Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights
Part Two – Arguments from Pity, Tolerance,
and Ad Hominem
by Francis J. Beckwith
Christian
Research Journal, Winter, 1991, Page 27.
In the first installment of this four-part series we examined a number of
arguments for abortion rights which can be classified as appeals to pity. In this article I will present and critique more
appeals to pity, along with two additional kinds of argument: appeals to tolerance and ad hominem
(literally, "against the person"). Of course, not every defender of
abortion rights holds to all or any of the arguments presented in this article.
But the truth of the matter is that a vast majority do defend at least some of
these arguments. For this reason, the following critique should prove helpful
to those interested in providing reasoned answers, rather than inflammatory
rhetoric, to the arguments put forth by the abortion rights movement.
A woman who becomes pregnant due to an act of either rape or incest is
the victim of a horribly violent and morally reprehensible crime. Although
pregnancy as a result of either rape or incest is extremely rare, [1] there is no getting
around the fact that pregnancy does occur in some instances. Bioethicist Andrew Varga
summarizes the argument from rape and incest in the following way:
It is argued that in these tragic cases the great value of the mental
health of a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest can best
be safe-guarded by abortion. It is also said that a pregnancy caused by rape or
incest is the result of a grave injustice and that the victim should not be
obliged to carry the fetus to viability. This would keep reminding her for nine
months of the violence committed against her and would just increase her mental
anguish. It is reasoned that the value of the woman’s mental health is greater
than the value of the fetus. In addition, it is maintained that the fetus is an
aggressor against the woman’s integrity and personal life; it is only just and
morally defensible to repel an aggressor even by killing him if that is the
only way to defend personal and human values. It is concluded, then, that
abortion is justified in these cases. [2]
Despite its forceful appeal to our sympathies, there are several
problems with this argument. First, it is not relevant to the case for abortion
on demand, the position defended by the popular pro-choice movement. This
position states that a woman has a right
to have an abortion for any reason
she prefers during the entire nine months of pregnancy, whether it be for
gender-selection, convenience, or rape. [3] To argue for abortion on demand from the hard cases of rape
and incest is like trying to argue for the elimination of traffic laws from the
fact that one might have to violate some of them in rare circumstances, such as
when one’s spouse or child needs to be rushed to the hospital. Proving an
exception does not establish a general rule.
Second, since conception does not occur immediately following
intercourse, pregnancy can be eliminated in all rape cases if the rape victim receives immediate medical
treatment by having all the male semen removed from her uterus. [4]
Third, the unborn entity is not
an aggressor when its presence does not endanger its mother’s life (as in the
case of a tubal pregnancy). It is the rapist who is
the aggressor. The unborn entity is just as much an innocent victim as its
mother. Hence, abortion cannot be justified on the basis that the unborn is an
aggressor.
Fourth, this argument begs the question by assuming that the unborn is
not fully human. For if the unborn is fully human, then
we must weigh the relieving of the woman’s mental suffering against the
right-to-life of an innocent human being. And
homicide of another is never justified to relieve one of emotional distress.
Although such a judgment is indeed anguishing, we must not forget that the same
innocent unborn entity that the career-oriented woman will abort in order to
avoid interference with a job promotion is biologically and morally
indistinguishable from the unborn entity that results from an act of rape or
incest. And since abortion for career advancement cannot be justified if the
unborn entity is fully human, abortion cannot be justified in the cases of rape
and incest. In both cases abortion results in the death of an
innocent human life. As Dr. Bernard Nathanson
has written, “The unwanted pregnancy flows biologically from the sexual act,
but not morally from it.” [5] Hence, this argument, like the ones we have already
covered in this series, is successful only if the unborn are not fully human.
Some pro-choice advocates claim that the pro-lifer lacks compassion,
since the pro-lifer’s position on rape and incest forces a woman to carry her
baby against her will. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the
rapist who has already forced this
woman to carry a child, not the pro-lifer. The pro-life advocate merely wants
to prevent another innocent human being (the unborn entity) from being the
victim of a violent and morally reprehensible act (abortion), for two wrongs do
not make a right. As theologian and ethicist Dr. Michael Bauman has observed:
“A child does not lose its right to life simply because its father or its
mother was a sexual criminal or a deviant.” [6]
Furthermore, the anguish and psychic suffering caused by rape and incest
has been treated quite effectively. Professor Stephen Krason
points out that “psychological studies have shown that, when given the proper
support, most pregnant rape victims progressively change their attitudes about
their unborn child from something repulsive to someone who is innocent and
uniquely worthwhile.” [7]
The pro-life advocate believes that help should be given to the rape victim “to
make it as easy as possible for her to give up her baby for adoption, if she
desires. Dealing with the woman pregnant from rape, then, can be an opportunity
for us—both as individuals and society—to develop true understanding and
charity. Is it not better to try to develop these virtues than to countenance
an ethic of destruction as the solution?” [8]
It is argued by many people in the pro-choice movement that legal
abortion helps eliminate unwanted children. They believe that unwanted children
are indirectly responsible for a great number of family problems, such as child
abuse. Hence, if a family can have the “correct” amount of children at the
“proper” times, then these family problems will be greatly reduced, if not
eliminated. [9]
Once again, we find several serious problems with the pro-choice argument.
First, the argument begs the question, because only by assuming that
the unborn are not fully human does this argument work. For if the unborn are
fully human, like the abused young children which we
readily admit are fully human, then to execute the unborn is the worst sort of
child abuse imaginable.
Second, it is very difficult to demonstrate that the moral and
metaphysical value of a human being is dependent on whether someone wants or
cares for that human being. For example, no one disputes that the homeless have
value even though they are for the most part unwanted. Now, suppose the
pro-choice advocate responds to this by saying, “But you are treating the
unborn as if they were as human as the homeless.” This is exactly my point. The
question is not whether the unborn are wanted; the question is whether the
unborn are fully human.
Third, an unwanted child almost never turns out to be a resented baby.
This seems to be borne out statistically: (1) there is no solid evidence that a
child’s being unwanted during pregnancy produces child abuse; (2) according to
one study, 90% of battered children were wanted pregnancies; [10] and (3) some
writers have argued that there is a higher frequency of abuse among adopted
children—who were undoubtedly wanted by their adoptee parents—than among those
who are unadopted. [11] In his voluminous and scholarly study on
the moral, political, and constitutional aspects of the abortion issue,
Professor Krason summarizes his findings concerning
the argument from unwantedness by pointing out that
“the factors causing child abuse cited most frequently by the researches are not
‘unwantedness,’ but parents’ lack of social support
from family, friends and community, hostility to them by society, based on a
disapproved sexual and social pattern of existence, and—most commonly—their
having been abused and neglected themselves when they were children.” [12]
Fourth, the unwantedness of children in
general tells us a great deal about our psychological and moral make-up as a
people, but very little about the value of the child involved. For it is only a self-centered, hedonistic people who do not
consider it their self-evident obligation to care for the most vulnerable and
defenseless members of the human race. A lack of caring is a flaw in the
one who ought to care, not in the person who ought to be cared for. Hence,
whether or not abortion is morally justified depends on whether the unborn are
fully human, not on their wantedness.
Many people in the abortion rights movement argue that their position
is more tolerant than the pro-life position. After all, they reason, the
abortion rights movement is not forcing pro-life women to have abortions, but
the pro-life movement is trying to
deny all women the option to make a choice. There are basically five arguments
which the abortion rights advocate uses in order to articulate this position.
It is sometimes argued that the question of when protectable
human life begins is a personal religious question that one must answer for
oneself. Justice Blackmun writes in Roe v. Wade, “We need not resolve the
difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective
disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are
unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the
development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate.” [13] Hence, the state
should not take one theory of life and force those who do not agree with that
theory to subscribe to it, which is the reason why Blackmun
writes in Roe, “In view of all this,
we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the
rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake.” [14]
In his dissenting opinion in Webster
v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), Justice Stevens goes even further
than Blackmun: “The Missouri Legislature [which said
that life begins at conception] may not inject its endorsement of a particular
religious tradition in this debate, for ‘the Establishment Clause does not
allow public bodies to foment such disagreement.’” [15] Thus the pro-life proposal that
pro-choice women be prohibited from having abortions on the basis that
individual human life begins at conception is viewed, not only as a violation
of their right to privacy, but as a violation of the separation of church and
state as well. Such a separation is supposedly necessary to sustain tolerance
in a pluralistic society. As pro-choice advocate Virginia Mollenkott
argues, “Women who believe that abortion is murder may never justly be required to have an abortion.” [16] Put in the words of a recent
bumper-sticker: “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”
There are several problems with this argument. First, it is self-refuting
and question-begging. To claim, as Justices Blackmun
and Stevens do, that the Court should not propose one theory of life over
another, and that the decision should be left up to each individual pregnant woman as to when protectable
human life begins, is to propose a
theory of life which hardly has a clear consensus in this country. [17] That is, it
proposes the theory that the personhood of the unborn child depends on the point
of view of the mother—if she thinks it is fully human, then it is, and if she
thinks it is not fully human, then it is not. This is a theory of life held by
a number of religious denominations
and groups, whose amicus briefs
Stevens oddly enough (since he’s concerned about not injecting religious
traditions into the debate) cites in a footnote in his Webster dissent. [18] Hence, in attempting not to propose one theory of
life, Blackmun and Stevens in fact assume a particular theory of life, and
by doing so clearly beg the question and show that their opinions cannot abide
by their own standard of not proposing one theory of life.
Second, the fact that a particular theory of life is consistent with a religious view does not
mean that it is exclusively
religious or that it is in violation of the Establishment Clause of the
Constitution. For example, many pro-life advocates argue for their position by
emphasizing that there is nontheological support for
their position, [19]
while many pro-choice advocates, such as Mollenkott, [20] argue that their
position is theologically grounded in the Bible. Hence, just because a
philosophically and scientifically plausible position may also be found in
religious literature such as the Bible, that does not
mean such a view is exclusively “religious.” If it did, then our society would
have to dispense with laws forbidding such crimes as murder and robbery simply
because such actions are prohibited in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures.
Furthermore, some public policies—such as civil rights legislation and
elimination of nuclear testing—which are supported by many clergymen who find
these policies in agreement with and supported by their doctrinal beliefs,
would have to be abolished simply because they are believed by some to be
supported by a particular religious theory of life. Hence, the pro-life
position is a legitimate public policy option and does not violate the
Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
Third, in claiming that “women who believe that abortion is murder may never justly be required to have an
abortion” but they shouldn’t force their pro-life beliefs on pro-choice women, Mollenkott is asking the pro-life advocate to act as if the pro-life view of human life
were incorrect. Mollenkott is also demanding that the
pro-lifer accept the pro-choice view of what constitutes a just society. I
believe that this is asking much too much of the pro-life movement. Philosopher
George Mavrodes drives home this point in the
following story:
Let us imagine a person who believes that Jews are human persons, and
that the extermination of Jews is murder. Many of us will find that exercise
fairly easy, because we are people of that sort ourselves. So we may as well
take ourselves to be the people in question. And let us now go on to imagine
that we live in a society in which the “termination” of Jews is an every-day
routine procedure, a society in which public facilities are provided in every
community for this operation, and one in which any citizen is free to identify
and denounce Jews and to arrange for their arrest and termination. In that
imaginary society, many of us will know people who have themselves participated
in these procedures, many of us will drive past the termination centers daily
on our way to work, we can often see the smoke rising gently in the late
afternoon sky, and so on. And now imagine that someone tells us that if we
happen to believe that Jews are human beings then that’s O.K., we needn’t fear
any coercion, nobody requires us to participate in the termination procedure
ourselves. We need not work in the gas chamber, we
don’t have to denounce a Jew, and so on. We can simply mind our own business,
walk quietly past the well-trimmed lawns, and (of course) pay our taxes.
Can we get some feel for what it would be like to live in that
context?...And maybe we can then have some understanding of why they [the
right-to-lifers] are unlikely to be satisfied by being told that they don’t
have to get abortions themselves. [21]
Since Mollenkott is asking pro-life advocates
to act as if their fundamental view of human life is false, pro-life advocates
may legitimately view Mollenkott’s position as a
subtle and patronizing form of intolerance.
There is a more popular variation of the above argument. Some
abortion-rights advocates argue that it is simply wrong for anyone to “force”
his or her own view of what is morally right on someone else. Consequently,
they argue that pro-lifers, by attempting to forbid women from having
abortions, are trying to force their morality on others. There are at least
three problems with this argument.
First, it does not seem obvious that it is always wrong to impose one’s morality on others. For instance, laws
against drunk driving, murder, smoking crack, robbery,
and child molestation are all intended to impose a particular moral perspective
on the free moral agency of others. Such laws are instituted because the acts
they are intended to prevent often obstruct the free agency of other persons;
for example, a person killed by a drunk driver is prevented from exercising his
free agency. These laws seek to maintain a just and orderly society by limiting
some free moral agency (e.g., choices that result in drunk driving, murder,
etc.) so that in the long run free moral agency is increased for a greater
number (e.g., less people will be killed by drunk drivers and murderers, and
hence there will be a greater number who will be able to act as free moral
agents). Therefore, a law forbidding abortion would unjustly impose one’s morality upon another only if the act of abortion does not limit the free agency of
another. That is to say, if the unborn entity is fully human, forbidding
abortions would be perfectly just, since abortion, by killing the unborn human,
limits the free agency of another. Once again, unless the pro-choice advocate assumes that the unborn are not fully
human, his or her argument is not successful.
Although it does not seriously damage their entire position, it is
interesting to note that many abortion-rights advocates do not hesitate to
impose their moral perspective on others when they call for the use of other
people’s tax dollars (many of whom do not approve of this use of funds) to help
pay for the abortions of poor women.
There is another variation on the first argument from pluralism. Some
people argue that it is not wise to make a public policy decision in one
direction when there is wide diversity of opinion within society. This argument
can be outlined in the following way:
(1) There can never be a just law requiring uniformity of behavior on
any issue on which there is widespread disagreement.
(2) There is widespread disagreement on the issue of forbidding
abortion on demand.
(3) Therefore, any law that forbids people to have abortions is unjust.
One way to show that this argument is wrong is to show that premise (1)
is false. There are several reasons to believe that it is. First, if premise
(1) were true, then the pro-choice advocate would have to admit that the United
States Supreme Court decision, Roe v.
Wade, was an unjust decision, since the court ruled that the states which
make up the United States, whose statutes prior to the ruling disagreed on the
abortion issue, must behave uniformly in accordance with the Court’s decision.
But since the pro-choicer denies that Roe
was an unjust decision, he or she must also concede that it is false to hold
that “there can never be a just law requiring uniformity of behavior on any
issue on which there is widespread disagreement.”
Second, if premise (1) were true, then the abolition of slavery would
have to be regarded as unjust, because there was widespread disagreement of
opinion among Americans in the nineteenth century. Yet no pro-choicer would say
that slavery should have remained as an institution. Third, if premise (1) were
true, then much of civil rights legislation, about which there was much
disagreement, would be unjust. Fourth, if premise (1) were true, then a
favorite pro-choice public policy proposal would also be unjust. Many
pro-choicers believe that the federal government should use the tax dollars of
the American people to fund the abortions of poor women. There are large
numbers of Americans, however (some of whom are pro-choice), who do not want
their tax dollars used in this way. And fifth, if premise (1) were true, then
laws forbidding pro-life advocates (e.g., Operation Rescue) from preventing
abortions would be unjust. One cannot deny that there is widespread
disagreement concerning this issue. But these are the very laws which the
pro-choicer supports. Hence, his or her argument is self-refuting.
Another way to show that this argument is not successful is to
challenge the second premise and show that there is not widespread disagreement
on the question of whether abortion on demand should be forbidden. Recent polls
have shown that a great majority of Americans, although supporting a woman’s
right to an abortion in the rare “hard cases” (such as rape, incest, and severe
fetal deformity), do not support the pro-choice position of abortion on demand.
In other words, they do not agree that abortion should remain legal during the
entire nine months of pregnancy for any
reason the woman deems fit. [22]
Maybe the defender of the above argument is making the more subtle point
that because there is widespread disagreement on the abortion issue,
enforcement of any laws prohibiting abortion would be difficult. In other
words, abortions are going to happen anyway, so we ought to make them safe and
legal. This argument also is subject to several criticisms.
First, it totally begs the question, because it assumes that the unborn
are not fully human. If the unborn are fully human, this argument is tantamount
to saying that, since people will murder other people anyway, we ought to make
it safe and legal for them to do so. But murder is never justified, even if there are social difficulties in
forbidding it.
Second, since the vast majority of Americans are law-abiding citizens,
they will probably obey the law as they did prior to Roe v. Wade. “A reasonable estimate for the actual number of
criminal abortions per year in the prelegalization
era [prior to 1967] would be from a low of 39,000 (1950) to a high of 210,000
(1961) and a mean of 98,000 per year.” [23] Contrasting this with the fact that there have been an average of 1.5 million abortions per year since
1973, one can only conclude that the pre-Roe
anti-abortion laws were quite effective in limiting the number of abortions.
Now if the pro-choice advocate claims that a law cannot stop all abortions, he or she makes a
trivial claim, for this is true of all laws which forbid illegal acts. For
example, even though both hiring paid assassins and purchasing child
pornography are illegal, some people remain undaunted and pursue them
illegally. But there is no doubt that their illegality does hinder a vast
number of citizens from obtaining them. Should we then legalize child
pornography and the hit-man profession because we can’t stop all people from obtaining such “goods”
and “services”? Such reasoning is absurd.
An extremely popular argument asserts that because a woman has a right
to control her own body, she therefore has a right to undergo an abortion for
any reason she deems fit. Although it is not obvious that either the law or
sound ethical reasoning supports such a strong view of personal autonomy (e.g.,
laws against prostitution and suicide), this pro-choice argument still
logically fails even if we hypothetically grant that its strong view of
personal autonomy is correct.
The unborn entity within the pregnant woman’s body is not part of her body. The conceptus is a genetically distinct entity with its own
unique and individual gender, blood type, bone-structure, and genetic code. [24] Although the
unborn entity is attached to its
mother, it is not part of her. To
say that the unborn entity is part of its mother is to claim that the mother
possesses four legs, two heads, two noses, and—with the case of a male conceptus—a penis and two testicles. Furthermore, since
scientists have been able to achieve conception in a petri
dish in the case of the “test-tube” baby, and this conceptus
if it has white parents can be transferred to the body of a black woman and be
born white, we know conclusively that the unborn is not part of the pregnant
woman’s body. Certainly a woman has a right to control her own body, but the
unborn entity, though for a time living inside
her body, is not part of her body.
Hence, abortion is not justified, since no one’s right to personal autonomy is
so strong that it permits the arbitrary execution of others. In this respect
this argument also begs the question, because it assumes that the unborn are
not fully human.
“Ad hominem”
literally means to “attack the man” (or person). Therefore, “to attack ad hominem is
to attack the man who presents an argument rather than the argument itself.” [25]
Instead of dealing with what a person is actually saying, one attacks the
person. This is a bad form of reasoning because it ultimately does not
refute the person’s argument. Hence,
when the abortion rights advocate judges, ridicules, insults, or slanders the
pro-lifer as a person, he or she
does not attack the arguments for
the pro-life position.
Why Don’t Pro-lifers Adopt the Babies
They Don’t Want Aborted?
One common ad hominem argument can be distilled into the following
assertion: Unless the pro-life advocate is willing to help bring up the
children he or she does not want aborted, he or she has no right to prevent a
woman from having an abortion. As a principle of moral action, this seems to be
a rather bizarre assertion. For one reason, it begs the question by assuming
that the unborn are not fully human. Wouldn’t these same pro-choicers consider
the murder of a couple’s children unjustified even if they were approached by
the parents with the following proposition: “Unless you adopt my three children
by
Second, think of all the unusual precepts that could be fairly derived
from such a moral principle: unless I am willing to marry my neighbor’s wife, I
cannot prevent her husband from beating her; unless I am willing to adopt my
neighbor’s daughter, I cannot prevent her mother from abusing her; unless I am
willing to hire ex-slaves for my business, I cannot say that the slave-owner
should not own slaves. Now, I believe that the pro-life movement as a whole
does have a moral obligation to help those in need, especially unwed mothers
(and there are enough organizations dedicated to this task to show that the
pro-lifers do practice what they preach). [26] But it does not logically follow from this moral
obligation that abortion automatically
becomes a moral good simply because individual pro-life advocates are not
currently involved in such a cause.
Some pro-choice (and even pro-life) advocates have pointed out that some
people who believe in capital punishment are also pro-life on the abortion
issue. And since capital punishment entails the killing of another human being,
these pro-lifers are inconsistent. Some people assume that this inconsistency
makes the pro-life position on abortion incorrect. There are several reasons
why this belief cannot be justified.
First, how does this help the pro-choice position or hurt the pro-life
position on abortion? Wouldn’t this argument make people who are against
capital punishment and for pro-choice equally inconsistent?
Second, inconsistent people can draw good conclusions. For example, an
Irish terrorist may inconsistently believe that it is all right to murder
Catholics and not Protestants. But this inconsistency in his thinking would not
make his correct conclusion about the wrongness of murdering Protestants automatically incorrect. Hence, this
argument is a red-herring and does not deal with the ethical legitimacy of the
pro-life position.
Third, there are a number of pro-life advocates who do not believe that
capital punishment is morally justified. [27] The pro-choice advocate can’t say that these pro-lifers are inconsistent. Why
does he (or she) not then give up the pro-choice position and embrace this pro-life position, since it should
seem to him even more consistent than the anti-capital punishment pro-choice
position?
Fourth, I believe that one can plausibly argue that the pro-life
position on abortion is consistent
with capital punishment. Pro-life advocates, for the most part, do not argue that killing is never justified, for many believe that
there are legitimate instances in which killing is justified, such as in the
cases of self-defense and capital punishment, both of which do not entail the killing of an innocent human life. Abortion does
entail such killing. Hence, the pro-life advocate who believes in capital
punishment is saying, “It is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being,
but the capital offender is not innocent. Therefore, capital punishment is
morally justified.” Although I have not made up my own mind on the issue of
capital punishment, I do not believe it is logically inconsistent with the
pro-life position.
In summary, like the previous argument, this one is a blatant example
of the ad hominem
fallacy, since it is a direct attack upon the character of the pro-life
advocate. Instead of dealing with the pro-lifer’s arguments against abortion,
the pro-choice advocate attacks the pro-lifer.
This argument is so silly that I fear by acknowledging it I may be
giving it undeserved credibility. But since I hear it so frequently in the
media, I think it ought to be answered. I was confronted with this argument in
a debate at the
I responded to Professor Langston by pointing out that arguments don’t have genders, people
do. Since many pro-life women use the same arguments as we did in the debate,
it was incumbent upon her to answer our arguments, which stand or fall apart
from our genitalia. I pointed out that since she could not argue the same way
if a woman were putting forth our arguments, therefore, our gender is totally
irrelevant to whether the pro-life position is correct. In a subtle and clever
way she dodged our arguments and attacked us—a clear case of the ad hominem
fallacy.
Second, on the same rationale, Professor Langston would have to reject
the Roe v. Wade decision, since it
was arrived at by nine men (7-2).
Third, abortion is a human
issue, not just a women’s issue, for it has consequences for everybody in
society. It is in part from men’s salaries that tax dollars are taken to fund
abortions; it is men who must help in child-rearing or pay child support if the
mother chooses not to abort; and it
is the man’s seed which is one of the material causes (along with the female’s
ovum) of the unborn’s being (there has been only one
known virginal conception).
Fourth, the appeal to the pregnant woman’s personal involvement can be used as a two-edged sword. Could not
someone argue that since men don’t get pregnant, and hence are less tainted by
personal involvement, their opinion concerning the morality of abortion is more
objective?
[1] Concerning this, Dr. Stephen Krason writes:
“A number of studies have shown that pregnancy resulting from rape is very
uncommon. One, looking at 2190 victims, reported pregnancy in only 0.6
percent.” (Abortion:
Politics, Morality, and the Constitution [Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1984], 283.)
[2] See Andrew Varga, The Main
Issues in Bioethics, rev. ed. (New York: Paulist
Press, 1984), 67-68. Varga himself, however, does not
believe that abortion is morally justified in the cases of rape and incest.
[3] On the fact that abortion on demand is legal in
[4] See the results of studies
of 4,800 victims of rape in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area, as cited in John F. Hillabrand, “Dealing With a Rape Case,” Heartbeat 8 (March 1975):250.
[5] Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting
[6] Michael Bauman, “Verbal Plunder: Combatting
the Feminist Encroachment on the Language of Religion and Morality,” paper
presented at the 42d annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, New
Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana, Nov. 15-17, 1990,
16.
[7] Krason, 284. For an overview of the research,
see Sandra Kathleen Mahkorn, “Pregnancy and Sexual Assault,” in
[8] Krason, 284.
[9] See the arguments in the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America brief (for Roe v. Wade), as cited in Krason, Abortion, 315-19.
[10] E. F. Lenoski, M.D., “Translating Injury Data
into Preventative Health Care Services,”
[11] See B. D. Schmitt and C. H. Kempe, Child
Abuse: Management and Prevention of the Battered Child Syndrome (Basle:
Ciba-Geigy, 1975).
[12] Krason, 320. See Rosemary S. Hunter, M.D., et. al.,
“Antecedents of Child Abuse and Neglect in Premature Infants: A Prospective
Study in a Newborn Intensive Care Unit,” in Pediatrics 61 (1978):629, 634; Vincent J. Fontana, M.D., and
Douglas J. Besharov, The Maltreated Child, 4th ed. (Springfield, IL: Charles
C. Thomas, 1979), 12-13, 27; Richard Gelles, “A
Profile of Violence Toward Children in the United States,” in Child Abuse: An Agenda for Action, eds.
George Gebner, Catherine J. Ross, and Edward Ziegler
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 102-3.
[13] Justice Harry Blackmun, “The 1973 Supreme
Court Decisions on State Abortion Laws: Excerpts from Opinion in Roe v. Wade,”
in The Problem of Abortion, 2d ed., ed. Joel
Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 195.
[14] Ibid., 196.
[15] “Webster
v. Reproductive Health Services,”
[16] Virginia
Ramey Mollenkott, “Reproductive Choice: Basic to
Justice for Women,” Christian Scholar’s
Review 17 (March 1988):291.
[17] See the results of The Boston Globe/WBZ-TV nationwide poll
recently published in the Globe,
which concluded that “most Americans would ban the vast majority of abortions
performed in this country....While 78 percent of the nation would keep abortion
legal in limited circumstances, according to the poll, these circumstances
account for a tiny percentage of the reasons cited by women having abortions.” (Ethan Bronner, “Most in US Favor Ban on
Majority of Abortions, Poll Finds,” The
Boston Globe, 31 March 1989, 1, 12.)
[18] Webster, 5044, footnote 16.
[19] See especially the nontheological defense of the pro-life position
by former abortion-rights activist Bernard Nathanson,
M.D. (Aborting America).
[20] See Mollenkott.
[21] George Mavrodes,
“Abortion and Imagination: Reflections on Mollenkott’s
‘Reproductive Choice,’” Christian
Scholar’s Review 18 (Dec. 1988):168-69.
[22] Bronner,
1, 12.
[23] Barbara J. Syska, Thomas W. Hilgers, M.D., and Dennis O’Hare, “An Objective Model for
Estimating Criminal Abortions and Its Implications for Public Policy,” in New Perspectives on Human Abortion,
eds. Thomas Hilgers, M.D., Dennis J. Horan, and David
Mall (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981), 178. For a
summary of the scholarly dispute over the prelegalization
statistics, see Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New
York: Macmillan, 1970), 132-36; and Krason, Abortion, 301-10.
[24] For more on prenatal development and the scientific evidence of the unborn’s humanness, see
Part Three in this series in the (forthcoming) Spring 1991 issue of the CHRISTIAN
RESEARCH JOURNAL.
[25] Nicholas Capaldi, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, rev. ed.
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987), 92.
[26] Among the many organizations which help unwed mothers and women in
crisis pregnancies are Crisis Pregnancy Centers (branches are found in many
cities across
[27] For example, see Ron Sider, Completely
Pro-Life: Building a Consistent Stance (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987).