Answering a key argument for abortion: Why excluding unborn children doesn’t make sense

Abortion ends the life of a human embryo or fetus. Supporters of abortion think that’s OK, or sometimes necessary, or maybe even good. But why? 

For many of them, it comes down to this: Unborn children, they think, don’t matter like the rest of us do. 

Consider a common pro-choice argument. Abortion is needed, some say, because of the difficult and unfair circumstances women often face. This is a very real concern that pro-lifers should compassionately address. Notice, though, that the argument doesn’t make sense if unborn children really matter. After all, no one says difficult circumstances justify killing (for example) toddlers or teenagers, who are clearly valuable human beings and ought to be treated as such. If unborn babies are also valuable human beings, then killing them isn’t justified either! 

Here’s the key point: Abortion supporters usually think (or at least assume) that unborn children are different from toddlers and teenagers. They don’t have the same value and right to life. They don’t count as members of our human family. 

Pro-choice advocates defend this exclusion in two main ways. Here’s why neither way works—and why unborn babies deserve equal respect and protection. 

Science: Is the unborn a human being? 

First, some people claim unborn children aren’t even biological human beings (i.e., human organisms). To support this position, they sometimes compare human embryos to mere cells, tissues, or organs (like the sperm and egg, a kidney, or a patch of skin cells). Those aren’t human beings, even though they are alive and human. And neither (the argument goes) are human embryos, at least at the earliest stages. 

The problem with this approach is that the scientific evidence is clear. That evidence shows that, from fertilization, the unborn child (1) grows and metabolizes nutrients into energy and (2) has human DNA and a human developmental trajectory. So she is alive and human. But the evidence also shows that—unlike mere cells and tissues, which are only parts of someone—the unborn child is (3) a whole organism (an individual member of our species) actively developing herself through the many stages of life. 

This is what science tells us. Human embryos and fetuses are simply living members of our species at the embryonic and fetal stages of their development. None of us was ever a sperm or an egg. But each of us was once an embryo and a fetus, just as we were once toddlers and teenagers. 

Human rights: Do all humans have them? 

There’s a second way some people try to exclude unborn children. Unborn babies may be biologically human, many pro-choice advocates acknowledge, but they aren't yet “persons” with the value and right to life that we have.  

Why not? Because they lack certain characteristics or abilities. Unborn babies are smaller than us, less developed, more dependent. They look different. They can’t think and feel in all the same ways as older humans.  

If our rights depend on such traits, though, serious problems emerge. One problem is that this standard excludes more people than just babies in the womb. Unborn children are highly dependent on others, for instance, but so are those who are elderly or have disabilities. Unborn children aren’t self-aware or rational, but neither are newborns or patients with advanced dementia. Unborn children (especially very young ones) may look different from older human beings, but appearance has only too often served as a basis for unjust discrimination. 

In short: Once we say that humans must meet some standard in order to have value, then none of us are safe.  

Here’s another problem: We don’t have characteristics like cognitive ability and dependency to an equal degree. When it comes to those traits, all of us—including everyone reading this article—are different. So if those characteristics confer our rights, then we don’t have equal rights. Some of us (like those who are smarter or more independent) have greater rights than others. Equality is a fiction. 

If we deny equality for unborn children, then we deny equality for everyone. 

No one should be left out 

The reality is this: Our rights don’t depend on characteristics that some humans have and others lack. Dividing humanity in two—those who matter and those who don’t—doesn’t make any sense. The truth, instead, is that we matter simply because we are human. That’s why every single human counts, and why every single human counts equally. 

And it’s why human beings in the womb deserve the same respect and protection as the rest of us.

This article appears in the October-December 2024 issue of MCCL News.