephen Kershnar

The Paradoxes of Abortion

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

June 25, 2019

The pro-life position on abortion (abortion is morally wrong and should be illegal) contains a number of paradoxes that indicate that the pro-life side either doesn’t believe in or doesn’t understand its position.   

First, most pro-life advocates don’t support charging abortion-doctors and the women who hire them with murder. This is odd in that on the pro-life theory a fetus has the same status as a baby. If someone were to willfully, premeditatedly, and with malice aforethought kill a baby, he would be charged with murder. This is especially true if he did it for money. Hence, advocates should think that abortion-doctors and the women who hire them should be charged with murder, even if they don’t admit this publicly.

Second, most pro-life advocates don’t support shooting abortion-doctors. Yet killing aggressors to prevent them from slaughtering infants and young children intuitively seems permissible. In World War II, for example, were an American paratrooper to discover a Nazi worker about to dump poison (Zyklon B) into a room full of Jewish children, few doubt that he may shoot the worker if that were the only way to save the children. Even if it turned out the worker could have been prevented from dumping the poison without killing him, few would shed a tear for the worker. Perhaps pro-lifers think that their cause is better served by changing hearts and minds rather than violence. Still, on pain on inconsistency, they should think that such killings are just. Again, this is true even if they don’t want to admit it publicly.

Third, most people judge women who damaged their children in the womb through alcohol, drugs, or smoking far more harshly than they judge women who’ve had an abortion. Consider, for example, the millions of women who’ve used the morning-after pill and escape condemnation from their pro-life friends. It’s far worse to be killed than harmed and so women who’ve used the pill have done far worse to their fetuses than those who harmed their fetuses through drinking or drugs. For example, following a car accident, most people would want to live even if they didn’t think as well or weren’t as healthy as they were before the accident.   

Fourth, few pro-life people reassure themselves that abortion isn’t so tragic because aborted fetuses are going to enjoy everlasting life in heaven. This is odd in that, on their account, fetuses have the same status as babies and, on some lines of Christianity, babies who die go to heaven. A Catechism of the Catholic Church (1261) says that while we don’t know what happens to unbaptized infants, people may hope that they go to heaven. This likely includes aborted and miscarried fetuses. This is a reasonable interpretation of the Bible given that Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” [Mark 10:14].

Fifth, pro-lifers often think that people begin to exist at conception. Yet zygotes and embryos can’t think and so there is little reason to believe that they have souls. Having a soul is an essential feature of a person who can think and live millennia after his body dissolves away. Such an individual is no mere biological organism, but rather an immaterial thinking thing. It is odd, then, to think that people are organisms when thinking about abortion and immaterial souls when thinking about the afterlife.

What explains the seeming inconsistencies? Perhaps it is that pro-lifers don’t really believe that fetuses, especially early in pregnancy, are people. Instead, they might implicitly think that a fetus is a precursor to a person much as an acorn is a precursor to a tree. Alternatively, they might implicitly think that the fetus trespasses onto the women’s body and, thus, however distasteful, abortion is a woman’s right. The right is based on her owning her body rather than the state, fellow citizens, or fetus owning it. On this view, a woman may kill a fetus, even though it is innocent, just as she may kill a psychotic attacker, even though the attacker is innocent in the sense that a court would find him not guilty due to insanity.

Even the pro-life legal position is odd. The pro-life lawyers and law professors generally want Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) overturned and the matter kicked back to the states. This is strange given that the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses should be read to require that people be protected against maiming and murder by private parties, if anyone is protected against such violence. For example, it would not pass constitutional muster for individual states to get to decide whether private citizens may hire hit men to kill blacks, Jews, or teenagers. Yet this is precisely what pro-lifers argue for in claiming that the Supreme Court precedent on abortion should be merely reversed rather than replaced with an interpretation that protects fetuses in the same way that the Constitution would be read to protect blacks, Jews, and teenagers against private killings.

In the end, it is unclear to me what accounts for the inconsistencies. The issue is made worse by the fact that the pro-life movement’s home is in the Republican Party and, in other areas, it is far better at ensuring peace, freedom, and posterity than the loathsome Democratic Party.

Perhaps what accounts for the inconsistencies is the practical nature of the American people. In particular, Americans and their politicians are not especially interested in theory, but in practical solutions that allow people to ignore Washington and focus on themselves and their families. Perhaps, instead, abortion, like adultery and sex, are impolite topics of conversation and this prevents open discussion and, thereby, prevents people from noticing the inconsistencies. Neither explanation strikes me as correct, though, so I’m not sure what explains the inconsistencies.