If pro-lifers are going to convince the culture that abortion is wrong, we are going to have to find creative ways to communicate our arguments. And that’s exactly what Choice42 has done with their latest video (see below).
Pro-life proponents are convinced that every human being—regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, economic status, or age—is intrinsically valuable. Human beings aren’t valuable because of what they can do or some capacity they possess. They are valuable because of what they are. Furthermore, every member of the human community has fundamental human rights that should be protected. This includes the most basic human right of all: the right to life.
Abortion advocates, on the other hand, do not believe that human beings are all valuable. In fact, they claim that some members of the human community have no value and, therefore, no rights. Human value is only obtained after you meet some arbitrary criteria.
So, abortion advocates divide human beings into two groups: valuable humans and non-valuable humans. Valuable humans have rights. Non-valuable humans have no rights and can be killed with impunity.
We must ask the question, what makes some humans valuable and some not valuable? What’s the difference that would allow you to kill the latter but not the former?
Well, abortion advocates point to four arbitrary qualities to exclude some humans from having value: size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. You can remember all four attributes with the acronym SLED.
Your Location Doesn’t Determine Your Worth
Many abortion advocates assert that a human isn’t valuable until he or she leaves the womb. But how does a journey of eight inches down the birth canal suddenly change the essential nature of a being from non-valuable human to valuable human person?
The simple answer is, it doesn’t.
Human beings don’t lose or gain value by changing their location. For example, you didn’t lose value when you rolled over in bed last night. The 33 Chilean miners didn’t lose value when they were trapped 2,300 feet underground in 2010. Neil Armstrong didn’t lose value when he stepped on the moon. Environment doesn’t determine value.
Apologist Greg Koukl illustrates this point beautifully by sharing a story of a little girl named Rachel who was born premature at five months. When she was born, she weighed less than two pounds. She could rest in the palm of her daddy’s hand. Doctors worked heroically to save her life.
Now if a doctor came into the hospital room where little Rachel slept in her mother’s arms and killed her, we would consider him barbaric and a murderer. However, unborn little girls and boys at the same age are being killed by doctors through abortion procedures simply because they are in a different location.
There is no good reason to think that traveling eight inches through the birth canal magically transforms a non-valuable human—with no rights—into a valuable human—with rights.
Watch as Choice42 demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the abortion-choice position: