Kevin DeYoung has a post up on his blog about why he believes it is not only permissible but necessary to legislate morality in the case of abortion.
First he makes the point that I was making to Jesurgislac in comments to this post. This point is that if the unborn fetus is human, you can’t kill it:
The question is not whether a woman has a right to choose what do with her body or whether a woman might suffer greatly if she brings the child to term. The question is whether “the unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community”, to quote Francis Beckwith. If the fetus is a human person, then abortion is prima facie morally wrong, and a moral wrong that ought to prohibited by the state. If the fetus is not a member of the human community, then we can debate whether the mother can terminate the pregnancy or not. But this would be to conclude that the unborn child is nothing much more than a mass of flaking skin cells. We don’t talk about a man’s right to choose to shoot his wife, or the right of a parent to suffocate her 4 year old, or the right of a 55 year old to push his aging mother in front of a car. These are not rights because in each case an innocent human person is being killed. If the fetus is a human person, then how can abortion be a right?
emphasis added
Resolution of this question in favor of the mother’s right to terminate the pregnancy necessarily entails a decision that whatever is growing inside of the mother’s uterus is not a human baby. That is why Jesurgislac feels that my calling unborn children babies “fatally weakens” my argument. Much better to call it a zygote, blastocyst, fetus etc than a baby. keep it safely dehumanized so that selfish decisions can be made about his or her future without legal or moral consequence.
That is why I wondered if a live debate would have been better. I wonder if we would all agree that if a fetus is a human person, then abortion is not an acceptable moral option? If so, then we could narrow the focus of the debate to the question of why the fetus is or isn’t a human person from conception onward. If not, then we are in Peter Singer land where any weaker person is subject to termination at any point that someone else determines that person’s marginal utility to the world is not worth their marginal cost. The remainder of the debate at that point would be to draw out as much evidences as possible of the monstrousness of that position
Then Kevin gets to the heart of why abortion is different and should be the subject of laws protecting the unborn children:
Abortion is different. Here we have some people saying “unborn life should be protected.” Others are saying “the fetus does not need to be protected.” The debate is about ends, not means. The abortion argument is not about how to best helpo the child, but whether they child deserves to be helped at all. The plain fact is millions of Americans argue for the right to terminate the unborn. Perhaps they think the fetus is not a human person. Perhaps they think small persons does not have a right to live. Perhaps they haven’t thought through the issue very carefully.
…..
……My wife and I had our 20 week ultrasound last week for our fourth child. We had an earlier ultrasound around 12 weeks because we feared a miscarriage. At both ultrasounds, and every other one we’ve had with our other three children, we’ve seen a little child rolling around, kicking its legs, moving its head, bending its arms. We’ve seen the baby’s spine, 10 fingers and 10 toes, and a little heart racing. If my wife went into preterm labor right now (heaven forbid), our doctors and hospital would do everything to save the life of our child. And if the child died (heaven forbid), the nurses and doctors and staff would mourn with us, and no one would think such a loss to be a small grief.And yet, many Americans, and not a few professing Christians, would think nothing of ending this child’s life on their own. And still others would think it a travesty not to have the “right” to do so. Almost every state has fetal homicide laws for the prosecution of those who harm a child in the womb. And yet, every state allows for abortion in all three trimesters for any reason. It is a sad and terrible kind of blindness that sees no contradiction in praying for safe pregnancies while still defending the right to kill the child of that pregnancy.
Either the unborn child is a human person or not. And if the fetus is a human person, then it is has a right to live whether we want it to or not. Which brings me to the main point: the government has no greater responsibility than protecting the lives of those who do not deserve to die.
emphasis added.
If the unborn child is a person (what else would it be?) then it has the right to live whether we want it to live or not. Read jesurgislac’s comments here and here very carefully. You will see a consistent dehumanization of unborn children. You will also see a consistent refusal to engage on the question of how the unborn child came to be in the womb.
Kevin is right. Abortion is different.