BJ at http://bj77.wordpress.com/ is starting a series about his pro-life convictions and it’s worth a read.  Reading BJ’s first post in the series reminded me of an entry I read some time ago in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy edited by Ted Honderich.  There are many contributors, and it does not say who the author of the entry is.  However, the book is written from a secular point of view and does not have religious leanings one way or another. 

The following is the entry on abortion.

” Human beings develop gradually inside women’s bodies. The death of a newly fertilized human egg does not seem the same as the death of a person.  Yet there is no obvious line that divides the gradually developing foetus [fetus] from the adult. Hence abortion poses a difficult ethical issue.

Those who defend women’s rights to abortion often refer to themselves as ‘pro-choice’ rather than ‘pro-abortion’. In this way they seek to bypass the issue of the moral status of the foetus, and instead make the right to abortion a question of individual liberty. But it cannot simply be assumed that a woman’s right to have an abortion is a question of individual liberty, for it must first be established that the aborted foetus is not a being worthy of protection. If the foetus is worthy of protection, then laws against abortion do not create ‘victimless crimes’ as laws against homosexual relations between consenting adults do. So the question of the moral status of the foetus cannot be avoided.

The central argument against abortion may be put like this:

It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.

A human foetus is an innocent human being.

Therefore it is wrong to kill a human foetus.

Defenders of abortion usually deny the second premiss of this argument. The dispute about abortion then becomes a dispute about whether a foetus is a human being, or, in other words, when a human life begins.  Opponents of abortion challenge others to point at any stage in the gradual process of human development that marks a morally significant dividing-line.  Unless there is such a line, they say, we must either upgrade the status of the earliest embryo to that of a child, or downgrade the status of a child to that of a foetus; and no one advocates the latter course.

  The most commonly suggested dividing-lines between the fertilized egg and the child are birth and viability. Both are open to objection. A prematurely born infant may well be less developed in these respects than a foetus nearing the end of its normal term, and it seems peculiar to hold that we may not kill the premature infant,  but may kill the more developed foetus.  The point of viability varies according to the state of medical technology, and, again, it is odd to hold that a foetus has a right to life if the pregnant woman lives in London, but not if she lives in New Guinea.

Those who wish to deny the foetus a right to life may be on stronger ground if they challenge the first, rather than the second, premiss of the argument set out above.  To describe a being as ‘human’ is to use a term that straddles two distinct notions: membership of the species Homo sapiens, and being a person, in the sense of a rational or self-conscious being.  If ‘human’ is taken as equivalent to ‘person’, the second premiss of the argument, which asserts that the foetus is a human being, is clearly false; for one cannot plausibly argue that a foetus is either raional or self-conscious. If, on the other hand, ‘human’ is taken to mean no more than ‘ member of the species Homo sapiens’ , then it needs to be shown why mere membership of  a given biological species should be sufficient basis for a right to life.  Rather, the defender of abortion may wish to argue, we should look at the foetus for what it is—the actual characteristics it posesses—and value it’s life accordingly.”

 I thought all that was pretty interesting. And I would add that neither are neonatal infants, nor many developmentally challenged persons rational or self-conscious. But no one (yet) is arguing for the right to  exterminate these two people groups.  So, I think we should look at ‘human’ as being a member of the human race as opposed to being rational and self-consious. 
Since there (as was agrued by the above excerpt) is no dividing line in the gradual process of human development at which to declare the fetus human, we need to protect it as being a member of the human race just as you or I.

Convenience should never play a part in the decision to end life. Actions have consequences. If you aren’t ready to be a parent, keep yourself out of situations that would come to that end.  The so-called ‘pro-choice’ advocates, need to understand that the choice does not lie in whether or not to end the life of the child who had no say in being concieved.  The choice lies in the decision to live a chaste life without the consequences that follow selfishness.

I think what most angers me about the murder of these children is this: People are motivated to murder by selfishness. They want their hour or so of pleasure, so instead of choosing self-denial for the sake of the child that could be, they enjoy their momentary pleasure, then kill the consequence. Then instead of feeling remorse for their heinousness, they invent ways to defend themselves, i.e. “It wasn’t a baby yet”.

Ok, I’m done now.