|
A response by Matt Wallace, completed on 29 April 2012, to a questionnaire submitted by a California high school student working on an AP Language and Composition research paper
An Interview with a Pro-Life Atheist
by Matt Wallace
This page was last modified on 8 February 2016.
Contents
1. Do you think that a woman has the right to choose whether or not her baby is born? Should abortion be legalized?
2. When do you consider a baby alive?
3. Is there any moral reason you believe supports your side?
4. Are there any more reason-based ideas that support your side?
5. How do you think having an abortion physically, mentally, and/or emotionally affects a potential mother?
6. What do you think should be done about abortion within your state and/or this country?
7. Please feel free to add on anything else regarding the subject.
1. Do you think that a woman has the right to choose whether or not her baby is born?
Should abortion be legalized?
If by “right to choose” and legalized abortion you mean “a woman’s right to choose to kill her preborn child for any reason and at anytime during pregnancy,” I must answer no to both questions. Even so, my pro-life/anti-abortion position would ban abortion except as needed to protect the life and health of the mother, including specific fetal health issues, and possibly in cases of rape and incest.
In all exceptional cases, the mother herself must decide her fate and that of her child. A woman should make this decision after consulting medical and religious advisers, considering her obligations to her other children and husband, giving due consideration to her preborn child, and determining the personal risk and sacrifice she is willing to accept to preserve her child's life. In such unfortunate circumstances, the woman facing this terrible choice should be the only one to make it.
At a minimum, abortion must be an option when a dangerous pregnancy threatens the mother's life or could cause serious physical injury to the mother. In both cases, life and health should be carefully and narrowly defined to prevent abuse of this exception. In such pregnancies, both the physician and the mother should do all they can to preserve both lives.
In the related issue of the preborn child’s health, abortion probably should be allowed to hasten the end of a fetus suffering a terminal condition that would result in his or her death prior to birth; doing so would relieve the mother of the burden of a futile pregnancy. What constitutes a “terminal condition” should be carefully and narrowly defined to prevent abuse of this exception. As for other conditions, I’m troubled with the use of abortion in other cases of fetal disability or abnormality as it too closely resembles discredited eugenics programs of the past. Also, in locations where being female is considered a disability, gender selection is a great evil.
Additionally, abortion probably should be allowed as an option in the case of rape or incest where it may serve justice with regard to the mother. In both cases, the crime would have to be reported in a timely fashion to prevent abuse of this exception. I'm not fully committed to this exception as I'm conflicted over protecting the innocent child's life versus forcing an innocent woman to bear her assailant's child.
Finally, abortion used as a convenient form of “birth control” should be illegal because it is both immoral and irresponsible; “convenience” is never a justification for any homicide. If a woman doesn't want to be a mother, she should take genuine control of her body and use appropriate measures to prevent conception, including contraception or abstinence. Failing this, she should accept the readily foreseeable consequences of her behavior as would any adult.
In 2006, Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher Institute reaffirmed a 1988 survey which determined the reasons women sought abortion: life or health of mother, 3%; health of fetus, 3%; rape or incest, 1%; personal or social, 93% (Abortion: Statistics for the United States). This suggests that the vast majority of abortions would be prevented by a ban on abortion with exceptions for life or health and rape or incest. I've seen other surveys which show that a solid majority opposes a complete ban on abortion, but 56% support the pro-life position I advocate. The exceptions position is politically viable and would reduce annual abortions from 1.2 million to 84,000. Such a policy won’t eliminate abortion completely, but it will eliminate most abortions, and the most egregious and morally offensive ones at that.
Return to Contents
2. When do you consider a baby alive?
An inarguable scientific fact is that human life, like that of all sexually reproducing organisms, begins at conception. When the parents’ reproductive cells merge their genetic material to form a cell nucleus, the first cell of a new life form comes into existence. The result is a unique organism which simultaneously is both its mother and father and is neither, and this uniqueness exists until the organism dies.
My understanding is that half of all such human conceptions fail due to mitosis not beginning; this is a fatal flaw for the zygote of a multicellular species. Of the half of zygotes which proceed to mitosis, half fail to implant in his or her mother’s uterine lining; this is a catastrophic failure for an embryonic mammal. As a result, only about a quarter of fertilizations become successful embryos, that is, pregnancies. While some of these embryos fail, most continue to grow and develop into fetuses at eight weeks after conception. By the twelfth week, with the exception of the fetal circulatory system (that is, the placenta and umbilical cord), the only physical difference between a human fetus and a newborn human being is size.
The most cursory knowledge of embryology and fetology clearly reveals the ongoing process of growth and development of a human being in the earliest stages of his or her life cycle. Even such limited knowledge readily exposes the plethora of “pro-choice” euphemisms for preborn humans as the deceptions they are. “Potential life,” “clump of cells,” “nonviable tissue mass,” “fetal infestation,” and the like are nothing but pro-abortion slurs meant to denigrate the very real lives of very real human beings.
Return to Contents
3. Is there any moral reason you believe supports your side?
As a pro-life Secular Humanist atheist, my opposition to abortion is not based on “Christian values” or any religious considerations. My primary motivation is my high regard for life and its uniqueness. Unlike Christians and other religionists, I realize that the choice isn't between this mortal life and some purported postmortal “eternal life,” but between life and death, existence and nonexistence, being and not being. Even in its totality, with joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, triumph and failure, life is preferable to the alternative which is no alternative at all. As an atheist, I understand that which affirms life is good and is to be supported and that which denies life is evil and is to be opposed. Abortion is the denial of life to its individual victims and a denial of life writ large. Abortion is the ultimate denial of life. I oppose abortion not because “the Bible tells me so,” but, in the words of the tagline of my nontheistic/nonreligious pro-life web site, Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League, “because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being.” I oppose abortion because it is a denial of both the humanity and the human rights of the most innocent and most vulnerable members of the human family. I oppose abortion because to do otherwise would be a denial of my own humanity.
Return to Contents
4. Are there any more reason-based ideas that support your side?
I link to numerous nontraditional or, if you will, non-“stereotypical” pro-life groups who oppose abortion for other than religious reasons on my Pro-life and Anti-abortion Connections page. Of particular note are Libertarians for Life who present a fairly solid pro-life/anti-abortion case based on their political principles and science and without recourse to religious arguments and Feminists for Life who carry on the pro-life/anti-abortion work of the traditional suffrage feminists.
Return to Contents
5. How do you think having an abortion physically, mentally, and/or emotionally affects
a potential mother?
As my primary argument against abortion is the humanity and human rights of preborn children, I haven’t looked too deeply into the negative consequences of abortion on post-abortive mothers, but I am aware of some of the potential hazards all the same. One risk is physical injury to the uterus during the abortion procedure itself. I’ve heard of studies showing increased rates of substance abuse, depression, and suicide in women who have suffered abortions. Also, I know of studies which correlate having had an abortion with higher rates of breast cancer.
Return to Contents
6. What do you think should be done about abortion within your state and/or this country?
Even though Roe v. Wade and its companion ruling, Doe v. Bolton, allowed the states to continue legislating abortion in the second and third trimesters, they also required exceptions for the life and health of the mother so broad that it has been nearly impossible to write legislation that could pass Supreme Court scrutiny. As a result, challenging any aspect of abortion on the state level is practically impossible. At this point, one of two things must happen to change the current abortion regime in the United States. In the first option, the Supreme Court must issue a new ruling which overturns the earlier rulings, thus reinstating the state abortion laws that were in effect in 1973 and returning to the states and the people the power to regulate abortion as they think best. The second possibility is the ratification of a Constitutional amendment which either recognizes the right of the states and the people to regulate abortion or affirms the right to life of the preborn, with or without the exceptions I discussed earlier. Of the two, a new Supreme Court ruling is the easier route and the more likely, but I fear we are a justice or two away from the necessary majority, and we’ll need a test case in order to revisit the issue.
Return to Contents
7. Please feel free to add on anything else regarding the subject.
You may find other useful information on my personal site by browsing the links listed in Site Index: A: Abortion or on my pro-life/anti-abortion site, Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League.
Return to Contents
| 
