The Pro-Life Answers (to the "Pro Choice/Death" movement)
Many pro-abortion arguments contain an awful amount of rhetoric; often, there is little substance behind them, but this fact is hidden by an emotional and rhetorical smokescreen.
The types of objections you get from pro-abortion people can be grouped into several categories. Choose a category or simply scroll down to browse through the objections and answers.
Who are you....?
For entire academic essays refuting pro-death arguments, go here.
- "Keep your laws off my body."
Answer 1: It's not about your body; it's about someone else's body, namely the baby's. Why will you not allow the baby a right to his/her own body, when this is a right you claim so insistently for yourself?
Answer 2: What do you mean, my laws? Moral laws are universal; they're not mine. Just like laws against murdering born people aren't any individual's laws, neither are laws against murdering unborn people. The pro-Life side can demonstrate the correctness of its positions irrefutably through science and reason.
Answer 3: Yeah, that's what the unborn baby says, too: Hello, woman, keep your "choices" off my body!- "Every woman should have the right to choose what she does with her body."
Answer: It's NOT her body! The baby is in her body, yes, but not part of her body. The baby, from the moment of conception, has his/her own DNA and its very own and unique genetic code. This is impossible if the child is part of the mother's body.- "Everyone has a right to choose."
Answer 1: Choose what, please? The phrase "right to choose" is empty and deceptive if we stop there. Whether or not someone has a right to choose something depends on the object of the choice, i.e. what it is that we're choosing! There are many things we can't choose: we can't choose to do whatever we want and we can't choose to kill whomever we want, for instance. Duh!
Answer 2: It's a child, not a choice.
Answer 3: Somebody's right to choose something can never exceed someone else's right to live. The right to live is the first of all rights; no other rights can infringe upon it. The right to live can only be taken away by one's own actions, through being guilty of a very serious and heinous crime. All unborn children, however, are innocent and have committed no crime.
Answer 4: So everyone has a right to choose? Really? Can I choose to have slaves, too? The point is, choice falls flat when that choice involves harming innocent humans beings.- "Abortion is simply a reproductive choice."
Answer 1: Some "choices" are wrong. Women are free to make reproductive choices before they get pregnant (such as being chaste), not after. Once you're pregnant, that's it, no more choices, because then we're dealing with a human being, completely unique and separate, and all a mother's choices must bow to the sanctity of innocent human life.
Answer 2: In the 1800's, there were people in the U.S. who had slaves. On top of that, many punished their slaves and made them suffer. They could have called that a "property choice," since they believed that slaves were property, and what they did with their "property" was a matter of their own choosing. The point is: we must look beyond the rhetoric to see the reality of what is signified. You can call killing people (or making them suffer) all you want; the truth still remains that the action is wrong. Even euphemisms like "reproductive choice" won't change the facts, just like "property choice" changes nothing when it signifies wronging human beings.- [to a male:] "Have you ever been pregnant?"
Answer 1: No, but I've been an unborn child!
Answer 2: No, but that's beside the point, because this issue is about what's right and wrong, moral and immoral, and these facts don't depend upon whether you are a man or a woman or whether you've ever been pregnant. To deny this amounts to saying that no one can say whether it's right to kill Jews unless he's a German Nazi, or whether it's right to have a slave unless he's a white American living during the time of slavery.
Answer 3: If males can't talk about abortion, then the Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, is null and void, because the justices were all male.
- "Women shouldn't be forced to be pregnant against their will." / "Women shouldn't have a compulsory pregnancy."
Answer 1: That's an argument from pity, and therefore fallacious. Since what's at stake in that "pregnancy" is an innocent human life, the baby's right to life overrides the woman's wish not to be pregnant. [An innocent human being's right to life, being the most basic of all rights and guaranteed by the Constitution, overrides any other rights or wishes.]
Answer 2: Everybody must take responsibility for his actions. If a woman does not wish to become pregnant, she shouldn't have sex. [Obviously, this argument doesn't work in rape cases.]- "I can have an abortion because it's my body!"
Answer 1: What is your body? Your preborn baby? No, your preborn baby is not your body; your baby is in your body. As a former fetus, I know that I have never been my mother. I have been in my mother, but not identical to my mother. We know by science that beginning from the moment of conception, the preborn child has his own unique DNA, and all the material necessary to develop into a full-grown adult is contained in the zygote. The baby has his own cardiovascular system and does not share in his mother's system! The baby has his own blood type, too. It is totally false, even from a merely scientific point of view, to say that the preborn child is your body. The child is in your body, but not identical to it.
Answer 2: Gee, that's about as smart as saying that I can murder people in my house because it's my house! No! There are a lot of things you can do in your house, but murdering people is not one of them!
- "The object of abortion is a fetus, not a child or a baby."
Answer: So what's a fetus, huh? "Fetus" is simply a term denoting an unborn child from eight weeks after conception until birth. Just like we use terms like "toddler" or "teenager" to refer to humans at different stages of development after birth, so also we use words like "fetus" and "embryo" to refer to humans at different states of preborn development. In short, a fetus is a child, simply at a preborn state of development. By the way, "fetus" comes from the Latin word foetus, meaning "little one."- "The object of abortion is a product of conception. It's tissue."
Answer 1: You and I, too, are "products of conception." And you bet we contain a bunch of tissue (especially if you're my weight!). But you are omitting a significant deal; in fact, so much that it changes the entire deceptive situation you have created through your rhetoric. The real question is: what is it tissue of? A human being! And no preborn child consists merely of tissue. Oh no. Very quickly, fingernails are present, hair develops, bones are starting to grow, etc. So you're wrong in saying that it's tissue because you are implying it's tissue only, kind of like just a bunch of cells clogged together and floating around. But that is not so, unless you wish to refer to yourself as just a blob of tissue, a product of conception.
Answer 2: The fact is that any human product of conception is a human being! Humans are--thank God!--naturally incapable of producing any offspring other than human beings. You'll never have a sheep or squirrel; it'll always be a human being, a baby.
- "Don't like abortion? Don't have one!"
Answer 1: "Gee, don't like slavery? Don't have a slave!" --See how stupid that is?
Answer 2: "Gee, don't like pedophilia? Don't be a pedophile then!" --See how stupid that is? We can justify any crime this way.
Answer 3: If we know that an injustice is done to somebody, we have a moral obligation (!) to speak out and oppose this and try to end the injustice or right the wrong if still possible. [If you are talking to a person who professes to believe in the Bible, you can add Proverbs 24:11: "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter."] We must speak for those who cannot speak and defend those who are too weak to defend themselves.- [to a male:] "Have you ever been pregnant?"
Answer 1: No, but that's beside the point, because this issue is about what's right and wrong, moral and immoral, and these facts don't depend upon whether you are a man or a woman or whether you've ever been pregnant. To deny this amounts to saying that no one can say whether it's right to kill Jews unless he's a German Nazi, or whether it's right to have a slave unless he's a white American living during the time of slavery.
Answer 2: If males can't talk about abortion, then the Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, is null and void, because the justices were all male.- "Quit showing those disgusting pictures of aborted fetuses. You're just trying to entice emotions."
Answer 1: Photographs aren't emotional. They just depict reality as it is. If this reality creates an emotional reaction in you, perhaps it should tell you something. So if you don't like what you see in those photos, it's because the reality of abortion is disgusting and wrong. That's not the pictures' fault, just like it's not a mirror's fault if it displays something you don't like when you look in it.
Answer 2: You didn't have a problem with anti-war Protesters showing photos of napalmed babies back during the time of the Vietnam war. The war ended much earlier because of those pictures. They showed that what was going on was wrong. If it wasn't wrong to show those pictures then, why should it be wrong now to show the even grislier reality of what is legal here in this country?
Answer 3: Funny you should bring up emotionalism. Because it's pro-abortion supporters like you who are actually arguing on emotional and therefore fallacious grounds. You are the ones who argue from pity, as in, "But look, she can't afford to have a baby right now" or, "But this poor woman was raped!" These are emotional arguments because they ignore reason (which tells us that being raped or not having time or money for a baby are not sufficient reasons to kill the child) and favor pure emotionalism and pity instead.
Answer 4: Stop killing children and we'll stop showing those pictures.
Answer 5: The sooner you believe that abortion is wrong, the sooner we can end it. That's why we show those ugly pictures.
- "You can't legislate morality."
Answer: Of course you can. We do it all the time. Even you do it by saying abortion should be legal--that is legislating morality, just the wrong way. Legislating morality is what laws are for. We legislate that you can't murder anybody, we legislate that you can't rape anybody, we legislate that you can't molest children, we legislate that you can't steal, etc. So what are you talking about? Of course you can legislate morality. That's exactly what many laws do.- "The fetus is really just a parasite and not a human being."
Answer: Let's see about that. First, what makes a human being a human being? The unique genetic makeup, of course, which is present from conception, and the fact that the child is the offspring of two human beings. Secondly, what exactly does "parasite" means? It's a word that is sure to get people's attention and is used to sway opinion in the pro-abortion direction. But what about the reality behind the word? The American Heritage Dictionary defines "parasite" as: "An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host." That may perhaps apply to the human child, though even that is not always --if ever--so, as the following story shows (click): "Unborn Baby Helps Keep Mother Alive." But let's just say that the above-quoted definition of "parasite" applies to every human preborn child. So what? Calling a preborn human baby a "parasite" is simply using the weapon of rhetoric--the art of speaking. It doesn't really tell us much. It tells us that the human child is totally dependent on the mother. Yes, we know that. So? The human child is completely dependent on others, especially the mother, even after birth. Children are always dependent on their parents. The elderly are often dependent on their children or on other adults. So what? Do we have the right to kill dependent people now? The word "parasite" does not only have a biological meaning, of course, but also a social meaning. The same dictionary defines the social meaning as: "One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return." I suspect that the abortion advocate relies on the fact that many people will associate the word "parasite" with the social meaning (which really suggests that a parasite is a spoiled bum) before considering the actual biological definition, which is quite innocent. So there we have it again: rhetoric. That's all they have, the pro-aborts. Reason goes out the window. Just use such loaded terms like "parasite" and hope that people will stop thinking and simply be swayed by the rhetoric. So, stripped of the rhetoric, the pro-abortion claim is that the preborn child is dependent on the mother and therefore has no right to live. Right? That's what they're saying. But why should anyone believe this? Why should the mother have the right to kill this child who is dependent on her? Why? Any reason they may give is either arbitrary or can equally be applied to BORN babies.
- "If abortion is made illegal again, women will have back-alley abortions, and they will die needlessly."
Answer 1: That people will "do it anyway" is no argument to legalize something heinous. By the same token, should we legalize rape now so that no rapist will have to do it in secret, or because he would do it otherwise anyway? Are you kidding?
Answer 2: While some women may still have abortions, the abortion rate will definitely decrease by, it is my guess, about 90% or even more. How many people would commit murder if it were legal, do you think? Certainly plenty more than do now! Obviously, making something illegal is always a deterrent for a large amount of people.
Answer 3: Don't tell me with a straight face that you care about needless deaths. Every single abortion that has ever been done was needless. There is never a "need" to kill your child. By making abortion illegal, we are reducing the number of needless deaths.- "So what are you going to do with all the unwanted babies if abortion is made illegal? Will you take them?"
Answer 1: If there should indeed be a grave need to give up own's own child, these children can be put up for adoption. There are countless couples who would like to adopt children but cannot because there are not enough children available. In the year 2000, approximately 1.3 million children were killed through abortion, and approximately 1.3 million people were waiting to adopt children. The number of children released for adoption was a mere 35,000 (statistics by National Council for Adoption; see Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments, 2nd ed., p. 122). So the truth is that we are not in a sitution in which there are not enough people to take "unwanted" children!
Answer 2: Even if no one wanted to take the "unwanted" children, this does not mean that we can kill them. Deliberately killing innocent people is always wrong, and there are no circumstances that can change that. Just because you don't want your child and I don't want your child doesn't mean you have the right to kill your child!
Answer 3: So that is your alternative? Kill them because no one wants them? Should we simply kill everyone that is "burdensome" or "unwanted"? The very thought of a child being "unwanted" by his own mother disgusts me!