In a recent edition of The Varsity, Paul Harrison discussed pro-life speaker Rebecca Kiessling’s Feb. 12 talk at Carr Hall (see Seeking the original face, Feb. 15). Harrison was not impressed by Kiessling’s arguments, and feels that the pro-life position lacks intellectual strength. It seems, however, that he has misunderstood both Ms. Kiessling’s talk and the pro-life position.
Harrison was disappointed because “the intellectual quality of [Kiessling’s] talk suffered because of the emotional focus.” However, Kiessling was not attempting to provide an exhaustive intellectual presentation of pro-life arguments. Her greatest witness in the talk was herself: a woman conceived in rape who was fortuitously spared from abortion and who insists that all people, conceived in rape or otherwise, have the right to life. She said that “Whenever you identify yourself as pro-choice or make that exception for rape, [you’re saying to me], ‘I think your mother should have been able to abort you.'” Harrison mentions this quote but does not refute it.
It is erroneous to approach Kiessling’s presentation as a philosophical discourse. Rather, the talk was intended to put a face on the issue of abortion, to show that real people are involved, and that one cannot dismiss the unborn child without devaluing the life of every human being. Harrison seems to have missed this point.
His article also misconstrues the pro-life position. He claims that he has “seen no substantial arguments […] from the pro-life side,” which, he says, condemns it to eventual failure. But the pro-life stance is actually much stronger than he realizes.
It consists of two premises and a logical conclusion, which I quote from Kiessling’s website: Premise one: Every person has the right not to be unjustly killed. Premise two: The unborn child is a person. Therefore, every unborn child has the right not to be unjustly killed.
If the premises are correct, then the conclusion undeniably follows. The onus is on pro-choicers to disprove either of the premises. Most people accept the first as a given, so pro-choicers usually disagree with the second. The second premise presents the only really important question in the abortion debate: is the fetus a person, or not? If so, no justification for abortion is adequate, even rape. If the fetus is not a person, however, than no justification for abortion is needed.
Harrison claims that the view of the fetus as a person is based on the Christian belief in the soul. Thus, according to many pro-choicers, the pro-life position ought to be dismissed out of hand. It is obviously absurd to dismiss a position merely because it is rooted in the Christian tradition (after all, Martin Luther King Jr. based his opposition to slavery on the Bible), but one need not be a Christian to accept the pro-life position. Kiessling herself pointed out that she was pro-life before she became Christian.
The humanity of the fetus is actually not a metaphysical assumption at all-it is scientific. Biology is quite clear that life begins at conception. Once the egg and sperm unite, a new cell (the zygote) has come into existence, with its own distinct DNA, which will develop into a fetus, an infant, a teenager, an adult. Once conception occurs, development of a distinct being has begun, and this distinct being is obviously a human being.
Geneticist Jérôme Lejeune made this fact perfectly clear in his 1981 testimony before a United States Senate Subcommittee. He stated that, “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.”
“Ah,” the pro-choicer might say, “but the fetus is not a person.” But on what will you base personhood if not on one’s fundamental human nature? As the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform points out, “If personhood is not recognized based on one’s human nature […] then it becomes a subjective notion based on the functions of one human being or on the feelings of another.”
Slavery is a case in point: slaves were denied recognition as persons because they were different from those whose views were being enforced. But personhood does not depend on whether you are black or white, tall or short, more or less developed, more or less able to perform certain biological functions, but on the fact that you are a human being. Why should this standard not be applied to the unborn child?
Ultimately, the pro-choice position lacks intellectual rigour. Pushed to its logical limits, pro-choice arguments must conclude that even innocent persons can sometimes be killed for the convenience of others. Pro-life advocates see this as an extremely frightening worldview, since it bases a human being’s right to life on a merely functional view of personhood. This was Kiessling’s fundamental point: if we claim the right to kill the unborn child, we devalue the right to life of every human being.
