5 Arguments Against Abortion

With the abortion debate in decent times you most likely have heard something along the lines of this:

“People who want to ban abortion need to stop pushing their Christian beliefs on me”

Now it is true that Christians are the predominant group opposing abortion and it can be debated why exactly I am not allowed to “push” my beliefs in politics while people with secular ideologies constantly do that but that’s a different topic altogether.

The fact is that anyone can be morally opposed to abortion for the same reason anyone can be morally opposed to murder. Because they’re the same thing. There are groups out there like Secular Pro-life for example.

And there are secular arguments that can be made to show that abortion is morally unjustifiable. Which if you are debating with a non-believer in a debate setting, youtube discussion or twitter beef these arguments may prove persuasive.

First of all as a personal recommendation from someone who has been discussing the pro-life position I would say try to maintain the focus as much as possible on the morality of killing an unborn life. Don’t let them try to derail you with noise about my body my choice, whether consent to sex equals consent to pregnancy, what about scenarios, etc. Because if you can show that abortion is the killing of an innocent human living organism i.e murder then nothing else matters. You can swap any abortion argument with the word murder to see just how ridiculous it gets.

So here’s what I consider to be some of the more persuasive secular pro-life argument. I also want to give a shoutout to Trent Horn from Catholic Answers who I̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶m̶e̶l̶e̶s̶s̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ influenced a number of these arguments. I recommend checking out his channel and debates with pro-abortion philosophers. But anyway let’s get into it.

The Humanity Argument

1. It’s morally wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human living organism
2. An unborn human life is an innocent human living organism
3. Abortion intentionally kills an unborn human life
4. Therefor abortion is morally wrong

I believe this to be the most solid argument and really the main argument I would recommend on abortion. Because it’s simple, effective and puts the abortion side on the defensive. Like I said if you can show abortion is on the same moral level as homicide really no political arguments can be justified. Instead the pro-abortion side will have to debate on the moral act on aborting a human life itself and that’s where they tend to completely fumble and fall back on completely unscientific arguments.

Premise 1 is self-evident because the premise is essentially a way of saying that murder is morally wrong. To deny premise 1 is to support murder against all human life and considering murder is universally seen as one of the most evil acts if you share the baseline premise of murder being morally wrong as nearly all humans do then it is not morally consistent to support abortion.

A person might try to attack premise 1 by suggesting not ALL killing of innocent human life is morally evil. One such argument would be that taking someone off life support for example is morally justified. However this cannot be considered an act of killing because we are not actively intending the death of a person. We are allowing them to die. That is why we would make a moral distinction between taking someone off life support and putting a pillow to choke that person to death as the latter would be killing.

Another argument for suggesting not all killing of innocent human life is bad is done by appealing to certain thought experiments like the Violinist Argument. It should be noted that these arguments have both pro-life and pro-choice critics and I do recommend learning about refutations to this argument. Some good links here

But suppose you get some sociopathic moral relativist or nihilist who argues that murder isn’t morally right or wrong. Well you could try to waste your time debating normative ethics with the person but I would simply say that person has effectively defeated his own point. Because if he doesn’t believe in morality then any arguments he makes for abortion is completely unjustified. After all if morality doesn’t matter then why claim it’s a woman’s choice? You have no moral claim to back that up. In the words of the late Roger Scruton:

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t”

Premise 2 is most likely going to be the one that will be most debated and attacked with many often presenting arbitrary arguments of when a fetus is a life or even human. Criteria like viability, pain, sentience or complete nonsensical buzzwords like clump of cells (which by definition we all are) or parasite (which by definition are heterospecific). So let’s make the case here that unborn that being fetus, embryo and yes even zygote are human living organisms.

First let’s define life. Pretty much the general consensus of defining life is that it needs to meet criteria such as metabolism, homeostatis, adaptation, growth and organization. The fact is that the unborn fit the criteria of life. In fact if something more simple like a bacteria is likewise considered a life. It is undeniable that life starts at conception but if you’re still not convinced this view is backed up by pretty much any journal on embryology. Gametes are not life because they lack many of these essential criteria.

Second let’s define human. This is pretty easy and undeniable. They are the offspring of humans and contain human DNA. Trying to argue that they are somehow a different species would just be foolish

Third let’s define organism. Again like the criteria of life suggests the ability to develop as an organism, to grow and mature. This is important because some will try to argue that body cells would be human life by our definition but the vital difference is that body cells cannot mature. They are body parts that are part of a larger organism. The unborn are a distinct organism.

And finally we can argue that an unborn life is innocent by necessity of their lack of agency.

Premise 3 is also self-evident. It is undeniable that when abortion happens a living being is killed. Hence why the term abortion is distinct from a miscarriage.

And from all these premises logically the conclusion follows that abortion is morally wrong.

The Neo-Boethian Personhood Argument

1. It is morally wrong to intentionally kill a person
2. A person is an individual substance of a rational kind
3. An unborn human life is an individual substance of a rational kind
4. An unborn human life is a person
5. Abortion intentionally kills an unborn human life and therefor a person
6. Therefor abortion is morally wrong

The reason why I focus on the concept of an innocent human living organism and why my preference goes to the humanity argument is because we have a strict definition to go by. A definition that is backed without ambiguity. But sometimes pro-abortion people such as philosopher Mary Anne Warren argue that murder being wrong is not dependent on human life but personhood.

Denial of personhood has long been something that has been used in history to commit atrocities to any types of humans that we wanted a moral justification against. It is basically another means of denying humanity but with more philosophical jargon. This is why I do not consider any pro-abortion arguments relying on the term person justifiable. But I think it is still important to have an argument for it.

Now premise 2 is the make or break for this argument as it argues a person is by definition individual substance of a rational kind. This is very similar to the definition that Roman philosopher Boethius gave but swapping out rational nature with rational kind as to leave out the ambiguity that this is in reference to the species as a whole (hence why I named it Neo-Boethian). The reason this is important is because it means the criteria of being a person simply means having to be a member of a species that is rational.

Now we can argue over the definition of personhood all day but I argue that this is the least controversial definition of personhood and the only definition that does not suffer from certain moral pitfalls.

Using pain, viability, sentience or individual rationality as arguments for personhood has severe moral implications because it would deny personhood to vulnerable populations that we already protect such as the comatose, those with dementia, other neurological disorders or infants. These would also essentially put non-human animals on the same moral standard as humans which is a whole different moral issue I am not touching today. Sorry vegans.

This Neo-Boethian definition of person however avoids all these pitfalls by applying the definition of personhood to all the members of a species that can be rational. So it does not exclude vulnerable groups as they are still part of the human race and does not put non-human animals on the same moral level while still leaving room for personhood of a rational non-human species like aliens. And even if we were to include animals in this definition that would still not exclude the unborn.

Arguments against fetal personhood
Personhood based on cognitive abilities

The Deprivation Argument (Future Like Ours)

1. It is morally wrong to deprive a human life from a valuable future
2. Abortion deprives an unborn human life from a valuable future
3. Therefor abortion is morally wrong

This is a classic philosophical pro-life argument championed by Don Marquis which has been cited and hotly debated. It focuses on why the act of taking a life is morally wrong. He begins by arguing that the act of murdering a born person is morally wrong because that person is deprived of all the value of his future. Effectively it is a violation of his self-ownership taking away the potential experiences and happiness he could have. But if deprivation of a future is what makes taking life morally evil then this would equally have to be applied to the unborn life which just like born life has a valuable future to look forward to.

What I find powerful about this argument in particular are two things:

1. This removes the entire concept of personhood or even humanity from the debate. Even if an unborn human life was neither the deprivation argument would still stand on the virtue of the unborn lives future
2. This removes any discussion of euthanasia as those are people without a valuable future and are only suffering

But consequently this is also one of the arguments that has received probably the largest amounts of responses so I would be cautious using it. In general I am always hesitant to use arguments that imply potential rather than emphasizing the humanity of the unborn. But it is a good argument if you know how to respond to the objections.

Probably the easiest layman response would be the contraception objection, basically what about sperm and eggs? After all would they not simply have a valuable future as well by potentially becoming a zygote? Would that not make contraception a form of genocide? The problem however is that neither the sperm or egg or even necessarily a combination of the two that has a valuable future. After all these are not unique organisms that are growing by themselves. As soon as conception happens however a new human being comes into existence, a distinct organism that grows. That is when an organism has a future.

Another response is the interest objection. This is an argument that suggests it’s not enough to say murder is bad because it deprives someone from a valuable future but instead the victim must have an actual interest in a valuable future which would exclude the unborn life. However this argument would also exclude newborns or suicidal people who see no interest in their future anymore. (Starting to see a notable pattern here where the abortion argument will always be applicable to a born life)

Finally the equality objection to the deprivation argument suggests that some are pretty certain to have a more valuable future simply by the privileges of where they were born or how much wealth they have, younger people too would have a more valuable people than the elderly by how much time they have left. And this implies that murdering the rich or young would be morally worse than murdering the poor and elderly. But Marquis says the argument does not imply such a thing. He merely gives an argument for the wrongness of murder and does not exclude other arguments for murder being wrong and he also gives reasoning that even if it was morally worse to murder the young there would still be practical arguments for legally treating all murders as equals. In general though this is a weak objection because even assuming that the objection rings true it says nothing about the morality of abortion. Because murder at any stage would be wrong at some degree.

An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong

The Equal Rights Argument

1. All humans have an equal right to life
2. If humans have an equal right to life they must share a common essence that makes us treat each other equally
3. That common essence is being human
4. An unborn human life shares the essence of being human
5. Therefor an unborn human life has an equal right to life

This is another type of personhood argument but with a different twist. The argument comes from Josh Brahm from the Equal Rights Institute.

This argument rather than defining personhood as an individual substance of a rational kind instead argues that personhood must be inferred from a shared essence which the argument claims can only be our shared humanity. I think this argument has potential but feel like it could be more fleshed out.

In general however this argument comes to the same conclusion as the Neo-Boethian argument in that it allows for a definition of personhood that does not exclude groups like the mentally ill or comatose. And as such many alternative suggestions for the common essence like sentience, self-awareness or viability would suffer from the same issues as I already outlined in the that argument. Personally I do think the Neo-Boethian argument is a bit more fleshed out and basically just coming to the same conclusion anyway but I think the argument has potential.

Arguing From Equality: The Personhood of Embryos

The Argument from Personal Identity

1. It is morally wrong to intentionally kill a person
2. Adult humans have personhood
3. X is an adult human and therefor a person
4. X remains the exact same essence throughout his entire life
5. X adult is therefor the same essence as X zygote
6. Therefor X zygote is a person
7. Therefor unborn human life is a person
8. Abortion intentionally kills unborn human life
9. Therefor abortion is morally wrong

So this one’s a bit of a brain twister. What this argument aims to show is that the very idea of applying personhood onto someone at an arbitrary stage of life is itself delusional because the very essence of a human never changes.

For example Socrates is the same organism as he was when he was an infant, and as an elderly person and as a zygote. Certainly his properties changed such as his body and intelligence but that is the important thing here, it was Socrates that changed. But Socrates was always Socrates in essence. He never became someone else. So if the statement “Socrates is a person” is true then it is true whether he was an adult, infant, fetus, embryo or zygote.

One objection to this would be to argue that being the same in essence does not give you the same rights at every stage of life. An infant does not get to drive a car even if he is the same being as when he becomes an adult. But there is a difference between a human having different properties between stages and life and a human in essence. An infant cannot drive or vote because he does not have the necessary physical and mental properties to do or be trusted with these things. But the infant is still a person in essence and that is why we still apply the most essential rights to him such at the right to life. And there really is no justification to strip that right away before he is even born based on an arbitrary criteria of development.

In general I think from a theoretical stance this argument is solid but I would not really recommend using it in a debate. Keep in mind that the person you’re arguing is likely not a philosopher but simply an emotional layperson with their own political worries. Focusing on abortion as an act of murder as outlined in the previous arguments is not only more understandable but will likely leave a more powerful impact. Still for those interested here’s a more detailed look into the argument.

Abortion, Bioethics and Personhood: A Philosophical Reflection