Why We Disagree About Abortion
Framing the Abortion Debate Around Personhood
Intro
With the overturning of the 1973 Supreme Court Decision Roe vs. Wade last week, I thought it would be apt to attempt to cut through some of the circle debates and get to the heart of the disagreement people have over abortion. I have made one recorded conversation with someone of opposing views on this topic in the last week (this will come out either this next week or the week after), but I felt that it would be best to try to state the issue clearly and succinctly.
Where We All Disagree: Personhood
The major point of disagreement between the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” people concerns the question of personhood. Both sides seem to agree that you shouldn’t murder an innocent human being (this is essentially a human universal). However, they differ on whether or not—and at what point or not—a baby in the womb is a person.
All pro-life people1 will say that a baby (or fetus or composite or whatsoever term suits your fancy) is a baby—a baby is a person—at the point of conception. On the other hand, pro-choice people move this mark of personhood to some other place. By these definitions, some pro-choicers are more “radical” than others. A pro-choice person who thinks abortion is fine up until birth is obviously more extreme than a person who thinks abortion is permissible for up to 6 weeks. Nonetheless, I have lumped all “non-conception” stances to be pro-choice for the sake of ease here.
The point of disagreement between the pro-life position and the various pro-choice positions is startlingly simple: the difference lies in where each camp draws the line at the beginning of life and personhood. In fact, this is such a determining factor that even individuals’ stories, circumstances, etc. will not affect a person’s position much if they believe that the baby is now person. In other words, it doesn't matter to the pro-life person that Sally is a Ph.D. candidate at Standford and will have to take a break from her bursting career: abortion would be wrong because it is the killing of another person. Similarly, a pro-choice person who believes that life begins at 24 weeks of pregnancy would be hard-pressed to care about Sally’s external situation if she was having the abortion after that 24-week mark. Even more than this, the most pro-choice person, who believes that the baby can be killed even after birth, would not say the same of a three-year-old kid, even if that kid was holding back Sally more than an infant was.
The major difference between all three examples above is the question of personhood. None of these camps think that we should be allowed to murder innocent people. We merely disagree on what a person is. Interestingly enough, this has almost always been the case throughout human history, whether that be the unjust killing of women (because they weren’t thought to be people), or the enslavement of black people (because they weren’t thought to be people). Injustice against another innocent human being is almost always justified by saying that that person is not really a person.
Towards Better Conversation
With this in mind, I believe that pro-lifers and pro-choicers can, perhaps, start to have better and more productive conversations about abortion. I personally believe that life starts at conception. This is where personhood begins. Thus, I believe that abortion is wrong. However, if I thought that life began at 8 weeks of pregnancy, then I could easily agree that abortion wasn’t wrong before then. And that is the point of contact, that is what we need to be talking about: what is personhood and when does a baby (or fetus or whatever term you want to use that will make you happy) become a person.
Approaching the conversation on abortion in this manner will cut through almost all of the needless junk2 and will get us talking in a way in which we can hopefully come to a point of agreement. The issue of abortion is really not that complex. We all agree that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. When we really get down to i,t we have one question: when does a baby become a person? Hopefully we can move to a place where we can stop screaming, panicking, and calling each other names, and get to a place where we can learn to listen and debate actual substainive arguments.
I am defining pro-life as “the position which one holds where life and personhood begin at the moment of conception.”
The biggest caveat to my approach here is the pro-choice argument known as the “Violinist Argument.” I did not address this here. However, a very good and short treatment of this argument can be found here: Answering The Best Pro Choice Argument - YouTube
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Interesting👍😂. Did you ever get around to looking into the difference between life beginning at “conception” verses “implantation?” Because like I said earlier, a lot of people justify hormonal birth control by believing that life begins at the actual implantation of the fetus into the uterus, instead of when the sperm and egg initially join (which is conception). So I’m probably just asking you when you TRULY believe that life begins. Or perhaps I’m asking you to clarify your definition of conception. Any thoughts, Colton?
Most pro choice people I know hold to the bodily autonomy argument, which makes the argument about personhood completely irrelevant. Granting a fetus the right to use a woman's body to sustain itself is not only a violation of the woman's human rights, it also grants the fetus special rights that we don't give to anyone else.