A special Two Part Series giving ten Pro-Life Answers to Pro Choice Questions

Part One 

We can all struggle when answering the statements made by pro-choice campaigners. Meritxell, an experienced pro-life campaigner who travelled the city centres of Scotland as part of an educational pro-life roadshow called “Project Truth”, identified for us ten of the most common statements used by pro-choice campaigners, and made the point that pro-life is in reality also pro-choice. 

The difference between the two is that pro-life does not accept the killing of innocent children as a choice that any of us should be allowed to make. 

The following are her list of statements, to which I have added simple answers that you can use, and additional information that may help you.

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1. Unborn children feel no pain, at least not until the third trimester.

Simple Answer: This is not true – science has proved conclusively that the unborn child feels pain as early as 8 weeks after conception. 

Information: Maureen Condic, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy, and expert on human embryonic development, proved in her research that the first part of the nervous system is already formed just 28 days after conception.

Imposing pain on any pain-capable living creature is classed as cruelty, so it is totally unacceptable to deliberately cause the unborn child the severe pain of an abortion. 

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2. While the life of an unborn child is totally dependent on a woman’s body it is not viable, therefore it cannot be considered a human being.

Simple Answer: This is not true. Universally accepted science agrees that viability is not an issue, as human life commences at conception. 

Information: 

Physicians, biologists and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being — a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological and scientific writings. 

Harvard University Medical School professor Micheline Matthews-Ross stated that “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception … and that this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of life”

The beginning of a single human life is conception, and this biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.

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3. A foetus isn’t a person until it develops a brain and becomes conscious. 

Simple Answer: This is not true. Brains develop over several months and there is no point at which one can say, “Now this is a person!”  Consciousness isn’t necessary for personhood; for example, a comatose patient is still a person with full human rights.

Information: Foetus and embryo, just like infant or toddler or adolescent, are simply terms used for a specific developmental stage of a human being. The stage of development of a human being determines nothing about his or her value and dignity. Nor does being an embryo or a foetus somehow make one non-human. 

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4. Pro-lifers are anti-science. 

Simple Answer: Pro-lifers are totally pro-science, as science proves that the unborn child is a human being from conception, and that the embryo is alive, human, and genetically distinct from his or her parents – it is a new human individual.

Information: Being pro-life is sometimes considered unscientific because it assumes that the human embryo has an immaterial soul, a claim that cannot be proven scientifically. But pro-life arguments do not depend on any such assumption. They do not need to, as new human life begins at conception, as science proves.

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5. Abortions should be legal in the case of rape or incest. 

Simple Answer: It is illogical to think that the circumstances surrounding the way in which a child is conceived have any bearing on the value of the child itself. A child’s right to life is not determined by his or her parents’ worthiness to be parents. 

Information: The unborn are separate and distinct human beings who are simply at a different stage of development from born people. Using the argument of rape or incest is an attempt to use the circumstances of that child’s conception as a reason to nullify his or her humanity, and therefore right to a full life.

If the unborn person conceived in rape is a human being, there can be no justification for punishing this child for the crime committed by his or her father. Instead of punishing a child by ending his of her life, we must punish the rapist. Should the innocent child conceived in rape deserve the death penalty for the crimes of her father?

Ponder this: Society doesn’t kill the guilty rapist, so how can it justify killing the innocent baby conceived?  

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6. My Body, My Choice

Simple Answer: Is the unborn a part of his or her mother? The clear proven scientific answer is absolutely and unequivocally no. The unborn child is a human being from conception, and the embryo is alive, human, and genetically distinct from his or her mother – it is a new human individual. Society finds it abhorrent when a mother deliberately harms her own child, yet it accepts a mother fatally harming her child just because the law allows her to. This is both wrong and illogical.

Information: Although the baby lives inside the mother and depends on her for warmth, hydration and nutrition, the cells of the baby are genetically distinct from the cells of the mother. Often the baby has a completely different blood type from that of the mother, and fifty percent of the time the baby is a different gender from his mother.

The false assumption is that a baby is merely a body part of its mother, like one of her limbs or organs. That is biologically incorrect. The genetically distinct unborn child is attached to the mother and dependent on her for life, but the foetus isn’t a part of his or her mother. A mother’s rights do not include the freedom to kill her own child.