Thousands thronged the streets in vehement protests across the United States soon after its Supreme Court overturned a 1973 law permitting legalized abortions in the historic Roe vs Wade case. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Guttmacher Institute, two of the revered institutions in the US that compile data under different methodologies on induced abortions furnishes staggering numbers ranging from over 600,000 to almost a million fetuses which are terminated annually. The debate between anti-abortionists who are referred as Pro-Life and opposing Pro-Choice, who champion abortion rights has rekindled and intensified worldwide. The moral and ethical arguments proposed by both camps are complexed thus rendering the legitimacy of this controversial topic extremely complicated. Planned Parenthood Federation of America remains instrumental in the murder of 6 million fetuses in its 100-year old history.

The fundamental argument is centered on the moral status of the fetus as to whether it has to be treated in a certain way congruent to a human being in a civil society. All studies in embryology and genetics are unambiguous on the fact that organism that emerges from fertilization is composed of the DNA of Homo Sapiens that directs itself on a developmental trajectory which is species-specific. The biological reality that it is a living member of the human species is therefore inarguable strictly on bio-ethical terms that doesn’t require any overt religious commitments. Pro-choice proponents argue that to accord legal and moral rights to an embryo or fetus, it has to be primarily ascertained whether it qualifies to be called a “person” as distinct from a human being or being alive. The pervasive pro-choice argument is that an embryo/fetus is neither a moral patient (lacking an ability to self-legislate) nor a moral agent who could be held accountable for their actions to be judged as morally right or wrong.

Philosophers use the term ‘human being’ denoting only as a biological entity and by contrast a ‘person’ is metaphysical designation possessing such traits as consciousness, reason, the ability to lead meaningful lives, ingrained sense of ethics and morality, communicate by virtue of language and become active participants in building and maintaining civil societies for peaceful coexistence. The pro-choice position crumbles under the ponderous weight of its own rational inconsistencies when it could be argued that babies, comatose individuals, senile citizens in a vegetative state and those afflicted with degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s have their moral rights legally protected even though they cease to be classified in the conventional parameters of being a ‘person’. Therefore, any moral discourse on the status of the embryo/ fetus warrants metaphysical reflections on the ultimate reality of the single celled Zygote which floats inside the uterus and attaches itself to the uterine wall, multiplying and growing into a lump of tissue that eventually develops human physical features and recognizes pain and sensations, a beating heart and brain waves announcing the arrival of a potential human whose pre-natal universe spreads over a tri-semester period.

Metaphysical truths by principle cannot be adduced by any scientific methods and the only recourse to a reasonable explanation of the nature of the ultimate reality is through the illuminating genre of philosophy and religion. If the presence of an immaterial soul is a metaphysical argument against killing babies or active euthanasia, then pre-natal embryo and fetuses should be accorded equal legal and human rights against murder, for the Psalmist sings poignantly in Book of Psalms 139:13-14, “You formed my innermost being, you knit me in my mothers’ womb, I praise you, because I’m wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self (italics mine) you knew”. Here the self relates to personality or personhood which pro-choice supporters so passionately negate in an embryo/fetus. The lack of metaphysical accountability and certitude of the embryo/fetus being classified as a ‘person’ for pro-choice advocates have led Peter Singer, a philosopher and professor of bio-ethics in Princeton University to propose infanticide of new-born babies born with congenital deformities and medical conditions like Down Syndrome. Peter Singer accords less value to a new born baby than to a life of an animal like a pig, dog or a chimpanzee citing lack of self-awareness for the infant unlike that of animals. His worldview is fashioned by an inhuman ideology of modern Utilitarianism which has maximizing pleasure and well-being by minimizing pain as its cardinal principle. Utilitarianism is in stark contradiction to Christian and humanitarian values of selflessness, charity, self-sacrifice, empathy and compassion. Such worldview draws striking parallels with the Aktion T4 program authorized by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany which was a murderous rampage to exterminate people with physical disabilities, psychiatric and terminally ill patients. Between 1939-’45, around 300,000 lives were lost and the plausible justifications for the killings were eugenics, racial hygiene and saving money.

Even if a morally conscientious pro-life crusader concedes that at conception, the embryo is a ‘non-person’ by definition, due to a lack of moral and physical characteristics of an adult person, still such arguments leave little credence. An embryo or fetus though in the first 14 days or until the first tri-semester doesn’t resemble a quintessential human, it has the potentiality to develop into one. Glenn Cohen, a bio-ethicist and Harvard University professor theorizes that even if someone lacks a ‘capacity x’ at a given point of time, it is not an indication that the being will never have the potential to acquire and develop a repertoire of capacities and capabilities in the future, and in the case of an embryo or a fetus progressing to possess physical features, mental faculties, metaphysical consciousness and subjectivity that qualifies a human being/person having legal and human rights under the ambit of a constitutional morality.

A striking confrontation against the Supreme Court ruling happened during the weekly service of Joel Osteen, a megachurch pastor and tele-evangelist when a lady protestor stripped down to her undergarments and screaming “I have the right to do whatever I want with my body”. For pro-choice advocates, a gestating mother has the prerogative to stop nourishing the embryo or fetus because the mother has total discretionary power to use her body in the spirit of liberty and freedom. But again, it’s a lopsided argument as according to a famous quote multi-attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Stuart Mill and Abraham Lincoln, “The liberty to swing your fists ends just where my nose begins”. The law categorically prohibits treacherous intrusions into others private space and therefore manslaughter, physical assaults and battery are punishable offenses. The definitive irrevocable act of suicide is regarded dishonorable in almost all cultures and invariably in all religions. A socio-cultural injunction against the ignominious act of suicide extends to a gestating mother abusing her body causing harm to an innocent life even though it is attached to her like an alien body.

One of the most compelling arguments against abortion is one proposed by American philosopher Don Marquis called the “deprivation argument” which is extensively and widely cited in philosophical debates over abortion worldwide. His major premise is that if the greatest loss is the loss of life, what makes murder more grievous and heinous is the fact that the victims future is compromised and irretrievably lost. A suicide or a terminal illness could be conceived in a similar dimension where the potential future of experiences, projects, activities and enjoyments are lost forever but the harm limited to oneself and not being a malefactor willfully terminating others future unceremoniously in the event of a murder. Liberals within pro-life movement are considerate to the option of abetting an abortion if the fetus threatens the life of a mother, deformities or unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape and incest and such positions have their own complexities and detractors. Pro-choice proponents argue that criminalizing abortions run the risk of a rise in closeted abortions that are often life-threatening to the mother.

Pope John Paul II in his brilliant encyclical titled, “Evangelium Vitae” (“Gospel of Life”) has strongly condemned abortion as violation of the fundamental right to life and exhorted humanity to resist legislations that promote it. The sacrosanct foundations of equality of justice should be unreservedly extended to the most vulnerable section of the species Homo Sapiens, namely embryos and fetuses in their pre-natal phase of life’s journey. The world requires crusaders equipped with ideological and spiritual weapons aided by trenchant intellectual and moral discourses to triumph over this culture of death.

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