Personhood
Today more and more pro-choice advocates have been forced to concede that the tiny life inside the womb is a human being. However, they flatly deny that our unborn human baby is a person. It used to be that a person and a human being were interchangeable concepts but this clearly would pose a problem for the pro-choice camp. Randy Alcorn sums up the problem as follows:
“The Fourteenth Amendment says the state shall not deprive any “person” of life without due process of law. Of course, when this was written the word human was a synonym for person and could just as easily have been used. The Supreme Court admitted in Roe v. Wade, ‘If the suggestion of personhood [of the unborn] is established, the appellant’s [pro-abortion] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [fourteenth] amendment.’”[1]
Thus, if we can establish that a preborn child is a person then according to the Fourteenth Amendment our tiny little person would be safe from being aborted under the law and would then be guaranteed the basic right to life.
Let’s look at a three month old fetus and see why it is so utterly disingenuous to deny him or her personhood. Prochoice advocates contend that at three months a fetus is just too tiny to be called a person. At that stage of development, a fetus is only about an inch or two in length and weighs only about an ounce. But what they fail to tell you is that it also has a perfectly functioning heart that has already beat millions of times! We all know that if a person’s heart stops beating they die. But if a fetus has a beating heart it is clearly an alive person.
Or what about a five month old fetus, which according to the law can be aborted in every state in America. Well today thanks to modern technology doctors can perform surgery in the womb to help correct a defective heart in the fetus. Thus, a doctor is performing surgery on a second patient, and obviously if you are a patient you must be a person. Another fascinating fact concerning a five month old fetus is that many have come into this world prematurely and are alive today in good health. Strange how a doctor can legally abort a five month old fetus but another doctor frantically work to save the life of another five month old fetus that is born prematurely! In the first case the fetus is not a person but in the second case the fetus clearly is a person. What changed? It certainly isn’t the fetus – it’s the intent of the mother; and this intent shouldn’t determine personhood. So far we have established that a fetus is clearly alive, a human being and a person.
The Dehumanization Process
But in order to make the unborn a candidate for abortion in the first place a dehumanization process must take place. Jean Garton in comparing Native American human beings, Black human beings, and unborn human beings sees a tremendous parallel in this dehumanization process. She rightly states: “This is not the first time in our history that we have made a distinction between the biological category of living human beings and the legal concept of ‘person.’”[2] Pro-abortion advocates once again cry foul and say that it is highly inaccurate to compare the hate felt for blacks in the old U.S. to the views of the average advocate of legalized abortion of a fetus. But these advocates completely miss the point. Regardless of motive if the unborn is a person then taking their lives in mass is clearly an unspeakable evil practice.
Gregg Cunningham states the parallels in a convincing way:
“Dominant societies have traditionally been selfish in the way they grant personhood. Ours is no exception. When a vulnerable group gets in our way or has something we want, we tend to define personhood in terms which exclude them. Indians got in the way of Westward settlement so we said they were subhuman to justify taking their land. We wanted the uncompensated work product of blacks so we said they were subhuman to justify taking their freedom. Unborn children have gotten in the way of our “liberation” so we say they are subhuman to justify taking their lives.”[3]
In fact, in a surreal twist of fate consider the following scenario: Back in the 1850’s it was illegal to abort a white unborn child in America but perfectly legal to kill a black slave if he didn’t obey your wishes. But today it is perfectly legal to kill a white unborn baby but it is murder to kill a black person of any age after birth![4]
And what about comparing the Jewish Holocaust with abortion. Well according to the Abort73.com website they tell us that: “Abortion supporters are infuriated at the notion that abortion is comparable to the Holocaust because they incessantly argue that the unborn aren’t people. This is exactly the same argument that is always made to justify crimes against humanity.”[5] Nazi Germany dehumanized Jews and as a result they could justify their extermination. And prochoice advocates do the exact same thing. They dehumanize the human fetus and as a result justify their extermination. The comparison is definitely valid because in both cases a beating heart is stopped one in a gas chamber, the other in the chamber of the womb.
[1] Randy C. Alcorn, Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments. (Portland, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1994). p. 57.
[2] Jean Garton, Who Broke the Baby? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1998). p. 48.
[3] Gregg Cunningham, Why Abortion is Genocide, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform website: http://abortionno.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/whyabortionisgenocide.pdf
[4] Curt Blattman, Children of the Womb. (Bloomington, IN: 1stBooks Library, 2003). p. 31.
[5] Abort73.com website: Systematic Injustice. http://www.abort73.com/abortion/systematic_injustice/
No one is against a woman choosing to do what she wants with her own body. You don’t see groups protesting liposuction, breast augmentation, various forms of plastic surgery, tattooing, and body piercing.
An unborn baby is not a part of a woman’s body. An unborn baby is a separate biological person with his or her unique DNA. At no time in a woman’s pregnancy does the baby come in contact with his/her mother; if he/she did, the mother’s immune system would attack him/her as a foreign body. In many cases, the baby has a different blood type different from his/her mother. The baby is neither an appendage nor a growth that has to be cut out of the mother like a tumor or a diseased appendix.
When it comes to abortion, what is a woman choosing to do? What is this choice she keeps defending? She’s choosing to kill her unborn child. It’s that simple, but it’s a question that’s rarely asked. “Tell me, what is it about your own body that you are choosing to do?” I would love to hear a pro-abortionist answer the question.
Curt, I think you are exactly right when you say it’s the “intent of the mother” that is exalted over and above any “rights” the separate person in her womb might have. We are at a point in this country where autonomy (and specifically female autonomy) is worshipped above all else; what the woman wants is paramount and we will murder in order to retain that “freedom.”
“You lust and do not have, so you commit murder.” James 4:@ NASB
Thank you for your post! Keep up this important work!