Surrender Is Not an Option

Many pro-lifers have recently begun to check out of the movement. Even worse, a small but growing handful of others have begun to buy the premises of "choice", "personal liberty", and "tolerance", in an effort to make the pro-life view much more appealing to a culture that has made personal autonomy into a religious ideology, and assigned sexual liberty as it's sacrament.

This is not an effective strategy. This amounts to a complete and utter surrender; a giving up of the fight, even when the goal of the pro-life movement for the last 44 years is now close to being recognized. Provided, much of the dismay over the current state of affairs seems to be resulting from the seeming inability of the US Congress to pass a bill to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood(which doesn't automatically mean that women will begin getting pregnant on an minute by minute basis. There is nothing stopping scores of American Leftists from donating money to keep PP able to provide free birth control). There is also frustration over the apparent stagnation of the abortion debate in the United States, as many people have simply started to ignore the issue.

Even in the midst of ongoing political and cultural frustration, there is still much that needs to be done by the pro-life advocates engaged in various aspects of the culture, and the fight to create a cultural ideal the respects the lives of all innocent human beings is still being waged. To illustrate the urgency, one needs to look no further than the recent war movie, Dunkirk, and the story behind it.

The movie is an account of the disastrous defeat suffered by the Allied forces during World War II, and the subsequent withdrawal of British forces back across the English channel from France. The story of the Dunkirk evacuation would have ended with the UK losing it's primary fighting force to an overwhelming defeat by the Axis powers. Instead, the disaster turned into an example of what courage and perseverance looks like.

Hundreds of civilian British watercraft left their moorings in the English harbors and sailed quickly across the channel to rescue the tens of thousands of British and French troops stranded on the beaches of France before they could be annihilated by the coming onslaught of Nazi troops. Braving machine gun fire, torpedoes, and German dive bombers, the people of the UK simply stepped up to do the right thing. Risking life and limb, they knew the cost of simply sitting by and assuming that "someone else" would step up to the challenge. Thanks to their efforts, what would have been utter defeat turned into a fighting chance for the British.

Re-focusing on the current challenges that confront defenders of innocent human life across the political and religious spectrum(and the Christian church in particular as of late), the example of the heroes of the past should be considered. If someone can risk life and limb to "step-up" and simply do the right thing, how much more is it necessary for those of us who have the ability to get involved to do so?

With the very meaning of what it means to be human, what it means to have value, the meaning and intrinsic purpose of sexuality, and the very definition of justice are now up for grabs, the time is now to get involved. To reach out to those wounded and hurting, and to love them and respectfully share the truth with them about these key issues. To do otherwise would be disastrous.

Surrender is not an option.

On Recent Viral Videos [Clinton Wilcox]

I'm going to try to write this and my next article without being too polemical. It will be difficult, but these two article are coming from a place of utter frustration. Frustration at the fact that so many people in our society can't think. This is evidenced by the number of videos by vloggers on YouTube that contain poor arguments (actually, that's too charitable; their arguments are downright pathetic), and further evidence by the number of people sharing these videos so that they go viral because the people sharing these videos can't think and don't realize how poor (read: pathetic) the arguments actually are. So I'm going to write two articles responding to two such videos. This first one will be responding to a video by vlogger jaimekid2 Ben Shapiro's arguments against abortion. Why am I responding to these videos if the thinkers are so unsophisticated? Because people are taking them seriously.

So what is jaimekid2's argument against abortion? He says, "Ben Shapiro is wrong on abortion. The reason why he is wrong is because he doesn't hold his values consistently."

The problem here is that it's a textbook case of the ad hominem fallacy. Who cares if Shapiro holds his views consistently? He can be inconsistent and still be right on abortion. Whether or not he's inconsistent holds no bearing on the validity or soundness of his argument. That's all that needs to be said. But what are his other claims?

He says that one cannot consistently hold to the position that the intentional removal of an unborn human from the womb is murder and to show why he brings an analogy into it: If you believe abortion is murder and it should be outlawed accordinly, you must support all women having miscarriages being investigated for a possible negligent homicide, the same way you would want a person involved in running over someone else with their car investigated for negligent homicide.

This, of course, is really just a false analogy. What should really do away with this argument is the simple fact that before abortion was legalized in the Roe v. Wade decision, post-miscarriage women were not investigated en masse for their miscarriages. This is because there is no reason to suspect that a woman who miscarries did so out of negligence. No police investigation would be warranted unless there was probable cause to suspect that it was because of negligence or foul play. If a homicide detective is investigating a potential crime scene and discovers evidence suggesting it was a suicide, not a homicide, the investigator would not, then, investigate it as a homicide "just in case." He would write it down as a suicide and close the case. By the same token, if a woman shows no signs of foul play or negligence, she would not be investigated, especially if she was making regular appointments with her OB/GYN.

Another claim is that many women are at increased risk for miscarriages, and he trots out a laundry list of women who are at a higher risk for miscarriage (and it's worth pointing out that he doesn't source any of his claims). His point here is asking if we would be comfortable allowing a woman at increased risk for miscarriage get pregnant. The answer, of course, is yes because everybody, every single human being who is conceived, has a 100% chance of dying. Some people just die sooner rather than later. But life is considered a good thing, meaning that even if we conceive someone who has a more limited lifespan than unusual, giving that person life, even for a short time, is seen as a good done to that person. This is all to say nothing of the fact that every human being has a right, a natural right, to procreate and the government would be wrong to take this right away from anyone. If a woman conceived and later miscarries through negligence, only then could the state step in and punish her for doing so (and only if there was probable cause to suspect it).

He poses a further question: would people be comfortable with a woman trying to get pregnant who has a high risk of miscarriage since they would not be comfortable with someone drunk getting behind the wheel of the car. He says that failing to take causation into consideration is intellectually weak, but his position is the one that is intellectually weak because he fails to make a basic distinction: the difference between agent causation and natural causation. A person who gets behind the wheel drunk is obviously doing something wrong and doing something wrong by their own doing. Driving a car is potentially dangerous so anyone who gets behind the wheel drunk is impairing their ability to drive a car. Having an increased risk of miscarriage is not impairing a woman's ability to conceive a child, nor, for the most part, is it of her own doing (especially if it is due to disease, which would obviously be beyond her control). Since all human beings eventually die and life is fundmentally a good thing, there is no harm done in conceiving a child, even knowing there is an increased risk of miscarriage.

One of his claims that he failed to source, just alluding to March of Dimes, is that as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know why he failed to source it: because that's not what they actually claim if you read their statement in context. Here's what March of Dimes really says: "Among women who know they are pregnant, about 10 to 15 out of 100 pregnancies (10 to 15 percent) end in miscarriage. As many as half of all pregnancies may end in miscarriage -- we don't know the exact number because many may happen before a woman knows she's pregnant."

This makes it ironic that he speaks of wanting to be intellectually honest when he can't even be intellectually honest with the facts. He'll probably fall back on saying "but they do say as many as half." Yes, but they clearly say we know 10 to 15 percent do, and then they follow up their claim by saying "we don't know the actual number." So their "as many as half" statistic is pure speculation, and "jaimekid2" used the speculative number rather than the factual number in order to try and bolster his case.

Despite all of his claims to "intellectual honesty" and "intellectual weakness," it is clear that "jaimekid2"'s arguments are just not good at all. They amount to a false analogy. Drunk driving is not a comparable situation to a woman conceiving with a greater chance of miscarriage, and it is also not the case that every woman who miscarries must be investigated for negligent homicide. Only in those cases with probable cause would it need to be investigated. The pro-life position is safe and sound from "jaimekid2."

Why Don't Feminists Fight for Bodily Rights?

I will have to admit, I have begun to reconsider what it means to respect the bodily integrity of individual women. During a  recent outreach at UCLA and Cerritos college, two students told me that I should respect the autonomy that women have over their bodies.

Now, setting aside that the unborn entity in question is not a part of her mother's physical body (if she was, then any pregnant woman would have four hands, two heads, and two genetic codes, which is absurd) but is a separate body that is growing inside her, and dependent upon her. This does not mean that they are one and the same human being, but two humans beings connected in the most intimate way possible.

Now, many I have talked to have espoused the view that because the woman is carrying the child within her body, and because the child is completely dependent on her mother's body for her immediate needs, her mother therefore has say over what happens within her body. Complete bodily autonomy for women is inalienable on this view. This is what pro-life speaker Trent Horn calls the "Sovereign Zone" view.

Now, if I were to embrace this view, and thus defend a woman's right to her bodily "sovereign zone", then that means that the following must also be fought for and legalized along with abortion:

1. Thalidomide A drug that was originally used as an anti-nausea treatment for women experiencing morning sickness, it was banned in the early 1960s for the effect that it had on developing children in utero. The drug would cause either the limbs of the child to fail to develop or the limbs would fail to grow to their full length, leaving only a hand where a full arm should be. (Langman's Medical Embryology, Thirteenth Edition, page xiii)

Keeping in mind the view that a woman has full rights to what happens within her body, even if there is another human body present inside of her, to be consistent one would have to argue that the drug should be legalized as an appropriate treatment for morning sickness. This would mean that if a woman took the drug knowing full well the effects it could have on her unborn child, and caused her child to be born without arms or legs, she would bear no fault. Some have responded that this couldn't happen because she broke the law; and yet, abortion also used to be against the law. Why aren't advocates of bodily autonomy fighting for a woman to have complete control over her body in this regard, and working to overturn this law?

2. Abortions for Frivolous Reasons If a woman "Has the right to do whatever she wants with her body", then would it be wrong to kill her unborn child for any reason she wants to? In his book Abortion Practice, abortionist Dr. Warren Hern recounts a time where a woman came to his office seeking an abortion, as she was pregnant with a boy and wanted a girl child instead. Doctor Hern, ironically, expresses his misgivings about abortion in this case but he goes along with it anyway (Abortion Practice, page 85).

Dennis Prager also brings up an important point in this regard. Suppose in the near future we are able to determine through genetic testing the sexual orientation that a child will be born with. A woman finds out her son or daughter will grow up to be gay later in life. Using the "my body; my choice" reasoning, she gets an abortion so she won't be a parent to a gay son or daughter. Horrifying as this is, would we think she did something wrong in this regard? If we do think that this is wrong, then what about abortions for children who will be born with disabilities? Wouldn't that be wrong as well?

3. Abortions For Profit Two years ago the infamous Planned Parenthood videos were released by the Center for Medical Progress, which purported to show the organization illegally selling the bodily remains of aborted humans for profit. While many media pundits, political analysts, and Planned Parenthood themselves denied the accusation, it does raise an important question: Can a woman sell the bodily remains of her abortion for profit? Suppose a woman of child-bearing age, hearing that there is a market for fetal body parts and tissues, decides to become pregnant, then carries her child to term, and gets an abortion so that she may sell the body parts on the market. This may not even be legal, but why won't the advocates of bodily rights advocate for this kind of behavior, in the name of "Her body, her choice"? Why don't they fight to have this "right", and enshrine it in law?

4. Infant Starvation Philosopher Trent Horn also gives another category for bodily rights arguments that he calls the "right to refuse", where the advocate of bodily autonomy will argue that a woman has a right to refuse to sustain the life of her child in utero. During a conversation at UCLA recently, a student I talked to likened unwanted pregnancy to being forced to donate one's kidney in order to sustain another person's life.

However, in using this scenario, one has to remember that a kidney is only designed to filter the blood of the organism it belongs to. As Trent Horn notes, the uterus is an organ that is not designed to support the life of a woman, as a woman may go through her entire life without ever becoming pregnant, but is specifically designed to support the life of her very young son or daughter.

In applying this reasoning to the issue of bodily rights, suppose a woman gives birth to an infant who needs to survive on her mother's breast milk. Suppose further that baby formula is not readily available due to a health and safety recall, and it will take too long to put the child in a shelter or up for adoption. Since the mother is now the sole provider of the welfare for her child, even though this relationship is only temporary, can she exercise her "right to refuse support" for her child on the grounds that her child has no right to her mother's breast milk, even though her child will starve to death as a result? Is it a mother's moral and legal right to be able to "disconnect" for the sole purpose of starving her child to death? I think we would all agree that doing such a thing is monstrous.

In conclusion, it seems that an unwavering support for bodily rights for women can actually prove too much and be used to justify some very horrifying behaviors. Now, some will argue for bodily rights by giving reference to scenarios that are emotionally vexing, like poverty or hardship, but at best, this would entail that the right to abortion is extremely limited to the most extreme circumstances. And then one must ask why, even in these circumstances, is it fully permissible and morally acceptable to kill an innocent human being whose existence may cause hardship?

It is high time we stop playing games with human rights in order to justify the behavior that we want to ensure is accepted by society. We've been down that road before throughout human history, and it has never ended well. Instead, if we are going to defend bodily rights, no matter what that entails, we had better be ready to accept the consequences of that decision.