01/15/2024 – “What to Say When – The Complete New Guide to Discussing Abortion” by Shawn D. Carney and Steve Karlen / attached excerpt
ISBN Reference: 978-1-7370477-1-1 / Copyright 2021 & 2022
I am choosing here to share an excerpt from Chapter 3 – “Life Begins at Conception” , page #33:
Point 2: Support for Abortion is Discrimination against Tiny Human
“Once you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the unborn child is a human being, many abortion supporters will try to move the goalposts. ‘Sure, the fetus might be a human being, but it’s not a person.’
According to this line of thinking, a fetus–though human– should not be legally considered a person, typically because he or she lacks consciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity for transcendent thought. (Bizarrely, some of the same ethicists in favor of denying personhood to unborn babies would grant legal personhood to advanced mammals or even robots!). Without benefit of the status of legal personhood, an unborn child has no legal rights, including the right to life.
But it is true that one must demonstrate consciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity for transcendent thought to be a person? Isn’t simply being human enough?
We turn, again, to Peter Kreeft, who notes there is a clear difference between what a person does and what a person is: ‘One cannot function as a person without being a person, but one can surely be a person without functioning as a person. In deep sleep, in coma, in early infancy, nearly everyone will admit there are persons, but there are no specifically human functions such as reasoning, choice or language. Kreeft’s reasoning applies to other stages of life as well. Old age, Alzheimer’s disease, and disability might rob a person of certain uniquely human capabilities, but those who suffer from such conditions do not cease to be persons. And even among people who are in possession of all their human faculties, the differences in ability that exist naturally from person to person mean that some people are able to exercise those faculties at higher level than others. But nobody suggests that a member of society is more intellectually gifted than another is somehow more of a person.
When abortion supporters argue that not all human beings are persons under the law, they are treading on very dangerous ground. Our society is well versed in bitterly divisive debates over which human beings are entitled to human rights.
Progressives often boast that they are on the ‘right side of history.’ But if there’s one lesson we learn from slavery and the Jim Crow era, the Trail of Tears, ethnic cleansing, racial segregation, internment camps, and genocide, it’s that history never looks back fondly on those who fought to deny basic human rights to a particular class of humans beings. Instead, it’s those who fought in defense of the dehumanized, the disenfranchised, and the persecuted who are vindicated in the history books.
Progressives’ demand for equality, inclusiveness, and justice rings hollow when it’s accompanied by the battle cry of ‘free abortion on demand!’ Abortion supporters are quick to heap scorn upon their ancestors for brutalizing African slaves because they looked different, but they have no problem brutalizing unborn children for the exact same reason.
‘It’s only an inch-and-a-half-long clump of cells,’ the abortion advocate observes. ‘Are you seriously telling me that’s a person?’ If a pre-born child is a clump of cells, so are you and I. The main difference is that we’re bigger! Long after birth, babies, toddlers, children, and teenagers all continue to grow and develop, but they do not become more human. Their lives do not become more valuable as they get bigger.
The same abortion advocate who compared abortion to handwashing admitted her prejudice against unborn children when she heard my case for the personhood of the fetus, shrugged, and said, ‘I just don’t feel like it has the same value as someone who’s been born.’
She probably didn’t realize what a stunning admission she had made by acknowledging that her disregard for the lives of unborn children wasn’t based in reason or science or philosophy or even in law, but in her own personal, subjective feeling. She didn’t stop to think that if she can deny a human being’s personhood based on a feeling, what is to stop anybody else from denying the personhood of an entire category of people?
When discussing abortion with progressives, we need to hold them accountable to their own standards. If their call for equality doesn’t include every member of the human family — born or unborn — it’s dishonest. Discrimination against the small, weak, and vulnerable is the most contemptible and dangerous form of discrimination there is.”
Soli Deo Gloria! Always connected through prayer and by His grace!