Argument 1#
“Pro-Lifers want to control Women” (Not really an argument, but let us deal with it.
In a story from the guardian, (Slide 1#) a new poll says that Pro-Lifers simply want to control women's bodies due to misogyny. They base this purely on slanted questions that are clearly aimed at political issues, and not in a way that would divine between egalitarian and misogynistic traits.
Article here:
This is simply not the case. Just because Pro-Lifers do not want to see a government mandate on companies to enforce diversity hiring does not mean that we hate women. It just means that we have an intellectual standard. Likewise, Pro-Lifers are no more advocating against a woman's autonomy in the prohibition of infanticide as we are in the prohibition of homicide. This is an intellectually consistent view.
Argument 2#
Some will simply say that the infant in the womb is a clump of cells. Or even then, they may be a human clump of cells, but not a person. As is done here by Clair White over at Medium.com:
https://medium.com/@ClaireJWhite/a-clump-of-cells-71071af908d9
To the first argument, genetically, this is undeniably a natural human with his or her own DNA and is in the most vulnerable stage of life. Cancer may have its own DNA as some will point out, but that is a silly comparison at best because Cancer is an unnatural thing that is from YOUR DNA that you received at conception in your mother's womb.
Argument 3#
The next issue raised by people like Clair White, is the issue of personhood. When does someone become a person? At consciousness? How about unconscious patients on life support? Did these lose part of their humanity? How about those who are mentally deficient? Is this consciousness and value of human life on a sliding scale? How about babies with deformities? Should we remove them from the gene pool? The Secular Humanists in Germany toyed with these ideas in the early parts of the last century and Europe is headed back in that direction now. This is not a slippery slope, this is a proven and repeated trajectory. Playing with the idea of personhood allows for great injustices in the name of so called science and progress. We saw it in Nazi Germany, Communist Russian, we see it today in China, and here in the west with the blackmarket for embryonic tissue for stemcell research.
Even if the infant is not a full fledged person, the argument falls apart. What do we do to those who poach or kill dolphins? Eagles? Even the destruction of some bugs and turtles land the perpetrator in the slammer. Is not the human embryo even more valuble than the embryo of a dumb animal? (Yes people have been jailed for damaging eggs of birds, turtles, etc)
Argument 4#
Another common claim that is made is that Pro-Life means Pro-Birth and nothing more, as articulated by prochoiceamerica.org in this article.
(Slide 3#)
https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/campaign/the-hypocrisy-of-the-pro-life-movement/
Again, they are conflating disagreement in how to fix these other problems with intellectual inconsistency. This is not the issue at hand.
The Violinist Argument will provide us with some good context for several claims and arguments. Pulled from(https://prolife.stanford.edu/qanda/q2-2.html)
“Educated pro-choicers who claim that the question of fetal personhood is irrelevant because the mother's right to an abortion would trump the fetus' right to life even if he is a person may bring up Judith Jarvis Thompson's famous “Violinist Analogy” or some variation of it.
In this somewhat contrived story, a man (a violinist, in the original formulation of the analogy) is dying, and the only way to prolong his life is to hook him up to another human and siphon off some of that person's blood or kidney function (or something) as a form of life-support. He must remain in this state for the several months necessary for medical technology to reach the point that it can intervene and completely resuscitate him. So the music lovers, in their zeal to save the violinist, find some random woman who happens to be the only person in the world with the right blood type. As she sleeps in bed, they hook her up to the violinist. The woman wakes up to find herself strapped down to the bed and attached as a form of life support to a complete stranger, essentially a human parasite, lying next to her. Unless she severs the tubes, she can't move or go anywhere indefinitely, forced to have her energy siphoned off by the parasite. Most people's (correct) reaction is that the woman has the right to free herself of the violinist, even though she knows that this will result in his death.
The idea is that this situation is analogous to an unplanned pregnancy: against her plans, the woman finds herself supporting the life of an unwanted person and has the right to deprive that person of her bodily support, regardless of what the result is for the parasite.”
Argument 5#: I have the right to abortion because the baby is a stranger and a leach that has appeared unplanned, unannounced, and unwanted.
Unplugging a stranger form life support is not an active act of murder, but rather a passive act of retracting care. No one believes that retracting life support from a terminally ill patient is necesarrily murder. The imposition on the one giving life support is not a morally necessary one, so one person's need for life support does not mandate another's autonomy. So this is a false equivalence. The proper analogy would involve dismembering the stranger, not unplugging them. One is an passive act that frees you of the responsibility (like adoption), and the other is an active act of murder.
Argument 6#: I did not consent to the pregnancy, just the sex.
The lack of consent argument holds little water. Consider this analogy: Someone playing baseball in the street may not have consented to the property damage caused by an accidental window break, but they WILL have to face the repercussions. If your child was conceived by a consensual act of procreation, then this is no different. You may attempt to argue that you have no responsibility for your actions and that you do not want a child. If so, adoption is an option for you. However, what is not an option, is jamming a pair of forceps into your baby's head or the head of your irate neighbor (How do you get to kill a 3rd party for your convenience when your actions caused the situation?).There are repercussions for actions. This also holds for rape and incest, 1% of cases. The principle is the same, but the blame is not on the woman, but the man. How does an evil act, committed by a more powerful person onto a vulnerable person, validate another evil act perpetrated by the original victim, onto an even more vulnerable person? If the baby in the womb is a person, then they have as much right to not be physically violated and ripped to shreds while alive as the woman had to not be raped.
Argument 7#: I have autonomy over my own body.
Correct! So does the infant. Imagine this, if turbulence on a commercial flight causes a stranger to stumble onto your lap, you do not have the autonomy to stab this person in the head and suck their brains out. In the poor analogy above, this unnatural position is temporary like pregnancy. Pregnancy, however, is the natural outcome and end to sex. Your autonomy extends to contraceptives, abstinence, adoption, or surgery to prevent you from being able to conceive. When did murder enter into the equation of personal autonomy?
Argumen 8#: If I cannot be compelled to give an organ to a stranger, or even my own child, how can I be expected to give my uterus?
Three points here:
1. A kidney transplant is permanent, pregnancy is 9 months. While a pregnancy does affect some bodily changes, these are incomparably benign to a lifetime of dialysis if kidney 2# stops working.
2. The issue of ontology is worth thinking about here as well. What is the purpose of the kidney? It works within the original owner's body to perform a critical function. You are partially impaired without both kidneys. Transplanting a kidney is an extraordinary and extra-natural act. The uterus, however, has a different purpose. It was made to hold the human life that dwells within for the duration of 9 months. The natural purpose of the uterus is to shelter that life. This is perhaps a weak argument, but one formed in response to a weak attack on the Pro-Life stance.
3. None of the above arguments deal with the issue of the infant's vs the organ recipient's state of health. The person in need of a kidney requires someone else to give up part of a healthy donor body to provide two people with compromised physical capacity. Without the donation, there would simply be one live non-donor, and one dead person who was in need of a kidney. The act of actively destroying the baby in the womb leaves one mother with a statistically higher chance of suicidal ideation (outside of 5~10 years), and a dead baby in the vacuum cleaner. Carrying to term allows for both individuals to live physically whole lives.
Argument 9#: I have reproductive rights.
That is true! But pregnancy is not reproduction, conception is. Even if someone took your agency in the case of rape or incest, the issue is not made better by infanticide.