What is Pro-life?

• “Embryology: Inconvenient Facts” by William L. Saunders, Jr.

• “The Wrong of Abortion” by Robert P. George and Patrick Lee from Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Wellman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics(New York: Blackwell Publishers, 2005)

• “The Pro-Life Argument from Substantial Identity” by Patrick Lee

• “Human Beings are Animals” by Patrick Lee

• “Human Personhood Begins at Conception” by Peter Kreeft

• “I Was Once a Fetus: an Identity-Based Argument Against Abortion” by Alexander Pruss

• “I Was Once a Fetus: That Is Why Abortion Is Wrong” by Alexander Pruss

• “When do Human Beings Begin?” by Dianne N. Irving
  
  All articles and credit from https://righttolife.org.uk/knowledgebase/what-does-it-mean-to-be-pro-life

In brief

• Being pro-life means believing that all humans, born and unborn, have a right to life.

• Because of this, pro-lifers are morally and legally opposed to abortion, embryo-destructive research and assisted suicide and euthanasia.

• People who are pro-life often disagree about what precisely the law on these issues should be and how it should be implemented.

• The term pro-choice refers primarily to support for legal abortion. It exists on a spectrum. Some who identify as pro-choice think abortion should be legal up to a certain number of weeks gestation or under certain circumstances, and some advocate an extreme view where abortion should be legal up to birth.

• Pro-lifers believe that mothers and their unborn babies have a right to life.

Misconceptions about the pro-life position

Many arguments against the pro-life position are based on misconceptions.

Misconceptions #1: Pro-lifers only care about babies before they are born

Reality: Pro-lifers care about babies before and after birth

• As a matter of principle, it is untrue that pro-lifers only care about babies before they are born. As the definition of pro-life makes clear, all human beings, babies born and unborn, have a right to life and their lives ought not to be intentionally ended.

• As a political matter, it is also not true that pro-lifers only care about babies before they are born. Since there is no organisation campaigning to remove the right to life of babies outside of the womb, pro-lifers tend not to discuss this issue. If there were a political movement to remove the right to life of children after birth or supported infanticide, the pro-life movement would oppose it.

• As a matter of fact, there are numerous pro-life organisations that provide practical support and assistance to mothers and families particularly those with newborn babies, the biggest of these in the UK being Life Charity, which raises millions of pounds each year from pro-life people to provide emotional and practical support to mothers and their babies, which includes providing housing and community support around the country. Over 12,000 mothers have been provided with housing by Life Charity.

Misconceptions #2: Pro-lifers do not care about the lives of women

Reality: Pro-lifers care about women (both born and unborn) and their babies

• As a matter of principle, pro-lifers care about the lives of women. As the definition of pro-life makes clear, all human beings, unborn babies and their mothers, have a right to life and their lives ought not to be intentionally ended. They are each worthy of respect and protection under the law in virtue of the dignity of being human.

• As a political matter, one of the pro-life movement’s slogans is “Love Them Both“. The pro-life movement does not believe that society must choose between mother and baby, but that both can be loved, helped and protected.

• As a matter of fact, there are numerous pro-life organisations that provide practical support and assistance to mothers and families particularly those with newborn babies. See the above section for more details.

Arguments against the pro-life position

Argument #1: Abortion is a personal choice. If you don’t like abortion don’t have one.

Reality: Abortion is a choice that profoundly affects more than one person. It ends the life of one person and can seriously affect the life of at least one other. “If you don’t like chocolate ice cream, don’t have it” is a reasonable thing to say. Given that abortion ends the life of an innocent human being with a right to life, “If you don’t like abortion don’t have one”, is not.

• As a matter of principle, the pro-life movement believes in the right to life of all humans, including the mother and her child. There are all kinds of choices that society rightly opposes. For example, society does not accept the choice to steal from someone else, nor to discriminate against someone based on the colour of their skin. While the choice to steal from another or to discriminate based on skin colour are personal choices, we do not accept that these things should be morally or legally permissible.

• As a political matter, laws, in general, are a form of restriction on actions. Red traffic lights, for example, impose a restriction upon drivers, but it is a restriction we all recognise as perfectly reasonable. Given the pro-life commitment to the right to life, it is equally reasonable that unborn babies should be protected under the law.

Argument #2: Being biologically human is not morally important. What is morally important is being a ‘person’ and humans do not become persons until some time after conception/fertilisation.

Reality: Being biologically human is morally significant. To say otherwise is to reject any notion of human equality and dignity of human life.

• As a matter of principle, if being human is not morally (or legally) important, then there is no rational basis for other moral principles, such as the equality of human beings. There is no other criterion under which we are all entirely equal. Human beings vary in their size, their intelligence, their age and every other conceivable factor, except their being human. All humans are equally human.

• To base our moral value on our being ‘persons’, and then defining ‘person’ by some psychological trait or other, is to reject any basis for human equality whatsoever.

• As a political matter, excluding the abortion law in the UK, the law does not, and should not, discriminate between citizens under the law. The law does not have a hierarchy of human beings, some of whom are considered persons and therefore entitled to full protection under the law and others who are not considered persons, and therefore entitled to fewer protections or perhaps none at all.

• Abortion already has devastating consequences for the most vulnerable in our society but a denial of the pro-life view, if extended beyond the womb (and, logically speaking, there is no reason why it should not be [see below]) will have far-reaching and devastating consequences for the most vulnerable in our society.

• As a matter of fact, there are academics and activists who argue in favour of the moral and legal permissibility of infanticide. They reason, consistently, that if late-term abortion is morally permissible because the unborn baby is not self-aware and therefore not a person, then ending the life of an infant shortly after birth is also morally permissible. This is a direct consequence of the rejection of the pro-life view.

References/further reading