Roe vs. Wade should be overturned

The central issue surrounding the abortion debate is whether a baby in the womb is a human being, or simply has the potential to become a human being.

If the baby is a human being, then abortion would clearly be murder, clearly be wrong, and we could all agree that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned.

The debate usually falls under the when-does-life-begin question. Pro-choice people point out that the baby isn’t fully human, and that even a single sperm cell carries all the biological characteristics of life. Is spilling your sperm murder?

Pro-life folks look at biology and say: basic nervous system at five weeks, heart beat at six, all major organs present at eight, and able to survive if born two months early. Of course it’s a human. But there is a side, not strictly biological, that should be looked at: When does personhood begin? Inside the womb or outside the mother?

I argue that personhood – with all the value any human being walking on this planet holds – is present in babies before they are born for the following reasons:

1. Babies show a great deal of personality – a key characteristic of any individual. A friend of mine said of her daughter, “Catherine has been contrary from conception. She refused to be found when they looked for her heartbeat. Right before I was about to give the final push, she tried to go back and refused to come out. Finally, with coaxing, she came. And she’s been contrary ever since.” Most mothers have similar stories.

2. Babies show an amazing desire and ability to communicate, which signals their need not only for other people, but their need to express themselves. When my wife was pregnant with our daughter Hana, I would often talk to Hana and most times she would come to my voice and kick where my mouth was. Whether she was telling me to shut up or saying hi, I’m not sure, but it was a beautiful form of communication and expression.

3. Babies also show strong signs that they have feelings and emotional needs – like all of us. Psychologists and other doctors have done studies on fetuses and many claim that it is possible to deprive the baby emotionally if the mother ignores the baby.

The fact that some people claim the arbitrary moment of passing out of the vagina to be the moment personhood starts perplexes me. Why? Is the pain of the passage a kind of initiation into life? The oxygen flowing through the nose?

This is weak reasoning to justify burning babies to death with concentrated salt, or cutting them up with a sterile scalpel, or sucking their brains out before the last push that would bring them into this world.

But what about the coat-hanger abortions and the in-the-alley-done-by-the-school-janitor abortions, which are bound to happen if we make abortion illegal? One might ask this. Yet, does giving a killer a machinegun with a silencer in exchange for a dull hatchet make the crime less horrible?

Babies show an incredible amount of personhood in the womb, just at a different developmental stage. This does not mean they aren’t human. We use terms like embryo and fetus to dehumanize them but we should use these terms – just like we say infant, adolescent, adult – as a name for and a right to life.

Perhaps the one characteristic babies in the womb don’t share with us is that of choice, but only because it has been taken away from them, not because they don’t desire it.

Babies are people and deserve the right to life that we all claim to hold in high esteem. Roe vs. Wade should be overturned.

Jared Kenning, The Arbiter

Related Posts:

1. Pro-Choice: The ultimate misnomer
2. Pro-life, pro-choice or pro-personal freedoms
3. The de-evolution of our values
4. Contraception Connection