Anti-abortion activists seek to impose their religious beliefs

My local newspaper published an exchange of letters debating whether the case against abortion is a religious issue. The initial letter expressed the view that those seek to outlaw abortion seek in effect to force their religious beliefs on others. Rebuttal letters followed a little later, claiming that it was not a religious issue but a constitutional one, it being the government’s obligation to protect human life. The rebuttals missed the point completely. The fundamental religious or faith based belief that is being pushed by the anti-abortionists is their definition of human being. Anti-abortionist make an issue of the fact that life begins at conception. Of course it does and we all agree that the embryo is alive even when it is nothing more than a smidgen of protoplasm. But is it a human life, a human being? Or is it a potential human being the same way that an acorn is a potential oak tree but clearly is not an oak tree, lacking any of the characteristics of the oak tree. A human embryo is not sentient, lacking so much as a functioning brain which is the means consciousness in any sense of the word. Even when the it goes from embryonic to fetal with the development of functioning internal organs including the brain it does not have the conceptual consciousness that is the essential and defining element of the human mind.

The religious opponents of abortion believes the embryo is fully human and therefore entitled to the protection of it’s unalienable rights, including the right to life, from the moment of conception. The anti-abortionist believes this because they believes that the embryo possesses a soul, something that both the egg and the sperm lack but which the embryo has upon conception, apparently received the moment the sperm breached the ovum wall. About this soul he can’t say very much..He can’t tell use what it is, how it happens or even formulate an intelligible definition but the anti-abortionist believes it exist as a matter of faith and that it is God given. This belief in a God given soul is a religious belief and it is wrong to give it the force of law. Women of faith who share the anti-abortion premise are not likely to have an abortion. And that’s their business.. However, not all women share this faith.

Consider a woman who accepts reason, not faith, as her guide. What does science tell her about the embryo?. What evidence and facts should she consider? To someone who rejects faith based beliefs such as the existence of an immortal soul and it’s corollaries then what is lost in an abortion is a potential human life. Not a fully human being with rights that supersede the rights of the pregnant woman who is self aware and conscious of her past and her present and her possible future. It is she who enjoys self-awareness and at her best is full of hopes and dreams. All of which is threatened if motherhood is forced on her. What is lost if there is an abortion. Does the embryo/fetus have visions of it’s future? Is it self aware or even conscious in any sense of the word? Does it have hopes and dreams? The answer I believe is no, simply because it has neither the means nor the capacity for thought, only the potential. There is certainly no secular and scientific reason why this potential should trump the actual person’s right to her life, her liberty or her pursuit of happiness.

© by Jed Hughett 2009