Is it Murder

Stages of development of a human fetus.  Source.

Amongst the most popular of debate topics of all time must be the topic of abortion.  While this topic elicits a wide range of responses and feelings from people around the world, it remains a hotly contested issue here in the US.  It is never far from any political debate and entire political careers have been made or broken on it.  People running for office at all levels from the local to national are often voted in or out on its basis and even Supreme Court justices are scrutinized on their position.  I even heard a prominent activist state that "(he) does not care about fiscal or foreign policy as long as the candidate is against abortion."  Of course, this debate gets completely muddled up because religion gets involved in it.  Fair enough, for religion purports to explain human life and what better place to start than the very beginning.  I through this medium would like to weigh in, and hopefully in some small way add to the debate.  Of course, those who know me (both personally and through previous posts on this blog) know that my views are not based in any way, shape, or form on any religious teaching.  If it confirms to one, then great.  If it does not, then too it does not matter.

We (this is a big collective 7 billion+ we) like to have our issues be black or white.  It does not matter what the issue is, for we want it simplified into a yes or no, it either is or isn't.  Perhaps our simple minds cannot handle nuance, or perhaps we have just learned from millennia of experience that it is simpler to make a decision when the matter falls neatly into one bucket.  So it is with abortion, where simple statements like the following attempt to put the issue cleanly into one camp or another:

All abortion is murder.

Only a woman should control her own body.

Life begins at conception.

You cannot take away a woman's right to choose.

Well, it's not that simple unfortunately - or at least I do not think it is.  Regardless of how binary we may wish to make it, the fact is that life is a gradual progression from conception to birth.  Trying to pin down exactly when a fetus becomes a human is an ad hoc and futile exercise.  One just has to see the image at the top or read about the stages of fetal development on the umpteen number of medical and parenting sites out there to know that a child goes through stages of development during the pregnancy.  After all, that is the whole point of spending nine months in the womb.  So I argue that if an embryo immediately after conception is Life = 0 and the birth of a child is Life = 1, then the period in between is Life = "some decimal number" < 1.  Whether the progression from 0 to 1 is linear or some curve with a change in slope at crucial stages (e.g. when the heart starts beating or the brain is developed) is immaterial.  The fact is the fetus is not a full life but neither is it just a collection of cells.  It is something in between.  And if we are to debate whether aborting the fetus is murder, then we must appreciate this nuance.  We can appreciate this concept by looking at a miscarriage.  Any miscarriage is a tragic and unfortunate event, but I think everyone would agree that an early term miscarriage is less tragic than a late term one which is less so than the death of a baby.  This is the painful truth and though we may not wish to assign a value to life, the fact is we implicitly do.  (As an aside, I would argue that we continue to do so throughout a person's life and therefore find the death of a 20 year old more tragic than that of an 80 year old)

In keeping with this nuance, we must deal with each situation on its merits, no matter how difficult it makes it to write laws or pass judgement.  To make my position clear, I am strongly opposed to abortion as a means of birth control.  Abortion cannot be a solution to a choice made on some random night.  For those who are completely Pro-Choice, I say this - "You had a choice, and you made the choice when you decided to have sex".  After the fact you may not be killing a child, but you are certainly taking some fraction of a life.  An abortion simply as a substitute for contraception or abstinence is immoral and wrong.  However, there are situations in which an abortion is justified, and these are situations where a full adult life is in question for 1 is greater than some decimal number.  Such situations (not a complete list) may be where the mother's life is in danger, rape, incest, or a baby's health condition where the child is unlikely to survive (admittedly this last one is tricky).  In such instances the act of abortion is not akin to killing a child, but it is not a benign act either.  It then becomes a woman's choice whose body it ultimately is.

Of course, there are many facets to this debate and I have only scratched the surface.  My point is this - we cannot clearly delineate a point where we go from No Life to Life.  It is a gradual process with shades of gray.  These shades of gray must be appropriately weighed against the clear black or white that exists on either end.  I recognize that this post does little to formulate an enforceable policy or legislation.  It also does little to help you pick a side on the ongoing debate on abortion.  But I suppose that is my point - there cannot be sides and I for one find myself sitting in the middle.