Okay. Let's get to the same level as you, and asume that a bundle of cell is human. It goes back to one crucial belief: can you force a human adult to give a kidney to another? Can you force a human adult to medically or financially risk their life, for many years, for another? Can a governement do that? If not, why should they do that for a baby?
Hi! I appreciate your effort to make that assumption for the sake of dialogue.
Pregnancy is not comparable to kidney donation or a stranger asking someone else to risk their life for them.
The following things make pregnancy unique:
- The child is completely vulnerable and has no means of communicating needs, much less filling them on their own.
- The child is completely dependent on one person, their mother, and under current medical capabilities cannot be transferred to the care of someone who is more willing.
- The vast majority of pregnancies pose no serious or long-term harm to the mother, and those that do have complications can be managed with good medical care.
- The process of removing the child through abortion involves killing that child directly. It is not comparable to saying no to someone’s request for an organ donation, because that person can go ask someone else or look for alternative treatments, even artificial organs in some cases. The child can’t do that.
Let me put it another way. There are many starving children in the world. Every so often we see ads on TV for charities that help them asking for one-time or monthly donations. If I do not donate, for whatever reason, nobody is going to come and arrest me for neglecting those children. Does that mean those children don’t have a right to life or aren’t valuable? No, it just means I am not directly responsible for them. It would be good for me to donate, but I am not legally required to.
If a parent refuses to feed their own child, we call that neglect. The difference is that the parent is directly responsible for the child’s well being and is expected to care for their physical and emotional needs.
In pregnancy, not only is the mother directly responsible for the child’s well being, but is the ONLY person who can care for the child. We can support her and make sure she has what she needs, but only she can provide nutrition and shelter for her child.
Once the child is born, she can place the child with another family or receive support in raising her child. She can now safely transfer her responsibility to someone else. But someone has to have responsibility for the child until the child is an adult and can care for themselves. And if the person responsible for that child neglects or harms them, they can be held responsible.
In abortion, the mother isn’t simply refusing to donate an organ or donate money to a charity. She isn’t refusing to adopt a child who needs a home. In abortion, the child is in her uterus, alive, growing, receiving what they need from their mother. An abortionist then either gives the mother a pill that cuts the child off from their supply of food and oxygen or goes in with instruments and removes the child, often piece by piece.
If someone asks me to donate a kidney and I refuse, I don’t then go and pay someone to kill that person.