We now have the ultimate pro-abortion presidential ticket. Kamala Harris insists that women have an inalienable right to abortion, which Justice Alito took away when he wrote the Dobbs decision. Tim Walz signed legislation supporting abortion up to the minute of birth – and even supports denying medical care to any baby lucky enough to survive the procedure. Perhaps now is an opportune time to examine the flawed logic that radicals use to support such extreme positions.
It’s always helpful to discuss logic at the boundaries of a situation. It’s at the extremes where things become clear, and subjectivity tends to fall away. If an argument holds at the boundaries, it remains logical when things are gray and confused.
Just after conception, at the beginning of the gestation period, the future baby exists as only a few cells. The Catholic church asserts that the one-of-a-kind combination of chromosomes which results from conception, is a unique creation by God, and that destroying it is an affront to God. I will acknowledge that the Catholic church is divining God’s wishes by interpreting scriptures which don’t explicitly mention abortion. For the sake of argument, I’ll accept that the beginning of gestation is a gray area. But things get considerably less gray at the opposite extreme.
Let’s look at the other boundary of the gestation period. Is a fetus in its 40th week of development a person? If so, when did it become a person? When it had a heartbeat? When it could feel pain? When it could live outside the womb? Harris and Walz avoid that debate by contending that the fetus remains a non-human until it emerges from the birth canal. Let’s test that.
Imagine that two women who have reached the 40th week of their pregnancy, go into labor at the same time. A minute before delivery, one of the women decides to abort her pregnancy – as the law Tim Walz signed allows. One minute later, the other mother delivers a healthy baby. The delivered baby lies swaddled in its mothers’ arms, and enjoys the full protection of the United States government. The other exists as dismembered body parts in a medical waste bag. Mere seconds previously, they enjoyed identical circumstances and future potential. The only determining factor in the fates of the two babies was the choice of another person. One mother loved her baby enough to deliver it, while the other woman did not.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz argue that is as it should be. They insist that a baby changes from non-human to human in the blink of an eye at delivery. Its physical development is irrelevant. They claim that the destruction of a baby before it reaches the open air is not a matter of morality, but simply a matter of choice.
But for hundreds of years, the faithful have held a different view. In the past, Christian religions considered the practice immoral (and Catholics still do). Jews consider it a grave and complicated decision in which a Rabbi should be consulted. Muslim clerics have mixed opinions on the procedure, but none consider it moral past 120 days – the point at which they judge the baby to be one of Allah’s creatures. Given that history, how did the pro-choice advocates turn abortion into an issue of women’s rights rather than human morality? They based their rationale on moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the philosophy that God does not define morality – society does. Its advocates claim that there is no absolute right or wrong. What is perceived as good or evil depends on societal norms. If society (i.e., the mob) deems something moral, it is. The pro-choice advocates argue that society has come to accept abortion, having allowed it to exist for 51 years. Therefore, abortion it is a societal norm, is clearly moral, and is simply a medical choice to be made by the woman. They claim it is routine reproductive healthcare. Supporters of abortion have been exempting it from moral consideeration since Margaret Sanger opened her first eugenics clinic.
But then the Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into things when it overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. The court essentially said: We don’t really know how society feels about abortion because we ended the debate in 1973 by judicial fiat. The Dobbs decision returned the debate to the states, so that the issue could be resolved – consistent with societal norms.
Now every state is wrestling with the issue, and some are democratically arriving at a decision the pro-choice extremists don’t like. It turns out a societal norm in Idaho is not the same as a societal norm in California. Suddenly the moral relativists are arguing that morality isn’t relative at all – that the court has taken away an inalienable (i.e. God given) right. It seems the pro-choice advocates were fine with society deciding what was right or wrong, until some societies disagreed with them.
There lies the flaw in the pro-choice logic. Advocates wave off the morality of the practice with moral relativism – claiming that good and evil are mere social constructs. But then when society judges some instances of abortion immoral – as 22 states have – they howl that the government is taking away a fundamental right, which Justice Harry A. Blackmum found lurking in an emanation from a penumbra of the Constitution. Pro-choice advocates cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that God has no say in the matter, and then counter argue that society has no say in it either. Their logic does not withstand scrutiny.
The flaw in the logic exposes two groups who continue to argue for unrestricted abortion. The first are the spoiled children, stamping their feet and screaming that they want it because they refuse to accept the consequences of adult decisions. The second is unprincipled politicians, pandering to the mob for votes.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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