Why I Am Pro-Life

[Creed of Heresy]

It's a gob of goo, Frods. It is not a human being.

Undisputed facts:
1. as soon as the cells start to divide, science classes it: the fertilised egg, as human
2. zygotes don't have a personality, but they do possess all of the information that will eventually lead to the formation of a person
3. zygotes don't have feelings. They are completely unaware of their death
4. the law on abortion (that applies to me) seems to be based upon sentience.
5. pregnancies naturally abort for many reasons
6. Deciding to terminate a life once you know it has begun developing, is always terminating a life.

You keep saying "science classifies an embryo as a human," Frodo. What. Science. Are. You. Citing? You had better not be basing these claims off of Robert P. George because if you are I'm going to tear your claims a new asshole...

Everyone keeps asking you, Frodo, WHAT SCIENCE. Answer the damn question and stop sidestepping it.

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“As a materialist, I think it has been demonstrated that an embryo is a separate body and entity, and not merely (as some really did used to argue) a growth on or in the female body. There used to be feminists who would say that it was more like an appendix or even-this was seriously maintained-a tumor. That nonsense seems to have stopped. Of the considerations that have stopped it, one is the fascinating and moving view provided by the sonogram, and another is the survival of ‘premature’ babies of feather-like weight, who have achieved ‘viability’ outside the womb. … The words ‘unborn child,’ even when used in a politicized manner, describe a material reality.”
-Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

Pro-life isn't a stance reserved for the religious.

You should've kept reading that entry.

However, this only opens the argument rather than closes it. There may be many circumstances in which it is not desirable to carry a fetus to full term. Either nature or god appears to appreciate this, since a very large number of pregnancies are “aborted,” so to speak, because of malformations, and are politely known as “miscarriages.” Sad though this is, it is probably less miserable an outcome than the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born, or stillborn, or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others. As with evolution in general, therefore, in utero we see a microcosm of nature and evolution itself. In the first place we begin as tiny forms that are amphibian, before gradually developing lungs and brains (and growing and shedding that now useless coat of fur) and then struggling out and breathing fresh air after a somewhat difficult transition.
Likewise, the system is fairly pitiless in eliminating those who never had a very good chance of surviving in the first place: our ancestors on the savannah were not going to survive in their turn if they had a clutch of sickly and lolling infants to protect against predators. Here the analogy of evolution might not be to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (a term that I have always distrusted) so much as to Joseph Schumpeter’s model of “creative destruction,” whereby we accustom ourselves to a certain amount of natural failure, taking into account the pitilessness of nature and extending back to the remote prototypes of our species.

Thus, not all conceptions are, or ever were, going to lead to births. And ever since the mere struggle for existence began to abate, it has been an ambition of the human intelligence to gain control over the rate of reproduction. Families who are at the mercy of mere nature, with its inevitable demand for profusion, will be tied to a cycle that is not much better than animal. The best way of achieving a measure of control is by prophylaxis, which has been restlessly sought since records were kept and which has in our own time become relatively foolproof and painless. The second-best fallback solution, which may sometimes be desirable for other reasons, is termination of pregnancy: an expedient which is regretted by many even when it has been undertaken in dire need. All thinking people recognize a painful conflict of rights and interests in this question, and strive to achieve a balance. The only proposition that is completely useless, either morally or practically, is the wild statement that sperms and eggs are all potential lives which must not be prevented from fusing and that, when united however briefly, have souls and must be protected by law.

Paraphrasing and quote-mining is a tactic used only by those who want the easiest answer without actually having to answer the question for themselves. Hitchens does not back your stance up on this; in fact he quite effectively states that the answer is a difficult one and subject to the situation, which in effect is essentially a pro-choice stance. He was a mixture of pro-life and pro-choice but in very complicated ways. To quote him further:

Hitchens: Two points I wanted to make. One, that the term "unborn child" has been made a propaganda phrase by the people who called themselves "pro-life." But it's something that has moral and scientific realities. It's become very evident indeed that this is not just a growth upon the mother.


If that's true, what are the problems? It need not qualify the woman's right to choose. It need not. But it would be a very bold person to say that what was being chosen didn't come up. What I argued in my column was this was a social phenomenon. This is the next generation we're talking about. Considering the unborn as candidate members-- potential members--of the next generation; wouldn't that strengthen the argument for socialized medicine, child care, prenatal care?


There's a reason why this is the only country where it's a mania. Because it's between the fundamentalists and the possessive individualists. It's ruined politics, absorbed a huge amount of energy that should have been spent elsewhere.


Q: But you're not agreeing with the religious right on this?


Hitchens: No one who is not for the provision of sex education, contraception, and child care should be allowed to have any position on abortion at all--and those who do should be met with fusillades. Women will decide it, that's a matter of fact, as much as a principle.


Q: So, what is your position regarding the continued legal status of abortion?


Hitchens: There's no choice but choice. I mean that to sound the way it does sound. But there are choices about the conditions in which that choice is made.


I'm very much opposed to euthanasia. I've never understood why more of these people can't commit suicide. Why do they need a Doctor Kevorkian? It's very theatrical. I believe in a right to decide.

But I'm against all blurrings. There's a very sharp dividing line in the case of an infant. I'm against fooling with that. Everything in me rebels against that. The conclusion I've come to as to why it's such a toxic question in America is it isn't about the rights of the unborn child. I think it's an argument about patriarchy. It is a metaphor for the status of women in what is still in some ways a frontier society.

Next time, quote sources we haven't all extensively read and are very familiar with.