First, let us get it clear: Human life begins not with birth but with the fertilized egg. As soon as the sperm inserts itself into the egg, there is a new human being in existence. He, not it, is very young, incapable of entering into contracts, and does not even look at all like the rest of us, for example, those reading this present essay. But he is as much of a rights-bearing person as anyone else on the planet.
There are only two other theories available that are alternatives to this one. First, birth. No, human life does not begin at that point. That is merely a slight change of geographical address and a very slight one, to boot. It constitutes only a move, just a few inches from inside the woman’s body to outside of it, and in her arms. That youngster changes no more from 10 minutes before birth to 10 minutes after, than you and I in any 20-minute span of time. Birth schmerth. Killing a baby one hour or one day before birth constitutes the murder of a very young human being.
Nor does human life begin when the heart starts to beat. Consider the patient who is undergoing a heart transplant. For a period of time, he has no heartbeat, no heart at all. His blood continues to circulate courtesy of medical apparatus. Is he now dead? Of course not.
Given, then, that the human person starts life from Day One, not four or nine months after conception, how do the two theories on abortion stack up?
Not too well. First, let us see the flaws in the pro-life position. A 12-year-old girl is walking down the street. She is grabbed, raped, and is now pregnant. How will the pro-lifers treat her? They will add insult to injury. They will consign her to, in effect, a nine-month jailing. No, worse than that. If rape may be defined as having an unwanted foreign body (part) thrust inside of you against your will, being forced to carry an unwanted fetus to term is equivalent to a nine-month rape of this totally innocent young girl. What crime did she commit that she should be treated so brutally? None. Not a one. Zero. This punishment is thus totally unjustified.
The pushback against the foregoing is that murder is illegal, and we have just finished acknowledging that human life begins with the fertilized egg, and he (not it) has the same right not to be murdered as all other people.
However, the baby is a trespasser. The young woman is a complete and total owner of her body, and there is now an unwanted person living inside of her, with no signed lease agreement to his benefit whatsoever. Can an innocent pre-born baby be guilty of trespassing? Can he have a duty not to do so? Yes. Otherwise, we must retract the claim that the young mother is a full self-owner.
Further, even avid pro-lifers allow abortion to save the mother’s life. If the baby is in effect squeezing the life out of the mother, even they would permit abortion. But why? This is totally illogical. Here we have two completely and equally rights-bearing individuals, the mother and the baby. Why should the mother’s right not to have her life snuffed out by the baby be given more legal weight than that of the pre-born baby not to be killed? Why should the mother always win in this supposed clash of rights? Why not flip a coin?
That this does not at all occur in the abortion case stems from the fact that we think the mother’s rights vastly outweigh those of her baby, under these conditions, where only one of them can survive. How so, apart from the obvious, undeniable fact that the baby is a trespasser, occupying terrain owned by someone else?
Thus, the pro-life position is a moral shambles. It condemns the innocent girl to nine months of hard labor, to say the least.
The pro-choice position is in a far worse moral quandary. At least the pro-lifers see the pro-born baby as a human being. The pro-choicers do not. For them, the fetus has as many rights as an unwanted appendix, broken off toenails, human hair, or diseased tonsils. The baby, one day, one hour, one minute, one second before birth, is just a bunch of human cells, a bit of protoplasm. He (not it) may be disposed of with impunity. Can anything worse, apart from mass murder, be even contemplated? It cannot. This is nothing less than utterly despicable. These moral scoundrels are advocating outright murder of very young human beings.
What, then, is the solution to this quandary? Is there any coherent alternative to both pro-life and pro-choice? Happily, there is: evictionism. It is a principled compromise between these two fallacious accounts.
Here, the trespassing fetus may be removed from premises not his own, but never killed. The former is congruent with pro-choice, the latter with pro-life. The removal must be done in the gentlest manner possible, since the fetus lacks mens rea. But it is legitimate to force him to vacate the premises, since he occupies territory to which he has no right.
A CATHOLIC GRANDMOTHER WAS FIRED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH. AMERICA SHOULD PAY ATTENTION
Given present medical technology, during the first two trimesters, the fetus will perish, which is compatible with the pro-choice result. In the third trimester, the outcome would be congruent with the pro-life philosophy. The fetus is evicted, but it can live and develop outside of the womb.
Happily, very few pregnancies result from rape. The overwhelming majority emanate from voluntary sexual intercourse. Was there at least an implicit contract between the mother and the baby, who might eventuate from such interaction to the effect that the former must carry the latter to a full nine-month term? No. That is logically impossible. For there to be a contract, or even an invitation, there must be two contractual parties or an invitor and an invitee. The former certainly exists, but the latter absolutely does not, at the time of intercourse. It takes time, sometimes more than several hours, for the sperm to reach the egg. It is not until this occurs that there is someone who can be contracted with or invited, since he does not come into existence until that momentous event occurs.
Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth eminent scholar endowed chairman and professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans. He is also the author of Evictionism: The compromise solution to the pro-life pro-choice debate controversy.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
