Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue

by R.C. Sproul

For the most part, the pro-abortion and pro-choice activists are not denying that life is sacred; they are only saying that a developing fetus is not a human life.

Even if it cannot be proven that a fetus is an actual living human person, there is no doubt that it is a potential living human person. In other words, a fetus is a developing person. It is not in a frozen state of potentiality. The fetus is in dynamic process—without interference or unforeseen calamity, it surely will become a fully actualized living human person.

Jesus taught that it is unlawful to commit the potential murder of an actual life. What, then, are the implications of committing the actual destruction of potential life?

(Isa. 49:1–5) This passage indicates not only that the unborn baby was distinct from the mother and was treated with a unique personal identity, but that his formation in the womb was the activity of God.

(Jer. 1:4–5) Jeremiah is told that God knew him before he was born; God had personal knowledge of the person of Jeremiah before the person Jeremiah was born. This indicates that Jeremiah was treated by God in a personal manner and as a personal being before birth. It is also significant that God “set apart” or sanctified Jeremiah before birth. Clearly God extends the sanctity principle to life in the womb.

In adults, heartbeat and brain waves are commonly referred to as “vital” signs. When both brain waves and the heartbeat cease for a period of time, a patient may be declared legally dead. Vital signs are a demonstration of life. When such signs are clearly present in the developing embryo, why are people so reluctant to speak of prenatal life?

One problem with our definitions of life and death is seen in the case of stillborn babies. Are stillborn babies “dead babies” or “never-have-been-alive babies”? It is commonplace for physicians to speak of stillborn babies as babies who have died.

If we regard the embryo or fetus as a living human person, then the moral implications of destroying that person prior to birth are enormous. As long as we can convince ourselves that a fetus is not human until birth, we are relieved of those difficulties.

There is a strong tendency among people of any nation to take their direction as to what is ethically right from what the law allows or what the society condones. The unspoken assumption is that if it is legal, it is therefore moral.

life. The foundational obligation of all government is to protect, sustain, and maintain human life. This is the very reason for the existence of government.

mortgages? There is one nonnegotiable issue, though, regarding government involvement: Government must be involved in protecting people from murder. The protection of human life is at the heart of the role of government.

When the church calls on the state to prohibit abortion, the state is not being asked to establish a religion. Nor is the state being asked to be the church. The church is simply asking the state to be the state. If it is the role of the state to protect, sustain, and maintain human life, and if it is the conviction of the church that abortion involves the destruction of human life, then it follows that the church has the right to call the state to outlaw abortion. The church is not asking the state to baptize human beings, but to protect the lives of unborn humans.

It is clear that abortion is considered by many to be only a moral issue. This has led to the prevalent opinion that opposition to abortion involves an unwarranted intrusion of the church into the public domain.

Surely the right to privacy is not a higher or greater right than the right to life. If it were, I would have the moral right to take the life of anyone who invaded my privacy.

We understand that the right to life transcends the right to privacy. If a fetus is a human life, then the Supreme Court erred in allowing the destruction of the fetus under the application of the right of privacy.

No people, including women, have an absolute right to do anything they wish with their bodies.

The fetus, although sharing geographical space within a woman’s body and connected to her, has a distinct genetic imprint and in essence is a separate entity, not a part of the woman’s body.

More women have died from abortions in the United States since abortion was legalized than in the preceding times of illegal abortion.

Whether abortion remains legal or is made illegal, women are going to continue to have abortions—and, as a result, risk death.

For those convinced that abortion involves killing living human beings, the continuation of it to protect those who are having the abortions is ethically intolerable. The loss of a woman’s life in abortion is a tragic thing; but if abortion is evil, then the life lost is that of the guilty party. The destruction of the unborn baby is the loss of the innocent party.

Again, the argument based on the concern for the harm that will come to women who have illegal abortions presumes that aborting unborn babies is a legitimate practice. In all likelihood, if the pro-abortion activist who uses this argument were to be convinced that the unborn are living human beings, this argument from practical expediency would vanish in view of the greater evil of the destruction of babies.

If we don’t know, then shouldn’t we morally opt on the side that is life? If you came upon an immobile body and you yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I think that you would decide to consider it alive until someone could prove it was dead. You wouldn’t get a shovel and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same thing with regard to abortion. —President Ronald Reagan

A person who is conscientiously pro-choice must understand that he or she is a legal ally, willingly or unwillingly, with the pro-abortion position.

Does the thief breaking into a home to steal someone’s television have the inalienable right to make that choice? Does a man have the right to choose to rape a woman? These extreme examples make it obvious that freedom of choice cannot be considered an absolute right.

At what line must freedom of choice end? I believe it ends where my freedom of choice steps on another person’s inalienable rights of life and liberty. No unborn baby has ever had the right to choose or deny its own destruction. Indeed, as others have said, the most dangerous place in the United States for a human being is inside the womb of a woman. For millions of unborn babies, the womb has become a cell on death row. The inmate is summarily executed without benefit of a trial or a word of defense. This execution literally involves being torn limb from limb. Is this description too graphic? Is it too emotionally provocative? No. It would be only if the description were untrue.

The right to choose, as sacred as it may be, does not carry with it the arbitrary right to destroy a human life. This is as much a miscarriage of justi...

discussion.) The time to choose whether or not to have a baby is not after the baby has been conceived and begun its development. Except in cases of rape, sexual intercourse with or without means of contraception is still a matter of choice. Choices we make, whether of a sexual or nonsexual nature, always have consequences. It is an axiom of ethics and of law that we are responsible for the consequences of our choices.

When we have sexual intercourse, we may not intend or desire to produce another human life. We are aware, however, that intercourse begins the reproduction process and can produce such offspring. To kill the offspring is hardly a responsible or moral method of handling this decision.

explained. To be anti-abortion does not equal being anti-women. On the contrary, I am persuaded that being pro-life equals being radically pro-women. Women have value and dignity because of their basic humanity, not because of their gender. A vote for abortion is a vote against the sanctity of life—the sanctity of female life as well as the sanctity of male life. Abortion is not a gender issue, it is a human life issue.

The feminist movement is driven by the relentless pursuit of human dignity. That is why it seems a radical distortion and gross inconsistency to link feminism with the pro-abortion or pro-choice positions. The pro-abortion and pro-choice positions do little for the cause of human dignity. On the contrary, they demean human dignity and, by implication, the dignity of women.

The point is merely that if the undesirability of a living fetus is a just ethical ground for its destruction, the same principle would apply to other living humans. In other words, if it is unjust to kill a three-year-old child or a three-day-old child because he or she is undesired, then it is likewise unjust to kill a living human before birth. The bottom line is that undesirability is not a just moral basis to kill a human being.

As a living human being, I do not want someone else to decide whether the quality of my life is such that I should be destroyed.

The either/or fallacy in the abortion question often joins with another false principle: the lesser of two evils. It goes like this: “Though abortion admittedly is not a pleasant option, it is preferable to the worse evil of having an unwanted child or a child whose quality of life may be undesirable.” Therefore, abortion is justified as the lesser of two evils, and the fact that there are other alternatives is lost in the process.

Abortions to end rape- and incest-caused pregnancies represent a very small number of cases and should be dealt with separately from the broader question of legalized abortion. As in all issues of human need and suffering, this requires absolute compassion. It is a small consolation to a rape victim who is pregnant to be told that she represents a tiny minority. Her problem is real.

Even if it were decided in extreme cases that abortion is an ethical option, the extreme cases should not dictate the general law.

Not only for every idle word but for every idle silence must man render an account. —Ambrose of Milan All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. —Edmund Burke

The world still recoils in horror at the reality of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Yet I believe we are in the midst of a new and more evil holocaust, which sees the destruction of 1.5 million unborn babies every year in the United States alone. This situation calls to mind the words of a German pastor imprisoned for opposing Hitler. Martin Niemoller said: In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.57