We are now living in a time where 56% of Americans believe abortion to be morally wrong. This is up substantially from 1995, where only 33% of Americans polled would identify as pro-life. So what has caused such a rise in the pro-life movement? Many different people have many different theories on why Americans have largely changed their stance in recent years. But I believe there to be a couple of reasons.
Science No Longer Supports Abortion
Science is recent years has increasingly supported pro-life. More and more scientific organizations and non-profits have been started in the name of life producing policies and studies. After just 22 days, a child has a heart of their own that circulates blood completely unique to that of the mothers. The zygote, the very first cell development from the sperm and egg, has a genetic composition that is completely unique. And this zygote is composed undeniably of human cells.
Even the definition of biological life and the criteria required for it are fulfilled by a zygote. It has metabolism and growth. It reacts to stimuli and reproduces. At the very least a zygote is every bit alive as a plant or other biological entity. The fact that a zygote fulfils all these criteria and is made up completely of human cells and DNA should classify it as human life. Yet this fact is simply ignored by pro-choice advocacy groups.
The Argument From Morality
Some pro-choice activists will accept these scientific facts but claim that in the end a fetus is not a person. But this personhood argument is not a scientific argument, it is a philosophical one. To determine whether or not something possesses the quality of personhood is something that should be asked of ethicists and philosophers. And any arguments for the development of personhood at any point other than conception are practically nonexistent.
Even somewhat granting this philosophy of human life is a very dangerous thing. Some pro-abortion articles acknowledge all these problems and claim that it does not matter. They grant the premise that a fetus is in fact a human life, and still advocate for abortion. Some claim that even though the fetus is life, it is a lesser degree of life. That the fetus is not as important as the mother. Does this concept sound familiar? Because it should.
This is what the Nazi’s believed.
Not only is that almost entirely what Nazi’s believed, just applied slightly differently, this is also what people believed about slaves. People with darker skin tones were believed to be “sub-human”. Being humanlike in nature but not being fully worth the same as Caucasians. In a 2013 article written by Mary Williams of Salon.com, she writes: “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides” (emphasis added).
Bringing us to Today
Taking all these things into account, it should seem fairly obvious why pro-life is rapidly on the rise. Any philosophy that makes abortion morally plausible is incoherent, hateful and ridiculous when examined closely. Science and philosophy both strongly support and advocate for pro-life ideology. It is my sincere hope that pro-life continues to rise in America and around the world. We may one day look back on this time in history as a tragedy, a black spot in modernism.
But until that time, we should keep fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.
About The Contributor
