Why I Became Pro-Life
The moral, historical, empirical, and personal reasons I changed my mind on abortion.
The following piece was first written in 2019. While it references events of that year specifically, the philosophical fortitutude of the arguments which made me pro-life remain all the more relevant as our nations face a depopulating demographic decline, and a delay of parenthood to dangerously late ages.
Due to the recent tumultuous political climate in the United States with matters relating to abortion in Ohio, Missouri, Alabama and Georgia, it’s almost impossible to avoid a discussion on one’s own personal views on the matter. I personally garnered the disdain of my peers after voicing my opinion on Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s video, denouncing Donald Trump with the usual accusation of “racist sexist bigot homophobe”. My moderate-to-far left-wing acquaintances at university didn’t appreciate my condemnation of Mayor Khan’s accusation that President Trump “doesn’t respect women’s rights” with the rebuttal that all bodily autonomy should be respected, including that of an infant human being.
Following a tirade of white male privilege accusations, I thought it may be constructive to share my views on the matter, and the reasons as to why I, a former reluctant abortion advocate, am staunchly pro-life.
My former pro-abortion stance originated from there being no innate value to human life, in a world devoid of empirical proof for a connection to a deity beyond our comprehension, and so this should not prevent us from ending one. Putting the staggering and disastrous legal implication of an ungovernable and brutal society, aside, the argument itself came from a place which was incredibly pessimistic about human nature. But the argument itself was actually logically consistent: if we are to kill a person that is not attempting to kill us, there must be nothing wrong with killing, and, therefore, nothing innately valuable to human life.
The issue with this argument is, if universalised, human beings become savage, and society itself suicidal. The rule negates the necessity for cordial cohabitation, and that really is rather nice when we can achieve it. In the absence of a religious argument, as we must govern ourselves secularly or else risk becoming an ideologically partisan theocracy, me must look to an objective standard that prevents us from harming others. That would be ‘the non-aggression principle’, or John Stuart Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’: that your actions are your own, bound to your right of self-determination as a human being, but they must not be done to inflict harm on another person. If you do intentionally harm another person, you knowingly relinquish your right to self-determination, and can be punished with the stripping of your liberty, or even your life (should the victim acting in self-defence be forced to act in such a way by your instigated acts of violence).
This principle is contingent on the perspective that each human life carries innate worth, equal to that of its peers. If the premise of this argument is not accepted, then I apologise for the depressing nihilism of your worldview, and hope you seek the help you need. Should this innate worth be societally rejected, then the exercise of governance itself is pointless, as all efforts to create a sustainable and orderly present and future for a nation’s citizens is pointless, as we aren’t worth investing in as a species anyway.
To get around the application of the Harm Principle to abortion, some activists have even made the radical claim that children commit acts of violence on the mother by being born. A recent Salon article argued that an aborted child is “A life worth sacrificing”. Sophie Lewis, in a recent video interview with Verso Books (a publication company I was made very familiar with during my recent university course on Contemporary literature, which had an undeniably and self-admittedly left-wing slant) said abortion is ‘a form of killing’ that is necessary, and should be defended.
‘We’re facing a really terrifying attack on abortion.[…] In the past, the strategies that our side has tended to use has included a kind of ceding of ground to our enemies. […] we say, “Luckily it’s not killing, luckily it’s just a healthcare right.” We have very little to lose at the moment when it comes to abortion and I’m interested in winning radically […] Abortion is, in my opinion, and I recognize how controversial this is, a form of killing. It’ s a form of killing that we need to be able to defend.’
I have genuine empathy forMs. Lewis, for she holds such a nihilistic and chilling perspective on human life.
This argument, for all the recent Feminist concern over consent (originating from a genuine and necessary concern about rape, coercion and sexual violence), does not consider the child’s inability to consent to, what Sophie Lewis considers to be, an act of violence. A child cannot choose to be conceived, nor consent to being delivered.
They can, however, feel the pain of, and will actively resist, being aborted. Former Texas Planned Parenthood branch director Abby Johnson has become a pro-life activist, releasing a movie about her experiences at the clinic this year titled ‘Unplanned’, since witnessing an unborn baby fighting against abortion instruments on an ultrasound. Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at University of Utah Dr. Maureen Condic testified before Congress in May 2013 for the ‘Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act’, and stated that ‘There is universal agreement in the scientific community that an unborn child experiences foetal pain by at least 20 weeks old’. Sonograms and ultrasounds show that, by at least 20 weeks, children react to light and sound stimuli inside the womb, and react with avoidant gestures to physical stimulation by medical equipment. This is due to the brain, by 20 weeks, having developed a fully functioning nervous system, and is capable of having its electrical signals measured by EEG. This has behaviour has been observed, however, in foetuses as early as eight weeks old. Additionally, when 18-week-old children are given blood tests, B-endorphins and cortisol rise 500% and 183% respectively as a reaction of stress to the painful stimulus.
Therefore, the method of abortion for a foetus at that stage in development (the dissection and breaking of its body by sharpened medical tools, and removal via vacuum) is most certainly a violation of the harm principle.
A fair bit of time has been spent, and will be further spent, talking about the ongoing debate in the USA. However, it is worth reminding you at this point that, in England, Scotland and Wales, abortion is currently funded by the taxpayer for up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Additionally, laws are designed to be universalisable: applied to all citizens which fall under jurisdiction of the law of the nation state which enforces it. Therefore, should birth be designated an act of violence committed to a mother by a child, and its development in the womb be designated an involuntary occupation of the mother, which violates her autonomy, then all children can be acted upon with the full force of law as morally accountable criminals, despite their inability to change the circumstances of their conception and birth.
This sets, in the Kantian sense, a dangerous precedent, as this would logically command all pregnancies to be terminated by abortion as a preventative defensive measure to stop what will inevitably be an act of violence (birth, or caesarean section). This would be the self-destruction of the human race, and so not a particularly productive piece of legislation. Though, considering some activists are choosing not to have children out of fear over the indeterminate effects of environmental change, it’s not inconceivable that there are radicals out there that would see our collective deaths as a moral good.
Now, there are other arguments that attempt to categorise unborn children as not fully human, and therefore able to be killed before reaching full maturation or birth. There are numerous ways in which this is disturbing; I will attempt to address as many as I can that I am aware of, as the arguments against them played a significant part in altering my own perspective.
Firstly, some argue that an unborn child is incapable of reason and self-determination, and so is not fully human. I would like to point out that, despite the offensive connotations this following statement may have on its surface, such an argument has been used throughout history to justify the dehumanisation of people and their murder and subjugation in atrocities such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, numerous genocides, and Nazi’s involuntary euthanasia of disabled Germans. It is no coincidence that propaganda of the past depicted marginalised and targeted groups as rodents or insects (serving as the inspiration for Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis), or that partial heritage (the “one drop rule”) or partial human status (“three-fifths compromise”) were used as methods and terminology to reinforce the sub-human status of selective peoples.
I would also like to note that the “one drop rule” served as the inspiration for Nazi discrimination against Jews, but was deemed excessively harsh by even the members of Hitler’s inner circle. This rule was imposed by the same party (obviously not the same Senators or Congresspeople) that is now pushing for the greater availability of abortion, through both taxpayer funding and a removal of term restrictions (up to and even post-birth abortions): the Democrat party. More on the racist history of the American abortion industry, and the Democrats’ radical modern policies, later.
In western democracies, our philosophical tradition of individual liberties afforded to us by the virtue of our humanity, and protected, not provided, by government, mean our human rights are written and chartered without the belief that there are qualifications which make a human being unfit to possess them, without infringing on another human being’s rights first to relinquish their own. If we were to revoke this philosophical principle, then people with mental disabilities, mental illnesses and memory impairment could be said to be killed just as justly as unborn children.
I, for one, am uncomfortable with such a standard.
This standard has been instituted recently, however, in regard to abortion: on June 21st, Justice Nathalie Lieven issued a ruling in the Court of Protection that has ordered a British-Nigerian woman in her twenties (identity undisclosed) to terminate her 22-week-old child because of her diminished mental and cognitive abilities. This is in spite of the woman and her mother’s Catholic convictions leading them to want to keep the child.
The ability to revoke the right to life, or right to create life, from people based on them being “not fully human” or “not fully sentient” is dangerous and disturbing. We have already seen the British government ordering treatment be revoked from Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans, and the government’s prevention of them to be taken abroad to seek private treatment not provided by the UK government via the NHS. NHS hospitals spent over £400,000 on legal fees to defend their doctor’s decisions to prevent the children seeking treatment abroad, instead ending their lives against the wishes of the parents. The Evans family had gifts stolen from Alfie’s memorial in the subsequent months after his death.
These heart-breaking cases — even one of them — is enough to warrant the prevention of governments and healthcare officials determining which innocent people have the right to life, and have their rights not be infringed upon.
Secondly: the argument that the child inhabits a woman’s body, and she has full autonomy to do with her body as she pleases. It is not true that the child is an extension of the woman’s body, as no aspect of anyone’s body has DNA of a strain independent to that found throughout the rest of the body.
The mother, also, cannot have two heartbeats, two brains, forty digits or a penis. Therefore, the phrase “My body my choice” does not apply to abortion: you cannot harm the child, as it has its own body that is reliant on, but not a part of, its mother’s.
The child is also not a parasite, as some have suggested, as this would require the child to be of a different species to its mother (the host). A mother and her child have, instead, a symbiotic relationship more closely classified as commensal: where the foetus benefits from the mother, without it (usually) seriously injuring or killing her (as the female body has evolved to accommodate childbearing).
Also, it’s an inconsistent line of argument to advocate personal autonomy of your property, but then demand people pay for abortion via a socialised healthcare system. I realise not every advocate of abortion argues for universal healthcare coverage, such as the NHS or the DNC’s “Medicare for all” 2020 platform, but that is the position of many pro-abortion governmental bodies and activist organisations. It’s odd to me that “My wallet, my choice” is not an equally respected argument.
Thirdly: that a number of weeks can be consistently applied to abortion as a restriction. The most obvious issue with this argument comes from the varying survivability rates around the world: infant mortality is low in western nations, and modern medical technology allows premature babies of increasingly young ages to survive outside the womb when born early. In the United States, a 26-week-old foetus has a 59% survival rate if born without a disability. An argument that appeals to a legal restriction of weeks, without a consistent and objective standard as reasoning behind the limit, is an arbitrary number which ties the value of human life to geographical location and economic privilege. Neither of those characteristics are chosen by the child, who has no say as to who its parents are, what income bracket it is born into, and where it lives.
The only consistent standard for limitations that do not state that life begins at conception (which is generally the various Christian denominations’ perspective on this matter) is one of the first heartbeat or brain signal, indicating an individual human life has started and so cannot be taken. This is a scientifically measurable, and so secularly applicable, legal standard, beginning as early as the fifth week of foetal development. This is the standard by which the states of Georgia, Ohio, Alabama and Missouri have passed their laws limiting abortion to only occurring until five weeks into the pregnancy, and as such have been dubbed “Heartbeat bills” or “Heartbeat law” states. Contrary to popular misconception, women cannot be jailed for having abortions under this law, as the states did not repeal existing laws which prevent this when signing the new “Heartbeat laws” into effect. Abortion administers, however, can be imprisoned.
An argument related to legality is the common argument by abortion activists that “There is no point banning abortion, because women will be forced to seek out unsafe abortions instead”. This is illogical, as it would then follow that other morally incorrect acts should not be illegal, because there will still be individuals that violate the law and cause harm. This is also the position of politicians who assert that banning firearms and “Hate speech” (a nonsensical concept unrecognised by any court in the United States) will prevent such vile actions as firearm crime, or racism and other forms of bigoted discrimination.
Additionally, abortions (although the risk is low) do not come without the risk of medical errors, which can be as severe as even damage to the womb which would prevent further pregnancies.
Finally, there is the argument that was most raised by those with dissenting opinions against my own in discussions prior to this article being written: a foetus shouldn’t take priority over the life of the mother. Now, this argument is not arguing that the unborn child must be delivered, even if the mother will die. The general pro-life position on this is that the death of the child must be prevented at all costs except those which kill the mother. This does not make the death of the child any less tragic, though. Instead, this argument mandates that the desires of the mother to remain childless, or her occupational, relationship, emotional or economic circumstances take precedent over the life of the unborn child.
I received plenty of criticism during those discussions for summarising my position on this as “The convenience of the mother does not take precedence over human life: the negative experience of a mother does not equate to the death of the child”. Allow me to unpack this soundbite, before I have to dodge any more rotten tomatoes from the social media stocks. The child and the mother have the same innate value as human beings: this is not a devaluation of the life of the mother to be the same of that as an unborn child, or else I would be arguing you could kill the mother too (which, as we already discussed, is an unsustainable standard). Therefore, the subjective life circumstances of the mother do not have more importance than the life itself of her child. Furthermore, the suffering of the mother, even in horrific cases of children conceived via rape and/or incest, does not have moral equivalency to the suffering of the child who is killed.
Mothers in the worst emotional and financial circumstances should be supported by charity, and deserve the utmost respect and sympathy for their horrendous ordeals.
I have listed here some organisations worthy of consideration, should you choose to support them and the mothers seeking their assistance:
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
Abby Johnson’s personal website
Whilst the prospect of the suffering of mothers may be uncomfortable for many, including myself, it is worth remembering that there are other choices. It is deceptive that the pro-abortion movement is called pro-choice, as not only should killing another person not be a choice, but the label also implies that pro-life provides women with no choices in regard to their bodily autonomy. As conservative commentator and late-night comedian Steven Crowder often says in his “Change my mind” segments, pro-life provides four choices: abstinence and contraception for sexual measures to prevent pregnancy, and motherhood or adoption post-pregnancy.
I can attest to the virtues of adoption through a family story: my great grandmother had a child as a teenager, and gave the girl up for adoption. Years later, my grandmother found her an older sister, who is living halfway around the world in Canada, with a loving family of her own. Whilst the shame of unmarried pregnancy in 20th century Ireland would have been very damaging to the life of my great grandmother, the same good came of my great-aunt’s birth and adoption as did my grandmother’s own birth and childhood. Those born of unfortunate circumstances can still live full, content and meaningful lives of their own.
I can also attest anecdotally to the grief and sadness of the loss of unborn children. I have known women who have miscarried, and it has been a source of both immense sadness for the life lost, and a source of great anxiety for future intended pregnancies. Alternatively, I know women who have chosen to have abortions because they felt it necessary at that time in their lives. As the action itself is predicated on an ideological position (the conviction that the child is an autonomous human life that is not to be ended), I harbour no vitriol for these women for this action; only sadness that a life was lost.
But, beyond my personal experiences with the topic, what is the purpose of engaging with the heated debate surrounding abortion?
From 1973 to 2011, there were 53 million abortions performed. Almost one million were performed in 2014 alone. There are up to 12,000 abortions performed in the third trimester of pregnancy that are not medically necessary (to save the endangered life of the mother) every year in the United States. Very few abortions are due to “foetal abnormalities”.
More African American children are aborted than born in the United States. Black women are responsible for 36% of abortions annually, despite making up around 13% of America’s female population. This is seemingly fulfilling the possibly racist (with her 1939 letter having various interpretations), certainly eugenicist fantasies of Margaret Sanger: founder of the leading provider of abortions in the United States (and governmentally funded under the Obama administration), Planned Parenthood.
As previously referenced, the Democrat party (the political force driving pro-abortion side of the debate), formerly led by President Barak Obama were responsible for the creation of the Klu Klux Klan, opposed reconstruction following the American Civil War, imposed the segregation laws known as Jim Crowe laws, and blocked numerous civil rights bills during the 20th century.
Abortion as a method of eugenics is not unique to the United States: in Iceland, the eradication of Down’s Syndrome through mandatory abortion has been compared to an ableist genocide.
The Trump administration has voiced its intentions to revoked Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding by amending Title X. Although the 1970 Title X ruling mandates that taxpayer funding is only to be spent on reproductive health care services, and the Hyde Amendment (which Democrat 2020 candidates wish to repeal) supposedly ensures no taxpayer funds are to be designated to funding abortion, the government subsidies provided under Title X make accessible more of Planned Parenthood’s funds to be spent on abortion. Some abortions are also paid for via Medicaid, though the economic boom under the Trump administration has led to a lower rate of Medicaid enrolment between 2018 and 2019.
Planned Parenthood has also been exposed by Live Action activist David Daleiden in 2015 for willing to profit from the selling of foetal tissue and organs, obtained from abortions, to organisations interested in experimenting on human tissue samples.
Abortion laws throughout the United States are changing in the opposite direction to the “Heartbeat bill” states. In New York, the 9/11 memorial was lit up with pink lights to celebrate the ‘Reproductive Health Act’ that permits abortion up until the moment of birth, should the mother decide the child is unwanted. This required the repealing of laws which classify the murder of a pregnant woman as double homicide; the non-medical abortion of a child in New York is now no longer classified as murder.
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker signed a repeal of a 1975 law that required spousal consent, waiting periods and health and safety inspections for abortion facilities to obtain an abortion. The new bill instead states: ‘a fertilized egg, embryo, or foetus does not have independent rights under the law, of this State’.
Virginia delegate Kathy Tran presented a third-trimester abortion bill that allows for abortions to occur during dilation. Shortly after, governor of Virginia Ralph Northam advocated for post-birth abortion, saying that an infant may be delivered, resuscitated, and ‘kept comfortable’ before a discussion will ensue between physicians and the mother as to whether the baby is to be terminated.
These bills are not contingent on an objective standard of physical health: they permit third-trimester abortion if the mother argues it will “impair her mental health”. The same standard applies for abortions up to 24 weeks in the UK under the 1967 ‘Abortion Act’.
Governor Northam’s disturbing insinuation has already become legal precedent for infants fortunate enough to survive abortion attempts. The ‘Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act’ intended to afford infants who survive abortions the same necessary treatment afforded to babies both born prematurely and without complications. It prevented the prosecution of the mother for an attempted abortion, whilst also imposing criminal penalties on doctors who failed to administer treatment to infants who survived abortion. The bill was blocked by Senate Democrats, only three of which voted in favour of the bill. Those against included every Senate Democrat running for President in 2020: Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and Bernie Sanders.
As a result of the ‘Born Alive’ act being prevented from being passed, doctors are now permitted to allow children who have survived abortions to die after being born without any repercussions.
The disturbing trend of increasingly flexible abortion restrictions originates from the heavily contested grounds on which the Roe V. Wade case, the case which essentially legalised abortion in the United States from 1973 onwards, is predicated on. Roe V. Wade ruled that abortion is covered under the fourteenth amendment’s ‘Right to privacy’; however, despite the inalienable nature of the constitutional rights that ‘shall not be infringed’ upon, the ruling states that this right to privacy is also subject to balance via the government of a woman’s health and the protection of prenatal life. This has led to the shifting of term limits, as there is no consistent standard instituted by the ruling. There have been many voices, even those not necessarily pro-life, asking to repeal Roe V. Wade, and for a new, better distinguished legal precedent regarding abortion law to be set. With the appointment of what looks to be three Supreme Court Justices by the Trump administration, it looks to be a possibility; though Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh have not expressed interest in issuing a direct challenge to Roe V. Wade.
Roe V. Wade also proves damning to the argument that abortion should only be allowed in the circumstances of incest and rape, as the abortion was requested on the grounds of a false gang rape accusation.
It is interesting to note that Jane Roe (real name Norma McCorvey) became a pro-life activist in 1995, until her death in February 2018. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota have all passed state laws that pre-emptively outlaw abortion in the event that Roe V. Wade is overturned.
As abortion is the termination of a human life, there is no good reason not to condemn this. As this article has (hopefully) demonstrated, there is a plethora of scientific and philosophical arguments which support the pro-life position.
There has been, however, a concerted effort to prevent the spread of pro-life material and messaging. The 2018 movie ‘Gosnell’ about abortion doctor and serial killer Kermit Gosnell (written by the excellent Andrew Klavan, who has a terrific daily podcast) was dropped from theatres despite appearing in the nation’s top 10 grossing films in its debut week.
A recent controversy involving whistle-blowers at Pinterest has also surfaced, in the midst of accusations of censorship of prominent right-leaning voices on Silicon Valley social media platforms. James O’Keefe’s media watchdog organisation Project Veritas exposed leaked internal documents from Pinterest which listed Live Action, a previously mentioned pro-life activist organisation, on a pornography blocklist to prevent it being shared on the website. When VICE media founder Tim Pool (who co-interviewed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, along with Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, on the Joe Rogan Experience about social media censorship) published a YouTube video on this, it was struck down and removed from the website following a “Privacy complaint”. The video has since been posted to free-speech committed video-sharing platform BitChute, which is rapidly growing as an alternative to YouTube in the wake of their “ad-pocalypses” and censorship of conservative and right-leaning channels following Vox.com’s Carlos Maza campaigning to censor Steven Crowder.
Therefore, the reason I’m compelled to write this extensive piece, and disagree with friends and colleagues, is because I hold the conviction that abortion is the single greatest legal injustice of our time, and I aim to rationalise, contextualise and emphasise this to as many people as are willing to engage with me on the subject.
For the record, I am in full support of the “Heartbeat bills”. They set an objective, secular standard as to what is the starting point of a human life, whilst also allowing for both the immediate prevention of pregnancy when reported to police (in the case of conception under criminal circumstances) and the conception of children through IVF (which requires the creation of multiple embryos).
Pro-life advocacy does not come from a sexist devaluation of women, or necessarily from a desire to have religion influence political policy. It is, at least in my case, a belief that all people have innate and equal value, and we have no right to take that from one another by ending a life.