Abortion - an inconsistency about innate human worth | Alexander Ruggles
Life and the rights inherent to it, are imperative to our existence as humans; the notion of rights as well as responsibilities act as the orchestrator of all human activity and inform each action we take. Natural law, which (tracing to Aristotle, Aquinas, the Bible, and Thomas Hobbes alike) is so foundational to our civilisation, and indeed humanity itself, affirms that every human is imbued with rights that are inalienable, absolute, and enduring- and as such, every human is an end in themselves. The most important right that we possess as humans is the right to life, to which all other rights are predicated upon. Indeed, without this right, all other rights that we possess are lost. There can be no pursuit of happiness, no bodily autonomy, no property rights nor, any ability to live as one chooses, if the right to life is violated.
Science has determined that life begins at conception, through the fertilisation of an egg by a single sperm cell, with “the time of fertilisation represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual. It is at this point and by this process that a new human being is created. Indeed medical embryology confirms that the ‘development of a human being begins with fertilisation, a process by which two highly specialised cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote’. This human life is unique and with every aspect of their genome formulated, is genetically distinct from both mother and father, possessing a genetic make-up that is irrepealable.
If it is scientific truth that conception is when a human life begins and if the right to life is the most important, indeed the very bedrock of every other right that a human possesses, then it follows that life should be protected from its very first moment.
Thus to argue in favour of abortion, the deliberately intended act of killing a child in the womb, is either to argue that the right to life and with that, morality itself, is subjective or even non-existent or to be inconsistent with the moral truth of human life having innate and intrinsic worth- and thus possessing an inherent and inalienable right to life. To argue that morality itself is subjective or non-existent is to deny that human life has any value, enjoyment, purpose or structure and that individuals have no right to pursue happiness or avoid harm, infringement or indeed any subjugation from other individuals. I do not think most supporters of abortion advocate such a position and for those who do so I can only have immense pity for.
Thus, I will expand on my second point; that to be in favour of abortion is to be inconsistent with the moral truth of human life possessing innate worth and dignity from its very first moment.
Those who justify abortion commonly do so through placing emphasis on bodily autonomy for the pregnant woman. Yet such an argument is weak. It violates its own premise in totally dismissing the bodily autonomy of the human being in the womb. A common counter argument to this is arguing that the bodily autonomy of an individual only begins at a point of viability outside of the womb, when a human can supposedly ‘live by themselves.’ There are various problems with such a position.
Firstly, life has already been proven to begin at conception; to argue that the rights inherent to an individual begin when they are ‘viable’ outside of the womb is to be inconsistent in recognising the right to life and to argue that the rights of an individual magically begin at a point other than that at the miraculous event of conception. Indeed, such an argument denies the fact that ‘the embryo’s subsequent development may be described as a process of becoming what he already is from the moment of conception.’ Moreover, the position taken of life only having value when being able to supposedly live independently outside of the womb is erroneous.
The reality is that all human infants can only survive through their utter dependency on other individuals; indeed a parent or guardian has a responsibility to nurture that child up until the age of maturity at eighteen and even after that point every human is dependent in some way or another on other individuals. Secondly, such a point fails to recognise that this vulnerability and dependency of a child, both born and pre-born entails a degree of responsibility to safeguard their inherent right to life, rather than violate it.
As academic Patrick Lee and legal scholar Robert P. George argue, we have ‘special responsibilities to those people with whom we are closely united,’ with abortion being a negation of that respnsibility to protect that child from harm. As such, the dependency of the child cannot result in it being morally acceptable to violate its inherent right to life; its very dependency creates a moral commitment for other individuals to safeguard and protect its right to life- and to recognise the child’s innate value and their responsibility to affirm and protect such worth.
So any acceptance of the aforementioned scientific fact that life begins at conception and the recognition of the moral truth of human life having innate worth underlines that abortion both violates and is inconsistent with an individual’s inherent right to life. Their dependency, rather than being a reason to infringe on their basic human right to life, should instead be seen to create a moral responsibility for other individuals to safeguard, protect, and uphold that individual's absolute right to life from its very conception.
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