Abortion can be attacked effectively on purely secular grounds. In many ways, I think the pro-life movement will almost have to move toward a more secular stance in order to win over the public.
If you ask me, the best answer to the very commonly heard “it’s a women’s issue” argument is to reply “no, it’s a human rights issue”.
Tell them to look at the abortion issue as a trial. What is on trial is whether a newly conceived fetus is or is not a human life. If it can be proven that the newly conceived fetus is, in fact, “guilty” of not being a human life, then it will be okay to go ahead and dispose of it.
Ask them to prove to you, on a purely scientific basis, when life begins. Have them prove at what point an abortion goes from being legal to being capital murder. Is it at one week, two months, six months, the head of the baby about to crown, half the body out of the birth canal? If they draw a line somewhere, ask them if it’s okay to abort a baby two hours or two minutes before that point. Why or why not? Some babies develop more quickly than others. Point out to them that if it’s okay to kill a baby at, say, eight weeks and earlier because of some gestational milestone that they have decided grants the baby membership into the human race then you will inevitably be killing some babies who reach that milestone at seven or seven-and-a-half weeks or seven weeks, six days, and 23 hours, and are, by the pro-choice supoorter’s own definition, human.
They are not allowed to resort in any of their arguments to what they think or what they believe or what they think ought to be. They must use science. Ask them to prove that a newly conceived fetus is not a human life. They cannot do it.
Now, of course, they are likely to ask you to prove that a newly conceived fetus is a human life. You can’t prove it either.
So, what do you do?
Well, in a trial, you have to go with a presumption of innocence. Since neither of you can conclusively prove to the other’s satisfaction that life does or does not begin at conception, then you must err on the side of protecting what might be a life.
As an aside, to answer the abortionists who say that “unwanted” children shouldn’t be born, tell them that they need to be consistent. Children at orphanages who haven’t been adopted are also “unwanted”. Ask them if they think it’s all right that if a child at an orphanage hasn’t been adopted after, oh, nine months or so, if it should be legal to euthanize the child.
As for those who think that abortion is okay in cases of rape and not in other cases: ask them why it’s not okay in other cases. They also need to be consistent. Abortion is entirely about whether or not the baby is a human life. If it’s not okay in other cases, then the only reason I can think of that it’s not okay to them in the other cases is that they believe the baby is a human life. Is a baby conceived via rape less human then a baby conceived by accident or at an inconvenient time? A baby does not choose it’s method of conception. Should the baby be executed because it was unfortunate enough to be conceived by rape? Does one crime justify the other?
Obviously, I think that once you bring God and the beliefs of the Church into the picture it only bolsters the argument against abortion. However, it seems that the close association between the Christian right and the pro-life movement takes away from the chances of the pro-life movement ever being transformed into a true human rights issue. The formerly marginalized homosexual community has won the acceptance of mainstream society by portraying their “plight” as a human rights issue. If the pro-life movement could, as repugnant as this sounds, take some lessons from what has happened with homosexuality in this country, it might make a big difference. Abortion really, truly is a human rights issue. There’s absolutely no question about it.
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(that’s the closest to marching smiley they have …