Responses to Pro-Choice Arguments

[St_Aloysius]

My friend and I find ourselves talking a lot about this issue. He’s a devout Catholic–much more so than me–but is decidedly free-thinking, a quality I admire strongly.

He says he’s “against abortion” and thinks “it’s wrong” but that it shouldn’t be totally illegalized–or at least not right now. “That won’t stop abortion,” he pointed out. I agreed. He says a family friend introduced him to the logic and rationale behind the Pro-choice position a while back and, being by very nature an incredibly persuasive man, it was difficult for him to contend.

This analogy was the best argument I’d heard for his position, and was really caught off-guard by it:

Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. “Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right? Well, it’s the same with abortion. The woman is sharing her blood, oxygen, everything, with the baby. Doesn’t she have the right?”

I made a response I thought okay at best, enough to catch him off-guard and admit both positions had a lot of merit. We concluded with his statement: “See, that’s why I’m not sure yet. I don’t want to be either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, just to think about these things.” A prudential move.

I also don’t think the immediate criminalization of abortion is the best or most effective (or for that matter, most viable) method of eradicating this evil. I still think economic and societal change should be promoted first. In any case, how does one respond to this train of thought?

This family friend is someone he praises and I will get to meet him in June. I know already that we are headed for discussions on these issues and others. From what he says, his reasoning and persuasiveness is incomparable. I want to be ready for this encounter. I can handle it, I think, without being abrasive.

**Statistics, logical arguments and convincing analogies.

They would really help.**

Thanks.

 

[frankadams]

If you Google variants of words and phrases like “abortion” “oxygen tank,” “analogy,” “debate,” and so forth, you can find some websites where others have explored this same argument from various angles. May your friend keep an open mind on his next visit!

 

[vz71]

This analogy was the best argument I’d heard for his position, and was really caught off-guard by it:

Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. "Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right? Well, it’s the same with abortion. The woman is sharing her blood, oxygen, everything, with the baby. Doesn’t she have the right?"

Apples and oranges argument.
The one with the oxygen tank did not take action to make the other come along. A fact that makes this decidedly different from pregnancy.
Pregnancy is the result of action freely taken and is a consequence freely accepted.
Abortion is shirking the responsibility.

 

[Paul2274]

Stay-at-Home Dad of 3… is me!

Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. "Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right?

The flaw I see with this analogy is that both people are going to die without the oxygen whether they share it or not. They willeither both die about the same time if they share it or one will live longer with the oxygen but eventually die when the tank runs out.
Abortion is a very one sided event when life and death are taken into account and unfortunately the child always loses.
Statistically though most women ,as an afterthought, will feel some kind of loss down the line. Most will even come to regret their decision.

Paul

 

[miguel]

I have a long-time friend, who at one point (back in high school) disagreed with me on abortion. I’m Catholic and have always been pro-life. He is a non-Catholic Christian. He is now pro-life, but still not Catholic. Anyway, when we were in college, he took a course in logic. For the final, he was given a choice of controversial issues, told to pick one, take a position and defend it using the principles of logic. One of the choices was abortion, which he picked, thinking how easy it would be to defend the pro-choice position. But as he found himself running short of time, he realized the only logical arguements he could come up with were for the pro-life position. He’s been pro-life ever since.

I know this isn’t what you asked for. I would suggest starting with the Catechism of the Catholic Church under the 5th Commandment: You shall not kill. Abortion is discussed there in a logical reasonable manner.

 

[1ke]

My friend and I find ourselves talking a lot about this issue. He’s a devout Catholic–much more so than me–but is decidedly free-thinking, a quality I admire strongly.

He says he’s “against abortion” and thinks “it’s wrong” but that it shouldn’t be totally illegalized–or at least not right now. “That won’t stop abortion,” he pointed out. I agreed. He says a family friend introduced him to the logic and rationale behind the Pro-choice position a while back and, being by very nature an incredibly persuasive man, it was difficult for him to contend.

It doesn’t stop rape, murder, stealing, or child abuse. But, it reduces crime and it gives protection to innocent persons.

Babies deserve protection from the law, even though some will still perpetrate crimes against them. Babies deserve the same legal protection before they are born as after they are born.

And, moreover, what we as a society condone in the law carries weight in so many ways. It allows men to abandon the women and children because they can just “get an abortion”-- it actually increases violence against women (especially those who try to reject a coerced abortion) as several studies have shown and gives women less legal protection.

Murder does not deserve the protection of the law. The law serves the common good and the protection of innocent persons.

I also don’t think the immediate criminalization of abortion is the best or most effective (or for that matter, most viable) method of eradicating this evil. I still think economic and societal change should be promoted first. In any case, how does one respond to this train of thought?

It’s not an either/or proposition. Abortion-- the murder of children-- must be illegal AND we must help those in need, including pregnant mothers.

Statistics, logical arguments and convincing analogies.

I really suggest you invest in a copy of Randy Alcorn’s book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments.

 

[buffalo]

Pro-choice - the choice a woman wants to murder her unborn child who is given no choice.

 

[Holly3278]

A good site for pro-life arguments against pro-choice arguments is www.abortionfacts.com

 

[buffalo]

Why Can’t We Love Them Both?

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Hi St Aloysius,

The scenario about the oxygen tank is flawed, because it assumes the relationship between mother and unborn is a relationship between 2 equal strangers. The relationship between mother and unborn, is a relationship between mother and child. If a mother needed to share oxygen with her 3 year old, she would be expected to. Obviously, it would be wrong to take the oxygen for herself and watch her own child die. Mothers are legally and morally required to take care of their children.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Making something illegal NEVER stops it. That is why there are laws against what we call crimes. If no one did it, there would be no reason to have a law against it. Just because making abortion illegal won’t stop all of them is no reason not to make it illegal.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[AgnosTheist]

*Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it *with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. “Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right? Well, it’s the same with abortion. The woman is sharing her blood, oxygen, everything, with the baby. Doesn’t she have the right?”

If you agreed to share it, you forfeit your right to take it back. You will have to live by the consequences of your decision

If a woman was raped and got pregnant, she has every right to abort the rapist’s unwanted child. There was no agreement.

 

[fix]

He says he’s “against abortion” and thinks “it’s wrong” but that it shouldn’t be totally illegalized–or at least not right now.

Are there other crimes against life that he thinks should be legal? Why?

Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. "Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right? Well, it’s the same with abortion. The woman is sharing her blood, oxygen, everything, with the baby. Doesn’t she

have the right?"*No, she does not have a any such right. Is the baby a pathology? Does he think the body of the women is hers to do what she desires with no matter what? Does the man with the oxygen tank claim a right to kill the other man?

 

[SoCalRC]

Are there other crimes against life that he thinks should be legal? Why?

This is a stretch of the presented position. Look at the caveat, “at least not now”.

The argument does not nec. mean that the act is just (the original post states otherwise), or even that the secular law is just. Just that a change in secular law might be out of sync with the current state of society.

The problem with prohibition type situations is that they move the problem underground, sometimes making incremental improvment more difficult. It is probably worth noting that the Church has a similiar situation in its history.

Pope Sixtus V issued a papal bull which intensified the penalties for abortion at any stage. Reportedly it was an attempt to curb rampant prostitution in Rome. Pope Gregory XIV revoked the papal bull just three years later. It was not a matter of Gregory endorsing abortion, it was just an attempt to address the problem differently. The stiffer penalties had not stopped abortions, they had just stopped people from coming to communion. The pope seemed to believe that real progress could not occur if the problem was merely pushed into hiding, outside the spirtitual guidance of the Church.

This does not make the original argument correct. It just points out that your assessment is quite a stretch - akin to my arguing that you actively support legalized abortion because you apply proportionate reasons in your voting on the matter (you have, after all, supported candidates who support the destruction of fetal life on the basis of its conception).

 

[SoCalRC]

Two people are on a mountain. One of them has an oxygen tank handy, the other does not. Both need it to survive. The one with the tank agrees to share it with his friend, but it’s still his oxygen tank. "Wouldn’t this man, then, have the right to take his oxygen back? It’s his, after all. Sure, it’d be mean and cruel, but doesn’t he have the right? Well, it’s the same with abortion. The woman is sharing her blood, oxygen, everything, with the baby. Doesn’t she have the right?"

In answer to the original question, I have three problems with the argument above. First, it is not at all obvious to me that the climber has an undisputed right to ‘his’ (or ‘her’) airtank.

The Church has long recognized the right of private property. But it also has long recognized that there are just limits to our use of private property and societal rights. In fact, quite a few biblical scholars contend that Matt 5:38-42 is primarily about resisting such unjust applications. That is, if you are a slave being wrongly backhanded, force the person treating you unjustly to strike you as an equal.

The “sue you and take your tunic” is even more telling. A tenant famer falls behind to the landlord, the landlord can sue for ownership of the tenant’s cloak. The landlord then ‘owns’ the cloak, but must return it each night (ownership did not entitle one to let the tenant freeze). It is not really a posession in the normal sense, but more of a badge of dishonor, to humiliate and shame the tenant. But if the original debt is exploitive and dishonest, why not reverse the situation? Stripping a man naked puts the shame and humiliation back on the landlord.

Second, the example seems structured to blur the distinction between “right”, in a secular legal sense, and “right”, in terms of proper Christian conduct. Look at the caveat, “Sure, it’d be mean and cruel”.

Catholicism is not a random collection of arbitrary beliefs that can be argued one at a time. The faith is a coherent whole. Any time we interject an observation that something is mean and cruel, we are already conceding that we have abandoned a Christian context. In that light, this seems to be a law school property rights argument being presented as a theological argument.

Last, as others have noted, the comparison is deceptive. An air tank implies a limited resource with two lives in peril. The suggestion is one of benevolence, so we are led to envision a situation where self preservation overrides benevolence. But no concept of self preservation is introduced in the second context. As generically presented, only one life is in peril at the outcome. If the first situation were presented in similiar terms (an experienced climber, acclimated, does not need his O2 tank, but her inexperienced friend, who she brought to the mountain, is experiencing severe hypoxia…) the emotive reaction to the tale would be different.

But, instead of dismissing the comparison, I’d fill it out. Let’s say that, yes, absolutely, the climber took back the O2 out of self preservation, there was only enough for one survivor. Likewise, let’s say that the mother is facing death should the pregnancy continue.

Most human beings, Catholic or otherwise, can muster empathy in both these cases. We can envision a climber who does not want to see a friend die, but also desperately wants to live. Likewise, we can picture an expectant mother, whose hopes and dreams have suddenly been turned upside down, choose to preserve her own life while still weeping for her unborn child.

Cathocism does not dispute that there are difficult situations, which can sometimes even seem morally hazy. But it also does not lose sight of the commonality of these situations. In our restructured scenarios, someone lives, someone dies.

The question then becomes, who decides, and how? And, more importantly, can such a decision be just? The Catholic answer is ‘no’. We are each a unique creation of a God who can, and does love us each infinitely. In math, when we include infinity as a term, quantitive comparisons become meaningless. 1000 infinity is not greater an 1 infinity. We view life very much the same way. That is why we say “every stage” and “every condition”. The distinctions that we make between ourselves are not, we believe, meaningful to God.

Yes, adhering to such a teaching can be difficult in some cases (like a mother dying with ill fated twins inside her), but we believe that, difficult or not, the teaching is correct and better leads us down the proper path. For example, the Church steadfastly rejected the eugenics movement, which was hugely popular in the US in the early 20th century.

 

[Prometheus1974]

To compare this story to abortion, I think you would need to establish 2 things:

First, the dependent climber would have had to appear on the mountain with his life endangered and supported by the oxygen without choice or foreknowledge. Perhaps he was kidnapped, drugged, and placed there, unconscious.

Secondly, except in the extreme case of rape or incest, the analogy would have to show that the other climber was responsible for this situation. Perhaps he made an unwise bet, and this was the consequence of losing.

Under these circumstances, you would have to hold that the unconscious climber certainly has a moral, and possibly also a legal right to the oxygen. For one, or the other climber to remove the other’s access on the grounds that it was “theirs” would be to commit murder, if it resulted in the other’s death. The only possible argument you could make is that if both their lives are in jeopardy, it would be the moral responsibility of the one who had a say in putting them both there to give up his access to the oxygen for the sake of the innocent other.

Even in the analogy to the case of rape or incest, when the two climbers both find themselves tethered together unwillingly they would have equal moral right to the oxygen, regardless of whose it was to begin with. Else the next time I’m alone with somebody on a lifeboat and supplies are dwindling…

I have no idea why this would be considered a good pro-choice example or argument. As usual, I think pro-choice would have to resort to a… “but the child isn’t human” argument, to try to differentiate between the value of the two individuals.

Not that that works any better.

 

[fix]

This is a stretch of the presented position. Look at the caveat, “at least not now”.

The argument does not nec. mean that the act is just (the original post states otherwise), or even that the secular law is just. Just that a change in secular law might be out of sync with the current state of society.

The problem with prohibition type situations is that they move the problem underground, sometimes making incremental improvment more difficult. It is probably worth noting that the Church has a similiar situation in its history.

This makes little sense. It simply states evil should be codifeid into law because some will always choose to do evil. Civilized societies outlaw killing innocents.

Pope Sixtus V issued a papal bull which intensified the penalties for abortion at any stage. Reportedly it was an attempt to curb rampant prostitution in Rome. Pope Gregory XIV revoked the papal bull just three years later. It was not a matter of Gregory endorsing abortion, it was just an attempt to address the problem differently. The stiffer penalties had not stopped abortions, they had just stopped people from coming to communion. The pope seemed to believe that real progress could not occur if the problem was merely pushed into hiding, outside the spirtitual guidance of the Church.

This is your interpetation of history. I will stay with the magisterium who says:

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights."81

This does not make the original argument correct. It just points out that your assessment is quite a stretch - akin to my arguing that you actively support legalized abortion because you apply proportionate reasons in your voting on the matter (you have, after all, supported candidates who support the destruction of fetal life on the basis of its conception).

That is not only a stretch, but faulty logic. Any attempt to limit evil is not canonizing any particular candidate or position. It is applying traditional moral reasoning.

In the OP example it is similar to those who claim abortion should not be banned until we have a national change of heart. That leaves the innocent children to be killed which is contrary to justice and Church teaching.

 

[Newbie2]

Making something illegal NEVER stops it. That is why there are laws against what we call crimes. If no one did it, there would be no reason to have a law against it. Just because making abortion illegal won’t stop all of them is no reason not to make it illegal.

In Christ,
Rand

If you agreed to share it, you forfeit your right to take it back. You will have to live by the consequences of your decision

If a woman was raped and got pregnant, she has every right to abort the rapist’s unwanted child. There was no agreement.

There’d be a different conclusion if everyone thought of it as God’s child.

 

[Hrvoje]

If you agreed to share it, you forfeit your right to take it back. You will have to live by the consequences of your decision

If a woman was raped and got pregnant, she has every right to abort the rapist’s unwanted child. There was no agreement.

What logic!

Say I’m an unwanted child, there was no agreement for me to be born.
This means, then, that my mother has the right to kill me, right?

Or, say I was born as a result of rape, and my mother, for some reason, did not abort me.
I’m, say, ten now.
My mother has a right to kill me, since there was no agreement, right?

What right can anyone have to kill?

 

[AgnosTheist]

^ Once you are born you gain human rights. The only excuse to kill you would be if you have committed a heinous crime.