I tend to avoid arguments and debates. Not only am I not good about debating, I also hate the tendency for debaters to demonize the other side. For the most part, my opinion is that most ordinary people want to do the best, whatever the best thing may be, and so we must argue not against people but against wrong opinions and bad arguments. Another bad tendency for debates is for one side to misunderstand the other side.
Now, I do not claim to completely understand the point of view of those who support abortion or those who support a woman’s right to abortion despite personal views that abortion is wrong. However, I do think that many people who are pro-choice misunderstand those who are pro-life. To remedy that misunderstanding, if only a little bit, is the point of this post. My purpose is not to prove that abortion is wrong (even though I believe it is wrong). My purpose here is to try to portray my point of view about the issue of abortion so that others may see what it is like to look through pro-life glasses.
The most important thing to understand about most of us who are pro-life is this: we believe that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being. The only purpose we have for being pro-life is to protect life. I am not going into arguments of when life starts. That is a conversation you may have with me in another post, in another time, and even better, it is a conversation you may have with the many other pro-life people here. But do try to understand why pro-lifers are so passionate about the issue of abortion. Whether or not you believe a fetus is a human being is not the issue. The issue is that we believe that a fetus is a human being.
Now, that might sound closed-minded but do be patient with me. Let’s go back to the time when slavery was still legal. Back then, many Southerners believed that blacks were not fully human. Those who believed slavery was wrong however did believe that blacks were human, human like the rest of us and having the same rights. Do you think the abolitionists really cared all that much that the Southerners believed that blacks weren’t human? Do you expect them to “respect the Southerners’ opinion of what constitutes human life”? You probably, and hopefully, don’t. This is because this very serious issue is not about the Southerners’ opinion of what a human life is. It’s not about anyone’s opinion of what human life is. It’s about what human life really is. The issue lay in settling this one question: are blacks human or not?
That is how we who hold the pro-life position feel like. We’re not arguing against women’s rights just as abolitions were not arguing against states’ rights. Maybe you think that our position is more about trying to protect an organ than trying to protect our life. That’s still an advancement from thinking our position is about suppressing women’s rights. I think the truth is that when people who are pro-choice debate with people who are pro-life with their main positions going around women’s choice, that they’re just missing the point. We don’t think women’s rights are the issue. We think human rights are the issue. We think that a woman, or any other human being, can do whatever they want with their body as long as it does not involve endangering or killing another human being.
Now go forth and argue about whether a fetus is human or not. Any other argument will really do little to persuade us.
