Baby Talk
Common sense responses to the uncommonly senseless arguments people give for killing unborn children.
By Steve Kellmeyer

When was the last time it happened to you? Maybe you were eating lunch with a friend at work, riding stationary bikes at the gym with your workout partner, or discussing the ways of the world with a next-door neighbor when a sudden chill entered the conversation. "Abortion." When that word was spoken, things changed.

You realized, to your surprise and dismay, that your partner in conversation was not pro-life. The pleasant talk suddenly became strained and a knot settled in your belly as the other person started in with the hard questions about rape, incest, underage pregnancies, fetal deformities. The list is not long, but neither were your answers.

You know instinctively and unequivocally that killing an unborn baby is unconscionable, but why is it so difficult to put that certitude into words? How do you formulate a response that will convince the other person, without alienating her and without allowing her to dismiss your pro-life convictions out of hand simply because they're "just your religious views"?

One challenge lies in overcoming the hidden assumptions many defenders of abortion bring (consciously or unconsciously) into the conversation - assumptions to which the pro-life person often unwittingly acquiesces. So let's examine eight common pro-abortion arguments and the hidden assumptions each argument contains. This often-heard statement is not restricted just to those who defend abortion. It's used by people who claim to be pro-life. (They aren't really, of course, if they use that cop-out.) You could counter this statement by asking, "Let's say your neighbor brought home her newborn from the hospital this morning, and this afternoon you saw her in the backyard crushing the child's skull with a rock. Would you force your morals on her by calling the police?" "That's different - that's against the law."

"Why is it different?"

"It just is."

"No, law is the morality of society - the collective individual.' We enact laws against things we don't like (eg. prostitution, drug use, murder, etc.), and in favor of things we do like (Christmas and Thanksgiving as holidays, having an Army and Navy to defend our country, etc.). Laws exist precisely to compel certain people to do things they don't want to do or stop them from doing things they do want to do."

Back to our hypothetical murder in progress in the backyard: You can avoid forcing your morality on your neighbor only by not dialing 911. But the real issue is, should you dial 911? Of course. In fact, you are obliged to try to do something to prevent the action.

Now, notice what your neighbor is doing to you by assaulting the child with a rock. She is forcing her morals on you! She's killing someone, an act which violates the moral law of society and your personal moral convictions as well. She would wish nothing more than to force you to quietly accept her morality. She would make you feel guilty about interfering with her free decision to kill. Does she have the right to force her morals on you?

See the irony in this statement? It's itself an opinion, one that is being imposed on you. You might respond, "Do you really believe no one has the right to force her own value system on someone else?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you think I don't accept that idea?"

"Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be trying to make me live my life according to your value system."

The setup is complete. Now you say, "So, you want to force your values, values which I clearly don't subscribe to, onto me? You want to force me to accept the value system that says: no one should be forced to accept another person's value system?

If you really believe what you say, in order to avoid forcing your values onto me, you should remain silent when I assert my pro-life views." Michael Gilbert's book, How to Win an Argument (available from Envoy Magazine), is an excellent resource for learning how to spot this fallacy and how to respond effectively to it. His argument is a variation on a theme. Sometimes it takes the form of: "What about the case of a fourteen-year-old girl? She's way too young to have a baby, so she should abort it."

These arguments contain the a priori assumption that getting rid of the effect of an act will somehow make the act less heinous and more livable. This is a form of moral subjectivism, the notion that one's actions are not wrong in and of themselves, but only if unwanted consequences follow. The sad reality is that legal abortion actually makes it easier (if not more likely) for men to commit incest or have intercourse with underage girls. In nearly every state, sexual activity by an adult with a minor (under 18) is legally considered statutory rape - a criminal offense. Some states have even passed laws specifying that a statutory rape of a girl 16 or younger, that later results in her having an abortion, is a felony.

Ironically, it was a 1995 study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, the "research arm" of Planned Parenthood, that indicated that the younger the girl is, the older her partner is likely to be. The study showed that girls between 12 and 14 are most often impregnated by men between 20 to 25 years old. Other statistics show that 50 percent of all pregnant girls under the age of 15 abort their children (cf. The Champaign News-Gazette, September 5, 1995, p. C-7, "For Teen Moms, Trouble Starts with Sex Abuse").

Medical personnel are required to report signs of sexual abuse. Why aren't abortionists reporting the abuse and statutory rapes of these young girls? A case in point: In Boynton Beach, FL, in 1968, a man impregnated his daughter. Because abortion was illegal, this retired plumber took the child his daughter bore and buried her alive in the backyard. He moved to Scottsdale, PA, impregnated her again, and buried this baby in the basement. Police were alerted to the crime in 1995, and were able to dig up and identify the bodies, successfully charging the man with rape and murder (ibid., A-6, April 19, 1995, "Police Seek Body of Baby that Man had by Daughter").

In 1970, that man resorted to the unthinkable horror of burying those children alive in order to cover up his hideous crime. Today, he could simply take his daughter to an abortion clinic and tell the clinic workers (assuming they ask) that the unborn child was the boyfriend's. The evidence of the crime is carried out with the rest of the bodies in the morning trash.

Does this happen often? No one knows. Abortion clinics are not required to show any data on their patients to anyone. However, Meta Uchtman, director of the Indiana chapter of Suicide Anonymous, says that 80 percent of the young women who call her hot-line have had an abortion. A standard question these counselors are trained to ask women who show signs of clinical depression is, "Have you had an abortion?" The evidence seems to indicate that when you see a pregnant minor, an adult male was the cause of her situation. Sadly, the legal, easy-to-get abortion is one of his escape routes. He avoids detection and punishment for preying on a minor, because there is no "evidence" left of his crime. The cold reality is that abortion doesn't help the girl physically or emotionally - her risk for suicide after an abortion is nine times higher than the average for teenagers. But the abortion lets the man off the hook for sexual exploitation.

This trend is documented by pro-life writer Ann Saltenburger in her book Every Woman Has a Right to Know the Dangers of Legal Abortion.

What about rape? There's no denying that the crime of rape happens with staggering frequency and to answer this emotionally-charged argument, you must first consider what rape is: the criminal, violent exercise of power and domination over a woman, an attempt to degrade her and treat her as a mere object, something less than human. What happens to the woman who, as a rape victim, has an abortion? She exercises a violent power and domination over the innocent child in her womb, making that child an object to be conveniently disposed of, a something (not someone) less than human. Without comprehending it, what the rapist sought to bring about by force, the victim, by aborting, vindicates and completes.

But think about how different is the act made by the woman who gives birth to the child. Where the rapist saw her as an object to be used, she sees her unborn child as a person, not an object. The rapist used violence to get what he wanted; by permitting her unborn child to live, this woman refutes his violence with peace and mercy. The rapist's destroying hatred and brutal selfishness is countered by the woman's nurturing love and selfless sacrifice for another. Though the rapist intended injury and perhaps death, the woman brings forth life. The rape which results in the woman choosing life over death for her unborn child is a powerful denial of the rapist and his predatory deed. True, her choosing life can't undo the heinous crime he committed, but it does neutralize its evil. Defenders of abortion may argue that few women will adopt this philosophical point of view, especially in the traumatic aftermath of a rape, and that is true. But it's true, sadly, because women in our modern culture have been conditioned to resort to the savage tools of violence and selfishness, instead of affirming their own biology and womanhood.

This assertion compares the risk of a surgical procedure generally undertaken before the twelfth week of pregnancy to the risks involved in the ninth month of pregnancy. It also assumes the risk calculation of both is reasonable, which is not necessarily the case.

Taking powerful abortifacient hormones and chemicals, having surgery - these things add to an individual's health risk, they do not detract from risk. Consider a woman who is one month pregnant. That woman is more likely to be in good health than is a woman who is one month pregnant and is also undergoing a chemical or surgical abortion. No matter what stage of pregnancy you consider, the pregnant woman is safer to be pregnant at that stage than she is to be pregnant and have an abortion. In fact, the risk of abortion rises so rapidly that by the 13th week it is safer to carry the child for the full nine months than it is to have an abortion.

This is true even though the risk calculations are stacked against being pregnant. For instance, ectopic pregnancies (pregnancies in which the embryo is "stuck" inside the fallopian tube) are very dangerous because the growing child will eventually rupture the tube, causing severe and probably fatal complications.

Abortions only empty the uterus - they don't touch the fallopian tubes. According to Center For Disease Control rules, if a woman with an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy has an abortion performed and subsequently becomes ill or dies because her undetected ectopic pregnancy ruptures her fallopian tubes, those problems are ascribed to maternal health risks, not abortion health risks - even if she dies on the abortionist's table.

This statement assumes the child is the mother's enemy. The pro-life position assumes the mother and child are friends, natural allies - not enemies. If a parent does not intend the child's death, but the child dies anyway, the parent is not culpable.

Imagine a woman whose fallopian tubes were blocked by an infection. It would be perfectly reasonable for a surgeon to remove the fallopian tubes in order to prevent the woman's death. In an ectopic pregnancy, the child is not an infection, but the child is also not in a healthy place for himself or for his mother. If the surgeon removes the fallopian tube, the child will probably die, but neither the mother nor the surgeon intend the child's death. The procedure would have been carried out no matter what caused the blockage - unfortunately, it happened to have been the child this time.

Contrast this to a legal abortion. The whole procedure is designed to bring about the death of the child. If this were otherwise, legal abortion would just be an early C-section. Pro-abortion groups are not fighting for the right to an early C-section. They are fighting for the right to a dead baby.

Even if we agreed that children with health problems should be killed, there is another angle to this argument which is often overlooked - the health risk to the child in the womb created by the act of testing, and the health risk to the woman of aborting a child with a problem. The pro-abort often forgets that most children are healthy, and that it is safer to carry to term than it is to have a second or third trimester abortion.

Generally speaking, the tests which detect fetal health problems are chorionic villus sampling (CVS, a procedure in which a small part of the placenta is removed and tested), amniocentesis, and ultrasound. Due to technical considerations, these tests cannot return meaningful results before the 10th week (the 12th week for amnio) at the absolute earliest. This means the woman is extremely unlikely to obtain an abortion until the second (often the third) trimester. Second and third trimester abortions are not done for reasons of physical health - she would be physically safer if she just carried to term and gave the child up for adoption.

Furthermore, remember that most pregnancies are perfectly normal. Thus, these tests are generally being conducted on a normal child. The probability of amnio/CVS causing a miscarriage is about the same as the probability of identifying a genetic problem, ie. about 1 percent. If the test is being done because the risks of a genetic problem are considered "significant," then it is also safe to say that these two procedures create a "significant" risk of miscarriage. In addition, CVS is associated with an increase in the probability of limb deformities (missing toes, fingers, etc.).

In short, procedures which test for fetal abnormalities increase the probability of harming a child who is almost certainly normal, in order to detect problems whose only "remedy" is a procedure which is several times more dangerous to the woman than simply giving birth. Essentially, many doctors are on a search-and-destroy mission for handicapped children, and they force healthy babies and mothers to pay the cost.

If our humanity derives from our being conscious and "viable" (ie. able to survive independently without direct, ongoing assistance from others), then those in comas or those who are under general anesthesia while in surgery aren't people. Taken to its logical conclusion, to agree with the "viability" argument above, used so often by pro-abortion extremists, means that killing a comatose or anesthetized patient wouldn't be wrong. Such patients are clearly not "viable." They need others to keep them alive. Nor can one argue that it would be wrong to kill such patients because they were previously conscious and most probably will return to consciousness shortly. Corpses used to be conscious - does that make a corpse a person? We have no guarantee that the unconscious tissue mass will wake up. Are there lower limits to what is acceptable for conscious thought? Do you need a certain level of intelligence to be human? If so, does this mean Down syndrome children aren't human?

"Viability," in the sense the pro-abortion crowd uses it, refers to one's ability to continue to survive independently. Note that the term presupposes that the entity in question is already alive - the term questions only whether the person will survive much longer. Remember, viability is a measure of technology, not humanity. If viability did measure humanity, then a child born prematurely in Zaire would be less human than a child born prematurely in the U.S., black children in the U.S. (who have a higher mortality rate than white children) would be less human than white children. Navy sailors trapped in a submarine, mountain climbers caught in a snowstorm, the Apollo 13 astronauts - the viability of each is in question, therefore, they are not human.

The fact is, the various biological arguments employed by the pro-abortionists generally fail. Trying to "prove" the unborn child isn't human through biological arguments is similar to the futility of trying to disprove the existence of God with scientific data.

There are two remarkably erroneous assumptions here, both deeply veiled. The first is bound up in the idea that a woman is oppressed by carrying a child. Implicitly, the fertile woman is the only creature on the face of the earth who is oppressed by her own biology. Her own biology is an enemy which must be subdued through chemical castration (the Pill, Norplant), physical devices, or surgery. In this mindset, a woman's freedom from oppression derives from her sterility, not her fecundity. When this is pointed out to a pro-abort, he will attempt to find an analogy: "Using the Pill is like taking aspirin for a headache, or taking antibiotics for an infection." It is worthwhile pointing out that this compares a perfectly healthy and normal aspect of female biology to an illness. Does a normally functioning female body require medical intervention by the very fact of its existence? What "fault" is being "corrected"?

That is why refuting the second assumption, which is quite indirect, is often the key to breaking down the pro-choice wall. It is assumed that men have no rights, but it assumes that they do have responsibilities. These responsibilities are imposed by the woman. When the underlying assumption involved in this above statement is unveiled, the pro-abortion arguer often gets upset. If the argument is presented well, you'll see the irony of a pro-abortion arguer resorting to using pro-life explanations.

To see how this works, consider the following conversation between Rachel, a pro-life college student and Bill, her pro-abortion classmate:

Rachel: "Is the choice to have sex a choice to have a child?"

Bill: "No."

Rachel: "And you believe that at conception, the 'thing' conceived is not a child, right?"

Bill: "Exactly."

Rachel: "So, when exactly would you say that a child begins to exist?"

(NOTE: How Bill answers doesn't really matter. Rachel agrees, for the sake of argument, to use whatever time frame he chooses.)

Rachel: "And you believe that a woman may have an abortion for whatever reason she chooses?"

Bill: "Of course."

Rachel: "Do you believe men and women have equal rights?"

Bill: "As long as abortion is legal, yes."

Rachel: "All right. Who creates children?"

Bill: "What do you mean?"

Rachel: "Well, if there's no child at conception, the 'product of conception' has to become a child at some point before it's born. Therefore, the woman alone 'creates' the child through the act of gestation."

Bill: "Er, what are you driving at?"

Rachel: "It's simple. Your pro-abortion position entails the concept that sexual intercourse doesn't create children, gestation creates children. Intercourse merely creates a fertilized ovum, a 'tissue mass.' Men don't get pregnant. Men don't create children. Men simply provide one-half of a set of blueprints. The woman provides not only the other half, but the building site, the construction materials, she oversees the project, and she can destroy the whole thing anytime she wants. The man has got nothing to do with it. The existence of a child is not his responsibility - he has no choice in the matter, right? He's done nothing to create, and you already said that the decision to have sex is not a decision to have children. So, the idea of compelling child support from the man is really a carry-over from patriarchy, when men were thought to share responsibility for the existence of a child. Now that legal abortion has liberated us from those archaic ideas, we should throw away the last remnants of the old oppression. If the question of allowing the unborn child to live or be killed through abortion is the sole decision of the woman, it makes sense to ask why the man should be made to pay to support her lifestyle, her choice? If she can have an abortion for whatever reason she wants, then she is having a child for whatever reason she wants. In neither case does it have anything to do with the man."

You can see how the conversation would end up. Rachel's line of questioning shows the inconsistency of Bill's position. Bear in mind that these points are given for effect, in order to show the internal inconsistency of the pro-abortion arguments and how they're actually inconsistent with the radical feminist ideology that propels the pro-abortion movement.

Don't expect these answers to pro-abortion arguments to change hearts in minutes. They won't. But clear exposition of the life-affirming teachings of the Church, even when presented in a secular style such as this, will sway people in the long run. Pro-abortion advocates often accept many of the underlying principles espoused by pro-life advocates, though their rhetoric often contradicts it. When you demonstrate the inconsistency of the pro-abortion position, you'll take another step toward leading people back to the path of sanity.