11 common arguments in favor of abortion and the reasons that prove them false

@ElentirENG ES 6·27·2022 · 7:03 0

Although supporters of its legalization have tried to shut it down, abortion is a debate that remains very open and in which they have the losing side.

Scientific arguments against abortion
The largest cause of death in 2021 killed 42 million human beings worldwide

We are going to review below the arguments most used by supporters of abortion and also their answers from a rational point of view, which demonstrate the error of those arguments.

1. "Women have the right to decide about their own body"

It is the quintessential argument among abortion advocates. And it is a bogus argument. The unborn child is not part of the mother's body. He is a distinct human being, with his own genetic identity distinct from that of his parents. That he is temporarily in the womb does not mean that he is part of the mother's body, like the stomach, the lungs or the nails.

On the other hand, the right to decide about our bodies is neither absolute nor unlimited: it ends where the rights of others begin, in this case the right to live of the unborn child. For example, no person has the right to decide on his body by driving his car off a cliff with children in the back seats, as that would kill them. Similarly, no person can invoke the right to decide on her body to abandon a baby in the middle of a forest. In every civilized society, both motherhood and fatherhood generate obligations, and the first of these is to ensure the life and health of children.

2. "Those who oppose abortion want to impose their morals or their beliefs on others"

It is a very typical argument among supporters of abortion. And the fact is that it is based on a profound ignorance of the fundamentals of law. We call morality the code of values that tells us what is right and what is wrong. Every civilized society has a moral code that establishes what is right and what is wrong, penalizing the latter when it involves serious harm to others. Thus, every law implies a moral imposition, since something that is considered to be wrong is persecuted, generally because it violates the rights of others. For example, the laws that prohibit robbery and murder are moral impositions, derived from the fact that it is wrong to take the lives of your fellow men and to seize the property of others with violence.

Those who support legalizing abortion are actually those who make the most serious imposition: imposing an aberration that consists of completely inverting one of the ethical pillars of our civilization, which affirms that killing an innocent and defenseless human being is wrong and never possible justification. They want to impose on us the moral aberration that killing an innocent is considered a good thing, for the mere fact that someone (in this case the mother) decides to do it, and we are even forced to finance it with our taxes. This imposition implies an irreparable evil: the death of the unborn child.

3. "Men should not comment on abortion because they cannot give birth"

Another very frequent argument among supporters of abortion, which consists of denying half of humanity its right to express an opinion about abortion, limiting it to an issue that only women can talk about. To begin with, this argument is as absurd as saying that only the driver who commits it can give an opinion on a hit-and-run, ignoring the person hit. This is precisely what supporters of abortion do: ignore aborted children, among whom there are boys and girls who do not even have a voice to defend themselves from the atrocity committed against them. If anyone should give an opinion on abortion, they are those unborn children, but they can't. So those of us who defend them have every right in the world to speak up for them, no matter how much the abortion supporters want to shut us up.

4. "If you don't like abortion, don't have an abortion, but let others do it"

Another very common fallacy. This is as absurd as saying "if you don't like stealing, don't steal, but let others do it". Once again, with that statement they simply ignore the victims of abortion: the unborn children. Abortion is not a mere choice like changing your shirt or your hairstyle. Aborting involves killing an innocent human being, and no one has the right to do such a thing.

5. "Abortion is a right"

Some countries say so, unfortunately, and supporters of abortion say that it is, even if it is not classified as such in their country. The truth is that every human being has the right to life, a right that derives from our own human condition (that is why we call them "human rights"). Affirming a "right" to end the life of an innocent human being is a legal aberration that collides squarely with that right to life, denying it or placing arbitrary limits on it. Eroding the most basic of all human rights in this way is very dangerous and often leads, in fact, to the erosion of other rights subordinate to it. And it is that if an innocent person is allowed to be killed, what guarantees do we have that the rest of our rights will be protected?

6. "No woman can be forced to be a mother"

This argument by supporters of abortion must assume that babies arise by spontaneous generation. In the vast majority of cases, children are born from consensual relationships between adults. Today there are various methods to prevent a sexual relationship from ending in an unexpected pregnancy. What cannot be expected is that an innocent person pays with his life for the decisions of his parents.

7. "Pro-lifers want to force unwanted babies into the world"

It is an argument that I have read many times. Sometimes other adjectives are also added to "unwanted", such as "deformed" babies. The truth is that the right to life corresponds to all human beings, whether they are wanted or not, in good health or not, deformed or not. Putting the mere desire of one person over the right to life of another is something ethically and legally aberrant.

8. "The fetus is not a living being"

More than an argument, this is one of the most colossal displays of ignorance exhibited by many supporters of abortion. Science shows that a human embryo and fetus are obviously living beings, otherwise they could not grow and develop. In fact, from the initial zygote (a single cell), that new life passes to 1,000 million cells in 8 weeks. If any supporter of abortion saw something like this on the planet Mars, he would speak of life without hesitation. It is still a mystery why they deny it when it occurs in the womb.

9. "The fetus is not a human being"

Another sign of ignorance very common among supporters of abortion, which involves thinking that human women conceive non-human beings (that is, of another species), something crazy from a scientific point of view. Science shows that the beginning of human life occurs at conception, which is when a new human being, different from the mother, begins to develop. It is also at this moment that he acquires the human genetic identity that will accompany him for the rest of his life. Thinking that what grows in the womb is a "non-human being" and that it becomes human at the time of childbirth is a form of magical thinking, since during childbirth there is no change in the genetic identity of the newborn that makes him pass from one species to another.

10. "It should be possible to abort until the X week of pregnancy"

It is another common argument and related to argument 8. In medical terms, to abort is to end a human life in its prenatal stage of development, whatever the moment of that stage. So establishing deadlines in which it is authorized to end that human life, assuming that before that deadline it is human and after that it is not, is an arbitrariness without any scientific basis and that implies the death of a human being. If all human beings have rights by the mere fact of being human, starting with the right to life, the imposition of arbitrary deadlines that invalidate that right is not justified.

11. "Abortion should always be legal in case of rape"

In the response to argument 6 I already pointed out that in the vast majority of cases, children are born from consensual relationships between adults. But there are cases (very few) in which the woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. Abortion supporters have always started their campaigns with these exceptional cases because they are the hardest emotionally. When a defender of life makes an allegation against abortion in the case of rape, it is usual for him to be identified as an accomplice of the rapist. However, that unborn child is as much a victim of rape as her mother is, and it is unfair that such a crime is resolved by killing one of the victims.

In fact, the supporters of abortion in case of rape often fall into a terrible paradox: they ask for the death penalty for one of the victims (the unborn child) but reject it for the rapist. It is radically unfair that the harshest punishment for a crime of rape falls on one of the innocent victims, and not on the rapist. A woman in that situation needs all possible help from the institutions, and should have the option of giving her child up for adoption if she doesn't want to, but imposing the death penalty on one of the victims of rape is radically unfair. A civilized society should harshly punish the criminal, not the victim.