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Add to FavoritesAbortion was a danger to the survival of the human species when we all lived as small groups of hunter-gatherers, rather like the Aboriginals of Australia. But those days are long gone; humanity is now the major influence on Earth's biosphere, and our greatest danger has become that we may extinguish ourselves by smothering the planet that supports us. In that situation, abortion becomes something else entirely.
Step back a moment in imagination to when the first proto-humans were drawn or driven (by drought, or curiosity, or a local epidemic, perhaps) to move outward from their birthplace as a species: the savannas of Africa. Wherever they went, one element remained the same: their extreme vulnerability. The world was full of much larger, faster, and better-armed hunters than ourselves, as well as bacteria and viruses that we had no defense against. An infected injury mostoften meant death.
In fact, there was no friendly environment for a few lightweight, bare-skinned creatures with only moderate hearing, medium sight, and pathetic natural weapons (claws, teeth) to defend themselves with. Given these limitations, what was crucial to our survival then wasn't our intelligence or adaptability. It was our breeding rate, which had to be very high, or we were doomed.
The truth is, for all of our inflated notions of "primitive man, the mighty hunter", for thousands of years we were more like rabbits and mice, which are many predators' basic food. We were small, slow, and comparatively weak in a clinch. Like rabbits. Like mice. This remained true for all the thousands of years before our big brains kicked in sufficiently to develop truly powerful and efficient projectile weapons, like the throwing spear or the atalatl; and it was during those earlier years that our basic physical characteristics were established, by the pressures of evolution.
To survive, we had to be able to breed like rabbits and mice too, quickly replacing our all too common casualties. Spontaneous abortions happened (and still happen) among all human populations at all times, but deliberate abortion would have been species-suicide then: we simply could not afford it. So the genetic lines that flourished were those that procreated most, and encouraged procreation. Quantity far outweighed quality in terms of humanity's survival.
But things change; given enough time, they can change into their opposite. This is what has happened to us, as a species, here in modern times. Our amazing success is becoming the cause of our undoing.
Thanks to better living conditions, better diet, and enormous advances in the medical technology people live much longer instead of dying young (as was still common in the 19th century). Infant survival rates in most of the world are unimaginably higher than when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, or even, later, farmers and herders. So much so, in fact, that human beings are now rapidly crowding out many other species. Our teeming numbers even put our own habitat in peril.
What this means is that the rabbit-like fecundity that we once needed in order to survive (and that got codified in religion as religious duty) is now a huge threat to our entire planet.
But it does not have to be that way. In fact, we are not rabbits reproducing wildly by instinct to stay ahead of the depredations of wolves, bears, and coyotes. Far from it: we are now the masters of this planet, thanks to the reasoning abilities that we depend on more than we do on our instincts. The time has come for us touse those reasoning abilities to take control of the dire issue of human over-population.
In some ways we already have: an infertile woman who desperately wants children can turn to advanced reproductive science to make the life she wants for herself, as a mother. She can increase her chances of having not just one baby but, often, twins or triplets. So why is it laudable for her to do that but pernicious if her sister uses birth control, including abortion, to make the life she wants for herself, as a woman without children - in an overpopulated world?
Moreover, for any woman the freedom to control her own fertility, and so to choose how she wishes to use her lifetime in the world, is an essential condition of her human freedom and dignity. It is not just right but essential to make abortion safe, affordable, and easily available to women everywhere, leaving each actual decision up to each actual woman, according to her values, beliefs, and individual aspirations.
And for our species and the world, this the only hope for a future worth bequeathing to all our children.
Learn more about this author, Suzy Charnas.
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No
In the abortion debate, the two sides are usually described as: "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice". Those who are opposed to abortion are in favour of preserving the life of the unborn child. Those in favour of abortion wish to promote "a woman's right to choose".
This last phrase refers to the right to choose what one does with one's own body. There lies the rub. Women have been blessed with the incredible gift, and responsibility, of being able to carry another body inside of their own. In other words,in the case of a pregnant woman, we're dealing with not just one body, but two; not just the woman's body, but hers and another one as well.
Ultra-sounds will show, even early in the pregnancy, the presence of new life that wasn't there before the pregnancy began. A faint heartbeat in the child can be detected at seven weeks. Yet, we're often led to believe that the child isn't really alive until much later. We could argue all day about the development stages of the unborn child, and at what point the child is anything more than a cluster of cells. We're not talking about a cluster of cancer cells, by the way. We're talking about a baby.
Any observer of nature can plainly understand something about the cycle of life, which includes reproduction. At the beginning stages, an egg is fertilized, and life begins. Even if you don't believe life begins that early, let us understand that a process begins at that point: a process which produces life. I don't know of a single farmer who would plant seeds and then dig them up before the plants are visible. Even if he dug up the seeds the very next day, it would be foolish. Why? Because every farmer knows the entire process is necessary to yield a crop. The entire process, from fertilization to birth, is necessary to produce human life. Stop the process, stop the life.
Now, of course, somebody might say, "What about chicken eggs?". That's another issue entirely; one about animal rights. Let's focus on the question of human rights. And yes, I would submit that unborn babies have, or ought to have, rights. There's been a lot of attention given, in recent years, to rights of children. We campaign and lobby and raise funds to try to keep children out of poverty, slavery, abuse, and malnutrition. But we do virtually nothing to protect the child from being killed in the womb.
So let's explore the question of rights. If ending the life of a newborn baby is murder, then why is deliberately ending the baby's life a few months sooner considered any different? If a person who kills a pregnant woman is guilty of two murders, then should the killing of the child only not count as one murder? Haven't we inadvertently acknowledged the unborn child as a second person? And does a "person" not have the right to live?
As with any issue, there are mitigating circumstances which occasionally arise to cloud the matter. What if the mother's life is threatened by carrying the baby full term? That becomes an ethical question of whether one life is worth more than another. What if the woman is raped? That's an atrocious thing, but then, there a lot of atrocious things done in our world. The old phrase "Two wrongs don't make a right" comes to mind. No one asked you to raise the child. Try adoption. The rapist needs to be punished. How does killing a third person solve anything? Incidentally, rapes account for a much smaller percentage of abortions than we are led to believe.
All of that aside, let's focus on " a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body". My contention is that it's not her own body anymore. I don't care if a woman wants to pierce or tattoo her body parts, use drugs or alcohol, eat too much or too little, or abuse her body in any number of ways. Those choices may not be wise, but to some extent, she's only hurting herself. But the moment an unborn child is involved, even many of those choices now affect a second person(except tattoos and piercing). We go to great lengths to protect people from second-hand smoke, drunk drivers, and drug pushers. We even acknowledge the adverse affect of these substances on the unborn baby. Yet abortion is considered just another choice that affects only the mother? Unbelievable.
So far, I've left God out of this. But I do happen to believe that God created man, woman, babies, and everything involved in the process of reproduction. God also told us not to kill. Even if we take God out of the equation, we're still left with the question of whether or not an unborn child is a person. If we decide that the baby is not a person until 12 weeks, 24 weeks, or even birth, then how long before that threshold is moved back to some point after birth? Come on folks, let's stop making excuses and face the reality: abortion is murder.
Learn more about this author, Thomas Bailey.
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