The Case for Pro-Life

Those who support abortion still use the argument that the unborn are not human as "born" people are human, thereby justifying abortion. Often sentience is used as a criteria for deciding whether a life has value. One of the commenters here asked the question "why is being sentient an any more or less valuable trait than being, say, six feet tall?... Is it not utilitarian relativism to value being sentient over other traits?" Indeed, why choose that one characteristic to give life a value?

I think one of the most convincing biographies of someone turned pro-life has to be the one of Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Nathanson was one of the founders of NARAL Pro-Choice America and he ran the largest abortion clinic in the country in New York City. He performed over 75,000 abortions, including one on his own child. Nathanson wrote his auto-biography in the book The Hand of God, but I found his account of the early days of NARAL in Aborting America to be the far more telling book. He wrote that book while he was still an abortionist and it recounts his gradual change of mind on the abortion issue. A must-read for someone who really wants to know the history of the abortion issue in North America.

Perhaps this quote would be of interest to those who think that being pro-life has to do with religious belief. It is true that most of us on this side are church-goers but it is not necessarily so.

My switch to pro-life had nothing to do with religion. I changed my mind based on fetoscopies and ultrasound studies. Once we had ultrasound in place, we could study the fetus and see that it was a member of our community. If you don't do that, you are just a creature of political ideology. In 1970, there were approximately 1,100 articles on the functioning of the fetus. By 1990, there were 22,000. The data piled up swiftly and opened a window into the womb.

- from The Hand of God, by Bernard Nathanson, M.D.