This past weekend former-educational-TV-star-turned-science-advocate Bill Nye posted a video about abortion on Big Think. Nye attempts to use science to resolve the debate about abortion and arrives at the following conclusion: “When it comes to women’s rights with respect to their reproduction, I think you should leave it to women.”

The video is a perfect example of Maslow’s Hammer, or the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In this case, the hammer is science and the nail is anything people disagree about. While science can tell us a lot about the world, it can't answer all of our questions.

For example, science gives us facts about the way the world functions (or what is), but only philosophy and/or religion tell us how we should live (or what we ought to be). This includes telling us whether it is right or wrong to kill unborn humans (or any human for that matter).

Refuting Nye's Main Argument

Unfortunately, not only does Nye’s video contain terrible philosophy, it doesn’t even get the science right. Let’s break it down:

"Many, many, many, many more hundreds of eggs are fertilized than become humans. Eggs get fertilized, and by that I mean sperm get accepted by ova a lot. But that’s not all you need. You have to attach to the uterine wall, the inside of a womb, a woman’s womb."

Yes, human beings in the embryonic stage of life receive nutrients from their mothers' uterus. A human embryo cannot develop into an adult without implanting in the uterus just as a human infant cannot develop into an adult without attaching to his mother's breast or some suitable alternative.

"But if you’re going to hold that as a standard, that is to say if you’re going to say when an egg is fertilized it’s therefore has the same rights as an individual, then whom are you going to sue? Whom are you going to imprison? Every woman who’s had a fertilized egg pass through her? Every guy who’s sperm has fertilized an egg and then it didn’t become a human? Have all these people failed you?"

Does Nye believe that newborns are persons? If so, then does he think we should imprison mothers and fathers whose children die of natural causes like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)? If having a high mortality rate means one is not a person, then born children were not persons throughout much of human history. Historically, (as well as in some parts of the world today) the child mortality rate was between 33% and 50%. That means one-third to one-half of all children died before they reached the age of five.

If we accept that born children sometimes die from causes beyond their parent's control, and that this tragic fact does not nullify their right-to-life, then the fact that unborn children also die from causes beyond their parent's control does not nullify their right-to-life either.

Plus, it may not be the case that large numbers of human organisms are miscarried. Instead, what might be happening is defective human tissue that could never develop into a fully mature human being is lost. According to embryologists Keith Moore and T.V. N. Persaud, “The early loss of embryos appears to represent a disposal of abnormal conceptuses that could not have developed normally.”¹

Answering Ad Hominems and Other Bad Arguments

"It’s just a reflection of a deep scientific lack of understanding and you literally or apparently literally don’t know what you’re talking about. And so when it comes to women’s rights with respect to their reproduction, I think you should leave it to women."

Bill, if you want to see someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, look in a mirror. If you want to see the scientific evidence that a human organism begins to exist at conception, watch this video.

"I’m not the first guy to observe this: You have a lot of men of European descent passing these extraordinary laws based on ignorance. Sorry you guys. I know it was written or your interpretation of a book written 5,000 years ago, 50 centuries ago, makes you think that when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse they always have a baby. That’s wrong and so to pass laws based on that belief is inconsistent with nature."

What does being a male of European descent have to do with abortion? This seems pretty racist and sexist to me. Imagine if I said in response to another hot-button issue, “You have a lot of people of African descent protesting police conduct and trying to pass laws that are based on ignorance.”

Also, it was seven white men of European descent that struck down all legal protection for the unborn in Roe v Wade. Now that was an extraordinary law based on ignorance, but their positions are okay because apparently men are only allowed to have an opinion on abortion if they’re pro-choice!

Second, both Christians and non-Christians have put forward powerful, secular arguments against abortion that have nothing to do with the Bible. Read Christopher Kaczor, Patrick Lee, Scott Klusendorf, Don Marquis, Stephen Schwarz, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen, and Frank Beckwith just to name a few.

Third, Christians do not believe that, “when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse they always have a baby.” Sometimes the sperm and egg never meet and so no new life is created. Sometimes they meet but what is created is just randomly generating tissue and not a human organism (e.g. a complete molar pregnancy). But sometimes the sperm and egg recombine to form something that is neither sperm nor egg. It is instead, as the eminent embryologists Fabiola Müller and Ronan O’Rahilly describe, “a new, genetically distinct human organism.”²

Pro-life advocates simply believe that all human organisms (i.e. human beings) ought to be treated equally. They should not be killed just because they are unwanted by older, bigger, more powerful human beings.

On "Telling People What To Do"

"I mean it’s hard not to get frustrated with this everybody. And I know nobody likes abortion, okay. But you can’t tell somebody what to do. I mean she has rights over this, especially if she doesn’t like the guy that got her pregnant. She doesn’t want anything to do with your genes; get over it, especially if she were raped and all this."

Why is it that “nobody” likes abortion? If the unborn are not human beings then abortion would be as innocuous as a wisdom tooth extraction. Instead, society's ambivalence towards abortion is evidence that abortion destroys a living human, organism.

After all, how could two human beings procreate a non-human offspring that only becomes human after birth? The answer is "they can’t.” Therefore, the human organism they procreate (i.e. the baby) should have the same right to life as his born brothers and sisters. All children have the right to loving support from their mother and father even if one of these people "doesn't want anything to do" with the genes of the other. At minimum, children have the right not be killed just because one parent despises the other.

In response to Nye’s assertion that “you can’t tell somebody what to do” I say bullocks. Nye says in another video that fracking, or drilling for natural resources with high pressure water, “can’t be unregulated.” So, it’s okay to tell businesses not to pollute the earth but it's not okay to tell parents not to kill their children. What about "My corporation, my choice!"

Finally, what is the “this” that Nye says women have rights over? I’m sure Nye means “the pregnancy” but that is just a roundabout way of saying the mother has unlimited rights over her unborn child. Civilized people long ago rebuked the idea that children are chattel property of their parents that can be disposed of at a whim. Perhaps Mr. Nye would like to join the rest of us in the 21^st century and stop peddling crude, Stone-Age-like tyranny over helpless human beings.

Are There More Important Issues?

"So it’s very frustrating on the outside, on the other side. We have so many more important things to be dealing with. We have so many more problems to squander resources on than this argument based on bad science, on just lack of understanding."

It’s true abortion isn’t the only issue today any more than slavery was the only issue that affected people in America in the 1850's. But slavery was the most important issue because the lives of human beings matter more than "economic choice" or "state autonomy."

Likewise, if the unborn are human beings then over a million of them are killed in our country ever year and many of their parents suffer physical and emotional trauma related to this killing for decades after the fact. Unless a pro-choice advocate can show the unborn are not human beings (which Nye has failed to do), then he has no grounds to say abortion is not an issue worth pursuing in public debate.

"It’s very frustrating. You wouldn’t know how big a human egg was if it weren’t for microscopes, if it weren’t for scientists, medical researchers looking diligently. You wouldn’t know the process. You wouldn’t have that shot, the famous shot or shots where the sperm are bumping up against the egg. You wouldn’t have that without science. So then to claim that you know the next step when you obviously don’t is trouble."

This argument is akin to saying, “Look, without scientists you wouldn’t even have medicine that treats diseases like syphilis, so don’t tell us it’s wrong to deceive and kill African-Americans in order to study this disease! You don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

Mr. Nye, you are the one who is completely ignorant of the developmental growth of a human being. By defintion a human embryo is a human being in the first seven weeks of life and a human fetus is a human being in age anywhere from eight weeks until birth. Saying an unborn human being is not human because he or she is an embryo or fetus is as ridiculous as saying a fifteen-year-old is not human because he is a teenager.

"Let me do that again. Let me just pull back. At some point we have to respect the facts. Recommending or insisting on abstinence has been completely ineffective. Just being objective here. Closing abortion clinics. Closing, not giving women access to birth control has not been an effective way to lead to healthier societies. I mean I think we all know that."

I’m going to keep this post limited to just the topic of abortion, but notice that Nye is simply making assertions here and not giving any evidence for his position. He just wields the “hammer of science” (a metaphor that some news sites have even adopted) in order to shut down the discussion with one massive appeal to authority. This is ironic since Bill Nye only has a bachelor's degree in engineering. As one writer puts it, “Calling yourself the ‘Science Guy’ does not mean that you are an expert on anything. It means you're the host of a kids show.”

Why Not Debate the Issue?

"And I understand that you have deeply held beliefs and it really is ultimately out of respect for people, in this case your perception of unborn people. I understand that. But I really encourage you to look at the facts. And I know people are now critical of the expression 'fact-based' but what’s wrong with that? So I just really encourage you to not tell women what to do and not pursue these laws that really are in nobody’s best interest. Just really be objective about this. We have other problems to solve everybody. Come on. Come on. Let’s work together."

You want the facts? Okay, would you be willing to debate the facts about abortion with me? You recently debated Ken Ham on the issue of evolution and his only credentials are a long history of advocating for young earth creationism. When it comes to this issue I have the credentials that would justify a debate between us.

I have a graduate level education and have studied abortion for over a decade. I have written a book that has become the most comprehensive popular-level defense of the pro-life position (which is currently the first thing that comes up when you search “pro-life” on Amazon). It's also been endorsed by nationally known pro-life advocates such as Lila Rose and Fr. Frank Pavone. Finally, I have been invited by secular universities to debate other well-known defenders of the pro-choice position such as Dr. Malcom Potts at UC-Berkeley.

And just so it isn’t “two white men arguing over women’s rights” I would be happy to do a team debate where you and a female pro-choice advocate of your choosing debate me and a female pro-life advocate of my choosing, such as my friend Stephanie Gray. As you said, “I really encourage you to look at the facts.” So, let’s look at the facts together in front of an audience and see who’s position they really support.
 
 
(Image credit: New York Times)

In a recent post here, I asked, “Do You Need God to Know That Abortion is Wrong?” I was prompted by two things: on the one hand, a series of articles defending the idea that we can be moral without God; and on the other, articles like this one, suggesting that opposition to abortion can only be “because God.” Those two positions don't work together. As I explained in the post,

The pro-life argument is simple: (1) human beings are alive from the moment of fertilization, and (2) it is morally wrong (and ought to be illegal) to intentionally kill innocent human beings. The first point is a scientific one. The second is a moral and legal one, one that science can’t answer. You don’t find human rights under a microscope, and there’s no experiment capable of proving that murder is wrong.

Since the scientific point is clear-cut and settled (it's inescapable that unique human beings are created at the moment of fertilization), everything turns on point (2). But the intentional killing of innocent human beings is what the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe calls the “hard core” of the definition of murder. So to frame the question slightly differently, to say that abortion is okay, you have to say that (a) murder is at least sometimes okay, and that (b) abortion falls within this class of exceptions.

This has sparked a lively debate, as well as a rebuttal from Steven Dillon. I want to address the kind of arguments being raised generally first, and then look at what makes Steven's position frightening.

I. Do we need to believe in God to know that all murder is wrong?

Broadly speaking, there are four major types of responses to this question:

1. Only Theists Can be Anti-Murder: If you argue that abortion is wrong because unborn children have souls, or if you argue that abortion is okay (at least up to a certain point) because they don't, you're making arguments that are inaccessible to atheists. In either case, you're acting as if opposition to murder can only be predicated on the presence of the human soul. If killing someone is only wrong if we're sure they have a soul, why aren't atheists pro-murder?
2. Murder isn't Always Wrong: If you argue that abortion is okay because killing one life can sometimes save two, or because our being pro-abortion is necessary for us to justify euthanasia and organ harvesting, then we've got a slightly different issue. In these case, you don't believe that murder is always wrong. You might have personally-convincing reasons for your views, like utilitarianism or a rejection of impaired human life, but at least own your own convictions. If you don't – if you insist on paying lip service to being uniformly opposed to murder, while holding to these positions – your advocacy will necessarily be incoherent, because you're arguing for two irreconcilable positions.
3. It's Okay to Kill Fetuses: If you argue that abortion is okay because unborn children don't meet the requirements to be protected human life, you're not showing that unborn children aren't scientifically and materially human beings. Instead, you're either saying that they're not really humans, for some immaterial and non-scientific reason (like the first group), or that they are a group of humans that it's okay to intentionally kill (like the second). Here, the clearest way forward would be for you to spell out your presumptions and beliefs: e.g., “I think that murder is only wrong when your victim can feel pain at the time of death.”
4. Abortion is Always Wrong: this fourth group includes those, including both religious pro-lifers and nonreligious pro-lifers like Secular Alliance for Life, who treat the prohibition against murder as absolute. This opposition (most clearly in the case of secular pro-lifers) is not based upon their recognition of a human soul. If you reject the existence of the soul and reject all forms of murder, this is the only camp to which you can rationally adhere.

All of Steven's arguments seem to fall within the first category. He doesn't dispute the biological evidence. Instead, he assumes (but stops short of acknowledging) that abortion is wrong only if the fetus has a human soul. If he's right, and you don't believe that anyone has a human soul, then you've got a problem rationally holding to the prohibition against murder.

II. Do We Need Metaphysics to Settle the Abortion Debate?

In his response, Steven takes issue with my twofold formulation. Specifically, he accuses me of conflating terms, between biological humans in (1) and metaphysical humans in (2). I'm actually doing no such thing: I mean human in the same sense in both (1) and (2), and reject the whole idea of humans who are biological-but-not-metaphysical (or vice versa). It's immoral, and ought to be illegal, to murder those that we recognize, scientifically, as human beings. Furthermore, any sort of metaphysical definition of “human” that fails to capture the entire set of all humans is a bad definition.

If Steven wants to hold that you need metaphysics to know that killing innocent human beings is wrong, or if he wants to carve out an exception to the prohibition against murder for those that (according to a metaphysics of his own making) he considers biologically-but-not-metaphysically human, he's free to make those arguments. But recognize that in each of these cases, he's the one shifting the conversation into metaphysics, and the one creating two classes of human beings.

I mention all of this for a simple reason. The rest of this article will be getting into specific metaphysical questions involving the soul. It would be easy, especially for an atheist or someone who thinks that only the natural sciences produce factual knowledge, to write off this whole inquiry as bunk. I certainly understand. But if you're going to do that, recognize that what you're rejecting is not my original argument, but Steven's attempt to carve out a metaphysical exception to the prohibition against murder.

With that in mind, let's dive into the metaphysics directly.

III. Is the Fetus Metaphysically Human?

This is the meat of Steven's argument. He asks, but doesn't answer, an important question: “What gets aborted?” To the extent that he gives any sort of answer, it's by negation. He denies that the fetus is human or even an animal. Based on his trifold distinction, the answer to his questions seems to be that fetuses are now a type of plant, but (likely, for obvious reasons) he doesn't spell out this conclusion.

He is led to this conclusion by two arguments, one good and one bad. The good argument is that there is a threefold distinction between plants (which have metabolism), animals (which can sense), and humans (who can reason). The bad argument is in how he understands this distinction. When Aristotle first proposed this distinction (In Book II, Chapter III of De Anima), he was looking at types of things. That is, a plant is the type of creature that can metabolize, an animal is the type of creature that can move and sense, and humans are the type of creature that can reason. In each case, the higher creatures also have the powers of the lower ones. By this standard, you're a human even when you're not reasoning, even when you're incapable of reasoning, as long as you're the type of creature that's capable of reasoning (which, of course, you are).

When Steven applies this distinction, in contrast, he's looking at whether you can currently employ these powers. That is, an animal is only an animal if it can sense right now. By this definition, you can't let sleeping dogs lie. Having fallen asleep (temporarily losing control over their powers of sensation), they cease to be animals, and thus cease to be dogs. You, too, lose your humanity every night when you fall asleep, by this analysis. You also cease to be a human if you fall into a coma (either permanently or temporarily), enter a sensory deprivation chamber, or get so drunk that your reason is completely impaired. If you go blind or become infertile, you similarly become less human, because you're less capable of employing your sensory or reproductive powers.

It takes very little to see the problems with such a position. After all, if someone slips Rohypnol into your drink and you pass out, are you still a human being with rights that should be protected? If Steven is right that human rights turn on whether you can currently reason or sense, the answer would seem to be no.

IV. What Is the Soul?

This, I think, suffices to answer his arguments, but there's an additional point worth clearing up. We often think of the soul as a sort of “ghost in the machine,” but that's not a good understanding of the soul. The Latin term for soul is “anima,” because it's the immaterial animating principle of the body. This can be shown easily enough, quite apart from Scripture or even philosophy. Simply envision two identical twins, one of whom suddenly dies. On the level of the matter, they are still identical. The same particles are swirling around, as before, and the dead twin has the same body that existed while he was alive, moments ago.

So whatever distinguishes them, whatever separates living things from dead ones, can't be a material difference... even though we can observe its effects on a material level. This principle of animation, separating the living from the dead, is what we call the anima or the soul. It's the organizational principle of the body, the body's “form.” And this is true whether we're talking about humans, or (to use Kreeft's example) cows, or ferns.

In contrast, Steven's inquiry imagines that you can have an animated human being, growing and developing in the womb of her mother, and that at some point, a soul suddenly enters her body. Not so. If you've got a living human, you've got an ensouled human. So the whole thrust of Steven's investigation is founded upon misunderstanding the soul.

So if the question of abortion boils down to a philosophical inquiry into whether or not the fetus has a human soul, very well: he does. But this still leaves me with my original question: does the question of abortion, or murder more broadly, boil down to whether or not the victim is ensouled? If so, where does that leave atheists?
 
 
(Image credit: India Times)

In his recent article "Do You Need God to Know That Abortion is Wrong?", Joe Heschmeyer shares an argument for why abortion is wrong. Now, the point of his article was not to advance or expound upon this argument, but it affords us with an opportunity to look into a common argument against abortion. As he states it, the argument goes like this:

"The pro-life argument is simple: (1) human beings are alive from the moment of fertilization, and (2) it is morally wrong (and ought to be illegal) to intentionally kill innocent human beings."

He goes on to say that “[t]he first point is a scientific one. The second is a moral and legal one, one that science can’t answer.”

Quibbles about validity aside, this simple argument encapsulates one of the most widely held reasons to be pro-life today: abortion is murder. But, the argument involves a number of problems including a crucial reliance upon an ambiguity which, when exposed, commits the pro-lifer to an untenable position.

You’ll notice that proponents of this sort of argument are adamant that (1) is a deliverance of science. And, indeed, “science” does tell us that the organism which humans produce through sexual intercourse is to be biologically classified as “human.” But, biological classifications do not always map to metaphysical classifications, and this becomes especially clear in the case at hand.

Metaphysically, the human being is an animal with rational powers. Her physical structure reflects the fact that she is an animal, and this is only to be expected since matter reflects whatever corporeal form of being it is in – e.g. solid, liquid, gaseous, sub-atomic, etc. But, as my pro-life interlocutors will agree, rationality is not a corporeal form of being. As such, it is not reflected in the physical structure of the human being.

(It may strike some of the Catholics here as bizarre that the presence or absence of rationality in a body makes no difference to its physical structure, but Catholics have long been committed to the position that human beings cannot, of their own power, reproduce members of their species: only God can create the human soul. As such, the body produced by humans only reflects the corporeal forms of being it is in, not the form of rationality.)

But, biologists classify substances according to the corporeal forms of life they come in. This is why you won’t find any talk of rational powers in Joe’s citation of Sandra Alter’s Biology: Understanding Life. In fact, as she says in the quotation, the cycle of human life she is describing is “representative of all animal life cycles.” So, the standards of humanity set by biology are not the same standards of humanity set by metaphysics, though the latter may include the former.

What all this means is that just because an organism satisfies the biologist’s criteria for being human does not mean that it satisfies the metaphysician’s criteria for being human. It’s not enough for a fetus to have this or that genotype, or whatever epigenetic primordia at whatever stage: such features are only reflective of corporeal forms of being, and the metaphysical human being enjoys more than just corporeal forms of being.

The ambiguity in the initial argument should be apparent at this point: in order to be valid, premises (1) and (2) have to mean the same thing by “human being.” But, premise (2) presents a metaphysical understanding of “human being” whereas (1) does not, being only “a scientific one.” Thus, the argument commits the fallacy of equivocation for using the same term in different ways, and the fallacy of non-sequitur for inferring a metaphysical categorization from a biological one.

However, matters are much worse than just that a premier argument against abortion is fallacious on several counts. As was stated above, metaphysically the human being is a rational animal. But, not just any ol’ parcel of matter can pass for an animal: there are features defining of the animal form of life that must be reflected in the matter. Now, my pro-life interlocutors (here at Strange Notions at least), will agree that, in terms of metaphysics, what is distinctive of the animal form of life is the power of sensation. But, nothing can have this power unless it also has the means by which to exercise that power; namely, sense organs. Just try to imagine having a sensation without having any means by which to sense, such as eyes to see or ears to hear.

The problem I’m raising is that there is at least one point in a biological human’s gestation at which she has no sense organs whatsoever: fertilization. Thus, the human zygote does not reflect any of the forms of animal life it would need to in order to be an animal in metaphysical terms. But, if the human zygote is not an animal, then, a fortiori, it is not a rational animal.

The standard pro-life argument encapsulated in Joe’s remarks therefore falls prey to a number of difficulties, including equivocation and non-sequitur. But, the going only gets tougher when we realize that the human zygote isn’t even an animal, let alone a rational one at that.
 
 
(Image credit: Pregnant Now)

The New Republic’s latest contribution to the abortion debate is remarkable, in that, despite getting virtually everything it says factually wrong, it still raises an interesting problem for pro-choicers and atheists. Here’s the Twitter teaser to the piece that started it all:

How the anti-choice platform is fighting to stay alive: http://t.co/m8kuGANs2Q pic.twitter.com/fxTeRyj444

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) April 17, 2015

According to the author of this piece, New Republic senior editor Jamil Smith, (1) the pro-life movement is struggling to survive; (2) the pro-life movement is fueled by ignorance; and (3) pro-lifers are forced to resort to “because God” in defense of their views. Each of these views is demonstrably false, but the third point actually highlights a potentially devastating problem for pro-choicers and atheists.

Is the Pro-Life Movement Dying or Gaining Ground?

Unlike The New Republic, the pro-life movement isn’t struggling to survive. But you don’t have to take my word for that. Just look at the most recent Gallup poll data on Americans’ positions on abortion:

Here’s how Gallup summarized the overall trends in 2012:

"Gallup began asking Americans to define themselves as pro-choice or pro-life on abortion in 1995, and since then, identification with the labels has shifted from a wide lead for the pro-choice position in the mid-1990s, to a generally narrower lead for 'pro-choice' — from 1998 through 2008 — to a close division between the two positions since 2009. However, in the last period, Gallup has found the pro-life position significantly ahead on two occasions, once in May 2009 and again today [2012]. It remains to be seen whether the pro-life spike found this month proves temporary, as it did in 2009, or is sustained for some period."

It noted further that “the decline in Americans’ self-identification as 'pro-choice' is seen across the three U.S. political groups.” So the last two decades have seen a shift for pro-choicers having a wide lead over pro-lifers to pro-choicers having a narrow lead over pro-lifers, to the present, in which the lead is hotly contested. And from this Smith concludes that the pro-life movement is dying? The data shows the opposite: the pro-life movement is not surviving, it’s gaining ground.

More likely, the problem is that Smith is ignorant: Gallup has also found that most Americans mistakenly believe that a majority of America is pro-choice, and that political moderates and pro-choicers are most likely to get this wrong. So Smith’s description of a political movement that is losing ground but remaining ignorantly deluded is an apt one: he’s just applied it to the wrong side of the debate.

Are Pro-Lifers Promoting Ignorance or Asking Inconvenient Questions?

But let’s talk about ignorance and science. Here’s a larger excerpt from Smith’s piece:

"The anti-choice platform survives by propagating one fundamentally flawed truth above all: Conservative politicians know more about medicine than doctors do, because God. That is an explanation that relies upon the ignorance of the persuaded and coerced.

 

Ignorance—both the kind they embrace and the kind they relentlessly promote—has always been a primary tool for conservatives in their battle against reproductive choice. […] The more of us caught up in speculating when life actually begins and questioning the rights of the fetus, the better."

The pro-life movement is actually very much pro-science, and science is on the pro-life side of the question of when life begins. This is from Sandra Alter’s Biology: Understanding Life, a collegiate-level biology textbook for non-majors. It explains the birds and bees for anyone still confused about how reproduction works

"To illustrate, look at the human life cycle diagrammed in Figure 18.13, which is representative of all animal life cycles. A life cycle is the progression of stages an organism passes through from its conception until it conceives another similar organism. The diploid zygote in the diagram represents that part of the life cycle during which the fusion of gametes, or sex cells, from a male and a female of the same species have produced a new individual. The female gamete is the egg, and the male gamete is the sperm.
 

After a person (or other animal) grows to sexual maturity, the sex organs begin to produce gametes by a type of cell division called meiosis (my-OH-sis). During meiosis, one parent cell produces four sex cells, but these cells are not identical to the parent cell. Each sex cell is haploid; that is, it contains half the amount of hereditary material of the original parent cell. It is a single set of genetic information – one of each chromosome. Because of this reduction in chromosome number, one sex cell from each of two parent organisms can join together in a process called fertilization to form the first cell of a new individual that has a full complement of hereditary material. This new cell is diploid. That is, it contains double the haploid amount – a double set of the genetic information, or two of each chromosome. This type of reproduction, which involves the fusion of gametes to produce the first cell of a new individual, is called sexual reproduction."

New life begins the same way in all animals, not just humans. Two gametes, sperm and egg, fuse to form a diploid. This diploid isn’t part of the mother or the father: it’s a genetically-distinct individual member of the species. That’s how we get new birds, new bees, and new boys and girls. On this point, there’s just no serious scientific question. Scientifically literate people don’t wonder, for example, if chicks are alive (or individuated) before they emerge from their eggs. So science teaches that fertilization produces new beings. In the case of humans, the fusion of sperm and egg produces a new human being.

But this doesn’t answer every question in the abortion debate, which is where we get to the most (inadvertently) interesting part of Smith’s piece.

Is Abortion Only Wrong “Because [of] God” or Can Atheists Know It, Too?

That’s an interesting claim for a few reasons. First, because he doesn’t actually quote a single person citing religion in defense of their position: he just ignores the actual reasons given, saying that their reasons are really “because God.” Second, because (Gallup again): “Americans who profess no religious identity are the most heavily pro-choice, at 80%, with 15% calling themselves pro-life.” How would Smith explain those 15%? Are they just pro-life “because God”? Smith claims that the pro-life justification for its position is simply “because of God.” Well, actually he says that it’s “because God,” and that this is why “conservative politicians” claim to know more about medicine than doctors, but that’s a bit of an incoherent mess. What he’s driving at, as near as I can tell, is that opposition to abortion can only be due to religious reasons.

But the third reason is that if Smith is right, this is a damning critique of atheism.

The pro-life argument is simple: (1) human beings are alive from the moment of fertilization, and (2) it is morally wrong (and ought to be illegal) to intentionally kill innocent human beings. The first point is a scientific one. The second is a moral and legal one, one that science can’t answer. You don’t find human rights under a microscope, and there’s no experiment capable of proving that murder is wrong.

Our scientific knowledge gets us far enough to say that abortion is the intentional killing of a human being, so we can say that if all human beings are entitled to basic human rights, then we must recognize unborn humans as having these rights, as well. But science can’t say if the intentional killing of innocent human beings is murder, or if murder is wrong, or if human rights exist.

So here’s why I say that Smiths’ piece ends up being an inadvertent contribution to the broader debate on abortion, as well as on religion. I frequently see two types of pieces from secular writers:

1. Articles declaring that we can be good without God, that atheists are just as moral as anyone else, etc.
2. Articles like this one, claiming that we can only know that killing people is wrong “because God,” in which case a truly universal respect for human rights can only come from a religious worldview.

"The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted'; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. [….]
 
No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life. It is the same upon the plane of morality.There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done."

The third group of atheists simply try to have la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca (“the barrel full and the wife drunk,” Italy’s colorful take on “to have your cake and eat it, too”). But this third position isn’t tenable.

So in spite of Smith’s gross ignorance of the statistical growth of the pro-life movement, the scientific origins of human beings, and the actual arguments used by pro-lifers, he’s stumbled into something resembling an interesting point. He (apparently) thinks that only God can coherently undergird the opposition to murdering unborn children. Non-believers and pro-choicers, is he right?
 
 
(Image credit: Caffeinated Thoughts)

NOTE: The following post, the second of two from Trent Horn, is excerpted from a new book he will publish in September defending the pro-life position. Read the first post here.

 
In Part 1 of this short series, we saw that there isn’t a way to consistently define what a “person” is that includes newborns but excludes fetuses and non-human animals. In this post I will examine “body-rights” arguments for abortion that take advantage of the difference between newborns and the unborn in terms of the use of the mother’s body during pregnancy. These arguments either admit the unborn are persons or say the question doesn’t matter and merely assume the unborn are persons for the sake of the argument.

There are really two arguments in this vein and I believe neither works.

The “Sovereign Zone” Argument

“Women have the right to have an abortion because women (and men) have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies, or at least, do whatever they want to whatever is inside of their bodies.”

The problem with this argument is that the premise (complete bodily autonomy) is more controversial than the conclusion (abortion should be legal). How do we know we have complete bodily autonomy? This argument is on par with saying, “Slavery is moral because is have the right to own anything I want.” Just as we should be skeptical of the premise “I can own anything” we should be skeptical of the premise “I have the right to do whatever I want with my body.”

The pro-choice philosopher Mary Anne Warren writes,

“The appeal to the right to control one’s body, which is generally construed as a property right, is at best a rather feeble argument for the permissibility of abortion. Mere ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property, and indeed I am apt to be held responsible if such people injure themselves while on my property. It is equally unclear that I have any moral right to expel an innocent person from my property when I know that doing so will result in his death.”¹

The U.S. Supreme Court even rejected this argument in Roe v Wade. Justice Blackmun wrote,

“In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court’s decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past.”²

I can’t think of any other right that is absolute in the way that defenders of the sovereign zone argument claim the right to control one’s body is absolute. No one has an absolute right to free speech; we ban shouting “Fire!” in a crowded building when there is no fire. No one has the absolute right to engage in illegal religious activities under the guise of “freedom of religion.” Laws against illicit drug use, prostitution, selling organs, public urination, and indecent exposure show there is no absolute right to do anything we want with our bodies.

In fact, all it takes to refute this argument is one example that shows we cannot do whatever we want with our bodies. If that principle is refuted, then so is the sovereign zone argument. Here’s one thought experiment that I think shows we do not have unlimited bodily autonomy over that which lives inside of us.

If it is possible to remove a late-term fetus and keep him alive in an incubator, then, theoretically, if the technology existed, one could take a premature infant from an incubator and transfer him into a woman’s uterus. Nearly everyone agrees that it would be wrong to kill the child in the incubator. But according to the sovereign zone argument, it would not be wrong to kill that child after he was transferred back into the sovereign zone of the womb. It is ridiculous that an infant could be treated like a human being in one location (the incubator) and like disposable property in another (the uterus).

Finally, the argument admits that the fetus is a person who, by the argument’s own logic, has a right to bodily autonomy. If we would respect the bodily autonomy of a sleeping or unconscious born person by not killing him, then wouldn’t we bound to treat an unborn child in the same way because they too, as a person, have a right to “bodily autonomy?”

Regardless of the status of unlimited bodily autonomy, the sovereign zone version of the bodily rights argument fails to support legal abortion.

The “Right-to-Refuse” Argument

 
This version of the argument says that maybe you can’t do anything you want with your body, but you have the right to not let your body be used as life support in order to keep another person alive (such as the refusal to donate bone marrow to save a dying person).

The biggest problem with this kind of argument is what’s called the responsibility objection. In the case of a stranger who will die unless I donate blood or bone marrow, I am not obligated to help him, because I was not involved in how he became ill. But if I caused another person to become dependent on me, then I would owe him assistance.

Here’s an analogy that might help illustrate what I mean. Imagine a replicator machine that can create any kind of object. If I activate the replicator, there is a high chance that the machine will dispense $10,000. There is also a chance that along with the money the machine will dispense a healthy newborn infant.³ If you could find no one else to care for this child, you would become the guardian or “parent.”

Why? Because you engaged in an act that you knew could create a helpless human being, and now that human being stands in need of your assistance. Abandoning this infant to die would simply never be tolerated. Michael Tooley argues in his book defending the morality of both abortion and infanticide:

". . . the anti-abortionist can argue that although people in general may be under no moral obligation to allow the fetus the use of their bodies, even when it is necessary if the other individual is to survive, a pregnant woman is, in general, under a moral obligation to allow the fetus the use of her body, since she is morally responsible for there being a fetus that stands in need of a life support system.”⁴

While the replicator is a science fiction example, we can also use the rare though real example of women who do not know they are pregnant until they give birth. If the autonomist believes that we have no obligation to the children we create, then there is no reason a mother who unexpectedly gives birth to a child in a field could not simply leave the child there.

Suppose a woman lived in a country where abortion was illegal or she could not afford to pay for an abortion. Upon giving birth at home could she simply abandon the child or “refuse to provide life-giving bodily aid” in the form of breast milk? If this woman does have a responsibility to care for this child because she was responsible for his existence, then it follows she would be responsible for that same child when it came into existence at conception and abortion would be morally wrong.

I’ve heard arguments in response to this objection that say engaging in sex doesn’t “cause” pregnancy because not everyone who has sex becomes pregnant. The critic also says that there are many factors outside of a woman’s control that influence whether she becomes pregnant so we can’t say she “caused” a child to come into existence that needs her help when she chose to have sex.

But that is like saying that drinking large quantities of alcohol and driving doesn’t cause pedestrians to be hit by drunk drivers because some people drink and drive and no one gets hurt. Furthermore, there are also factors outside of the driver’s control that affect whether a person gets hit (like whether other people are on the road or not). Therefore, we can’t say drunk drivers cause drunk driving fatalities.

Hogwash.

Drinking alcohol impairs a person and initiates a chain of events that is likely to lead to traffic fatalities. Even if the person took measures to avoid getting into an accident (e.g. playing the music loudly, rolling the window down) he or she is still responsible for the fatality that was caused.

Finally, this response would make it futile to collect child support from deadbeat dads since they could always claim that they aren’t truly “responsible” for the children they sired since they didn’t intend to have those children when they chose to have sex. If we expect men to be responsible for children they create (intentionally or unintentionally) through intercourse, then shouldn’t women be held responsible for the children they create through intercourse as well?

The Organ Use Objection

 
“But,” says the critic, “What if the traffic victim needs your blood, or your own child needs a bone marrow transplant that you knew would be required before they were conceived? Are you obligated to donate your body in those cases?”

Here is where another important difference arises between pregnancy and these cases. In organ donation cases, I use a part of my body that was not made for the sick person in order to keep him alive. I am resorting to extraordinary means to save him, since the purpose of my kidneys, for example, is to filter my own blood and not anyone else’s. By my withholding the use of my kidneys, the sick person dies. But I am not the cause of his death; I have merely chosen not to save him. Is abortion a similar act of withholding an extraordinary use of an organ?

Even in a nonreligious framework it makes sense to say things like, “The purpose of the heart is to pump blood” or “The purpose of the lungs is to absorb oxygen.” Some people may deny that our organs have any “purpose” or are “for” anything, but I don’t think they would hold that attitude should their own organs become damaged or infected. In order to say an organ isn’t working properly would seem to imply that the organ has a proper way of functioning, or a “purpose” or “end” in its operations that is not being achieved.
 The uterus’s purpose seems clear: to support the life of an unborn child. Otherwise, why is it even inside the body at all? If the uterus is designed to sustain an unborn child’s life, don’t unborn children have a right to receive nutrition and shelter through the one organ designed to provide them with that ordinary care?⁵

Unlike in the organ donation cases, where I fail to save someone who is dying, abortion involves separating a healthy child from what it requires to live. Abortion is not an act of “failing to save” but is an act of killing that deprives a child of its right to live safely.⁶ It is on par with putting your infant out in a snowstorm that directly kills him and does not “fail to save (him) from an environment in which (he) cannot survive.”

A critic may object that pregnancy is not “ordinary care” because it causes the woman’s body to undergo extraordinary and uncomfortable transformation. But it is a transformation toward which women’s bodies are naturally ordered. Puberty also involves large-scale and uncomfortable changes to the body, but no one says puberty is an “extraordinary” event on par with organ donation (indeed, it would be extraordinary if it did not happen).

Likewise, throughout all of human history, fertility and pregnancy were considered ordinary events, and anyone reading this page was involved in such an event. Providing shelter and nutrition in the womb is simply an ordinary amount of care (even if at times it can be painful or uncomfortable) that we expect parents to provide to their unborn children.

Conclusion

 
I think I’ve shown that there are no morally relevant differences between humans before they are born or can survive outside of the womb and humans just after they are born. As one child development book puts it, “The fourth trimester [the three months after birth] has more in common with the nine months that came before than with the lifetime that follows.”⁷

We therefore should either treat newborns like fetuses and make it legal to kill them simply because they are unwanted, or we should treat fetuses like newborns and make it illegal to directly kill them because they are unwanted.
 
 
(Image credit: Tribune News)

NOTE: The following post, the first of two from Trent Horn, is excerpted from a new book he will publish in September defending the pro-life position.

 
Let's begin by noting that while not all atheists are pro-choice, a sizable majority are. In fact, a recent Gallup poll revealed that those with no religious attachment are the most likely demographic to identify as pro-choice.

With that in mind, let me present what I think is the strongest argument for the moral and legal permissibility of abortion, often made by atheists:

“Pro-life advocates say that abortion is wrong because the fetus or embryo has human DNA. However, merely possessing human DNA doesn’t make it wrong to kill something because then it would be wrong to kill gametes (sperm and egg) or tumors that also have human DNA. Instead, it is wrong to directly kill innocent persons.”

But what is a person?

“A person is any being who is capable of rational thought and/or self-reflection. Since fetuses and embryos are clearly not persons due to their inability to engage in rational thought, it follows that abortion is not immoral and should remain legal.”

Sounds like a familiar argument so far. What makes it hard to refute is if you tack this part on to it:

“Yes it’s true that newborn infants cannot engage in rational thought that surpasses higher-order animals like pigs or dogs, which are also not persons. But this only means that newborn infants are not persons. Just as it is not immoral to euthanize a pet because it is unwanted, it is simply not immoral to euthanize an infant that’s unwanted because infants aren’t persons.”

Michael Tooley famously defends this view in his 1982 book Abortion and Infanticide. Peter Singer defends a limited view of infanticide and several years ago the issue came up in the media with the publication of a journal article defending “after-birth abortion.”

What makes this argument hard to refute is that it is consistent. You have to dig deep with the argument’s metaphysical assumptions about persons to show what’s wrong with it instead of just pointing to a repugnant conclusion of the argument.

But what about the pro-choice atheist who thinks infanticide is wrong? Can he consistently defend legal abortion without opening the door to infanticide? I don’t think so and here’s why.

The Worst Pro-Choice Arguments

 
The following arguments that defend abortion without allowing for infanticide are very bad and pro-choice philosophers know it. Even still, they are common so I’d like to get them out of the way right now.

Abortion should be legal because women have a right to choose.

If by “right to choose” you mean “right to have an abortion,” then you’re using circular reasoning. You’re saying, “Abortion should be legal because women have the right to have an abortion.” The conclusion is being used to support the premise and the argument is now invalid. However, if by “right to choose” you mean something like “right to control one’s body” then see my comments on bodily rights arguments at the end of this post.

Abortion should be legal to help alleviate overpopulation, poverty, and child abuse.

Should we also kill the homeless and the disabled in order to alleviate those problems as well? Unless the pro-choice advocate can show the unborn are not persons while born people are persons who can’t be killed to ease social problems, then this argument just assumes it’s permissible to kill fetuses and not permissible to kill infants (and other born people). It’s missing a reason that justifies killing fetuses because the world is overpopulated, but not born people.

Don’t like abortion, don’t have one!

If you don’t like firing someone because they identify as being gay then don’t fire them, but don’t take away another person’s right to choose to discriminate against these people. See what I did there? If we don’t have the right to discriminate against, harm, and especially kill, born persons, then we don’t have the right to do the same to the unborn unless one can show they are not persons.

The unborn are not human like an infant. They’re just embryos/fetuses or a clump of cells.

If by “human” you mean “person” I’ll get to that in a moment. If by “human” you mean “an individual member of the species homo sapiens,” then this is just patently false. David Boonin, in his book A Defense of Abortion writes,

“Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you and me on the one hand and every human fetus on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, homo sapiens. A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development.”¹

Peter Singer also holds this view and writes,

“It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being . . .”²

Finally, embryo and fetus refer to the stages of development in a human being’s life, so they don’t disprove an entity is not a human organism. Likewise, the unborn are not “clumps of cells” but complex cooperating cellular units that develop for the good of the whole organism. If the unborn are clumps of cells, then so are we.

Abortion should be legal otherwise women will die in back alley abortions.

How does the danger involved in a bigger person killing a smaller person justify making legal for the bigger person to kill the smaller person? The pro-choice philosopher Mary Anne Warren says of this argument, “The fact that restricting access to abortion has tragic side effects does not, in itself, show that restrictions are unjustified since murder is wrong regardless of the consequences of prohibiting it.”³

You’re a man.

So men can’t have an opinion on this issue? (No, they just can’t have an opinion that takes away women’s rights!) Oh . . . so they just can’t have a pro-life opinion since you would not be upset at a man speaking out in defense of abortion (like the nine male justices who decided Roe v. Wade). In any case, just pretend I’m a woman making the same arguments.

The main issue: What is a person?

Now, for a lot of these arguments a pro-choice reader might be screaming, “But killing toddlers, the homeless, and the disabled is different than killing fetuses!” This is because many pro-choice advocates believe the former are persons but the latter are not. But do they have an argument to justify that belief? More importantly, can they consistently show the unborn are not persons without showing that newborns are not persons either?

Let’s try out some sample definitions of what a person is and see if they work:

Before I get started I want to point out a bad way of defining “personhood” that I often see among pro-choice advocates. Instead of offering a definition for personhood they will just offer a disqualification. They might say, “A person can’t be the size of a grain rice”; “A person can’t be an immobile unthinking blob of cells”; or “It’s just obvious embryos aren’t persons!”

Okay, but don’t tell me what’s not a person; tell me what is!

In order to say fetuses and embryos are not persons you already have to know what a person is in order to disqualify them from being considered persons. For example, we can say a snake is not a mammal because it lacks the traits a mammal must possess (like being warm-blooded). We only know snakes aren’t mammals because we already know what mammals are.

Likewise, we have to know what a person is in order to say embryos and fetuses are not persons. So are there any definitions of what a person is that excludes embryos and fetuses without excluding infants?

A person is any being that can engage in rational thought.

This definition excludes the unborn along with the newborn (and the long-ago born) who can’t engage in rational thought.

A person is any being that has the potential to engage in rational thought.

This definition includes the newborn as well as the unborn so it can’t be used to defend abortion. You might counter that newborns have primitive brains while embryos do not have ay kind of brain at all (fetuses have a small, primitive brain). According to Nature magazine, a newborn’s brain increases from 56 trillion synaptic connections to 1,000 trillion at nine months after birth. If we grant newborns are persons even though their brains still have a lot of developing to do, then why not grant the same status to the unborn that also just have more of the same kind of developing to do?

How could the amount of time it takes to grow a fully functioning brain affect one’s moral status? Why does the newborn’s undeveloped non-rational brain grant it special rights but the fetus’ undeveloped non-rational brain, or even the embryo's genetic code to make a rational brain, not grant those beings the same rights? Why does the stage of an undeveloped organ’s growth change a being’s moral worth?

A person is any being that can feel pain.

This definition excludes most embryos and fetuses, as well as adults suffering from congenital insensitivity to pain. Also, it includes non-human animals like rats. It makes running over a chipmunk and fleeing the scene a felony.

A person is any being that is born.

Cats and dogs are born. Are they persons?

A person is any being that can survive outside of the womb.

This definition has the same problem as the previous two definitions.

A person is any human organism that can survive outside of the womb.

This is just circular reasoning at its finest. “A human organism that can survive outside of the womb” is the same thing as “not a fetus” (this also applies to the definition of personhood being “any human organism that is born” as well). This argument just says, “A person is not a fetus because a fetus is not a person.” But that’s like saying women aren’t people because a person is any human that has a Y-chromosome.

In the absence of any supplemental reasons to justify the claim that birth or Y-chromosomes matter, these arguments are simply fallacious.

A person is any human organism that does not depend on the body of another human organism in order to survive.

Why should we believe this criterion is correct? How does the way a person survives change their moral status?

In the year 2000, a British court had to decide what should be done with two conjoined newborns named “Jodie” and “Mary.” Mary could not survive without being connected to Jodie’s heart and lungs while Jodie could survive without being connected to Mary. Unfortunately, Jodie’s organs were expected to fail after a few weeks due to the strain of supporting both herself and Mary. The court decided that the most ethical decision was to separate Mary from Jodie so that at least Jodie would survive. But the court emphatically stated that Mary, in spite of her complete dependence on Jodie, was still a person with a right to live. The court said,

“All parties took for granted in the court below that Mary is a live person and a separate person from Jodie . . . in the face of that evidence it would be contrary to common sense and to everyone’s sensibilities to say that Mary is not alive or that there are not two separate persons.”⁴

A human organism gradually becomes a person over time.

This critic says that there is no precise moment when a human becomes a person, but by the time a fetus is born it obviously is a person. But this just assumes newborns are persons without giving a reason why they are persons. Once again, we need a definition of what a person is besides, “A person is who I think a person is.”

Alternative Responses

 
So I think I’ve shown that any defense of the claim that unborn humans are not persons will either entail that newborns are not persons, or include non-human animals as persons as well. It seems that there is no consistent way to deny the personhood of embryos and fetuses and affirm the personhood of newborn infants. As Peter Singer says,

“[P]ro-life groups are right about one thing: the location of the baby inside or outside the womb cannot make such a crucial moral difference. We cannot coherently hold that it is all right to kill a fetus a week before birth, but as soon as the baby is born everything must be done to keep it alive.”⁵

But maybe there is another way pro-choice advocates could defend abortion without defending infanticide. One way would be to concede that newborns are not persons but claim that there are other reasons that make infanticide immoral.

I’ll confess though that I haven’t found those reasons to be very persuasive (e.g. our species couldn’t survive if we killed too many babies, infanticide might make us heartless, etc.). They seem to be very “ad-hoc,” or cited just to support people’s emotional revulsion to infanticide. Due to space issues I will probably comment on them in a future post if the discussion warrants it.

The other way would be to use what are called bodily rights arguments in defense of abortion. While infants live outside of a woman’s body, fetuses live inside of it—which could be a morally relevant difference between the two cases. Even if the fetus is a person, perhaps abortion can still be justified based on the woman’s right to control her body.

I’ll take a look at those arguments on Wednesday in Part 2 of this series.
 
 
(Image credit: Fast News Release)