Catholic responses to pro-choice arguments
By: Justin Apollonius
Tags: Abortion, Catholicsim, Catholic, Apologetics, Pro Life

Refuting Pro-Choice Arguments

In this following article, I aim to reply to common objections made towards the pro-life position. This debate is one of our society’s critical debates because of how much is placed on the line. On one hand, we have the pro-life group, who say that abortion is intrinsically wrong. And on the other hand, we have the pro-choice group, who say abortion is a human right. If we say that the pro-life position is correct, then society is in grave sin and in moral wrong for killing millions of babies. Still, if the pro-choice position is correct, then we are morally wrong for letting millions of women suffer. Let us now examine which position is correct; since I’m pro-life myself, I will take the most prominent pro-choice arguments, and show how they are false. I will get these pro-choice arguments from an article written by Seth Millstein, which I suggest everyone read to be on the same page. But before I do, I would like to state my argument first.

On the Anti-Abortion argument.

My argument is simple and is commonly used in the pro-life community. I have seen no convincing argument that refutes it.

Argument Against Abortion

1. Killing innocent human beings is intrinsically wrong

2. A ZEF (Zygote, Embryo, Fetus) is an innocent human being

3. Abortion kills the ZEF

4. Therefore, abortion is wrong

Premise 1: It is known through the natural law that murder is objectively wrong. If a pro-choice person were to deny this, then I would ask them if they were also ok with the moral wrong that was committed in the holocaust. If they reply with a yes, then there is no point further arguing with a person who thinks it is a human right to take away other people’s right to live. If they say no, then they are against killing an innocent human being.

Premise 2: Regarding the ZEF’s humanity, there is a scientific consensus that the ZEF is a human being. There is a whole list of scientific textbook quotations that agree that the ZEF is a human.

“In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual” — Human Embryology, William J. Larsen, 3rd edition, 2001, P.1 “Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.” — Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation. “The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”— Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology, 3rd edition, P. 3

Even Pro-choice philosophers/activists like Peter Singer, David Boonin, Ann Furedi and others agree with this (though there are disagreements with whether every human being is a person which I will discuss in a future article)

“We couldn’t allow abortion if we accepted that fetal life had the same degree of value as born human life, and I don’t believe that it does … We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it. It’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil, and we can recognize that it is human life … The point is not when does human life begin, but when does it really begin to matter?” — Ann Furedi Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you or me on the one hand and every human fetus from conception onward on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, homo sapiens. A human fetus, after all, is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development. — David Boonin

There was also research done by Steven Andrew Jacobs on when does human life begin, where he surveyed “5,502 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions” and got the following results: “including biologists that identified as very pro-choice (69–90%), very pro-life (92–97%), very liberal (70–91%), very conservative (94–96%), strong Democrats (74–91%), and strong Republicans (89–94%). Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human’s life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502)”. Some may call that statistic biased because a theist writes it. Still, even if there is a biased present, that doesn’t make the facts wrong, and this is verifiable since so many medical textbooks and pro-choice philosophers agree that human life begins are fertilization.

The ZEF is a human and is alive; it is human mainly because of 3 reasons:

1. Its parents are humans, and the child is a combination of chromosomes from both parents

2. It is Homosapien by species. Denying this is denying science.

3. It is human because it has human DNA, and it is alive because it can grow into a fully formed baby. This is more a scientific take on proving the human nature of the ZEF, there is also a philosophical approach that one may take to prove the human nature of the ZEF using hylomorphism, but I will not address it here. It is spoken about in this article.

Premise 3: Abortion is a “procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus.” — this process of ending a pregnancy is a process of killing the ZEF thru different methods depending on the situation/stage of the pregnancy.

Premise 4: After all that we have seen, we have put forward our case for the ZEF’s humanity, and we also know that abortion is a procedure that kills the unborn human being. Therefore, it fundamentally follows that abortion is intrinsically wrong. Now let us consider the arguments made by the pro-choice group.

A large crowd of pro-life Queenslanders gather outside Parliament House for the March for Life rally in Brisbane. Photo: Alan Edgecomb.

Pro-choice arguments and replies.

Let us now see what the article written by Seth Millstein says against the fetus’s humanity and abortion in general.

Objection 1: A fetus can’t survive on its own. It is fully dependent on its mother’s body, unlike born human beings.

Reply to Objection 1: The fact that the ZEF can’t survive on its own doesn’t mean that it is not human. If you keep a one-year-old out in the blizzard, it can’t “survive on its own”, and you will be responsible for that child’s death. Even if you can’t take care of that child, it is required for you to transfer the child to a safe place (like an adoption center), it still cant “survive on its own”, and you are still required. But that doesn’t mean they are not human. And the fact that it depends on the women’s body shows that it is more vulnerable and that we need to take care of it. Therefore, nothing is refuted.