I am updating my list of “facts” and “arguments” offered by self-identified Pro-Choice advocates why an unborn baby is not living or human.
There are three additions today. First, the clump of undifferteniated cells could become anything. Second, the fetus feels no pain. Lastly, the fetus at this stage is indistinguishable from a fetal dog or any number of other mammals. Keep in mind, I am not making any arguments about the legality of abortion. I have one goal with posts related to abortion and that is to clarify facts. Life begins at conception, this is a biological fact. Abortion will destroy that life, also a biological fact. The value that one places on that life is subject to opinion but that makes it no less a life.
Undifferentiated cells: This is a non sequitur to my point. It matters not whether the cells have differentiated or not. The cells are alive and they are human. There is little chance they will develop into frogs or Buicks.
Fetal Pain: This is another non sequitur to my point. Not only do any number of people with neuropathic diseases not feel pain but pain is culturally relative so feeling or not feeling pain cannot make one human or not human. The larger problem with this argument is that it assumes that there is something that doesn’t feel pain in the mother’s womb. There can be little argument about it being alive as they recognize that the clump of cells will eventually feel pain, that is the cells are alive. That they are human cells is not a matter of rational debate.
Stage of Development: Because a fetus doesn’t develop voluntary brain activity until roughly the 24th week it is not human (until that point). However, this fact didn’t change their opinion that abortion at this stage should be legal. Nor was he moved by the fact that adults without voluntary brain activity are still human and alive. In fact, some have even delivered healthy human babies from this state.
In all three cases the person argues that the possession of certain qualities is required in order to be considered human. This position ignores the first point at hand; there needs to be something to possess the qualities they argue it currently lacks. Second, that something has to grown in order to possess them.
What they were actually arguing is not whether the clump of cells was alive or human but what value they place on it. People use such arguments to avoid confronting the reality at hand: Life begins at conception. That life passes through many phases but it is no less alive nor human.
