Speaking as a Former Fetus...

by Dinesh D'Souza - April 23, 2007 - Townhall.com

Speaking as a former fetus, I welcome the Supreme Court's decision permitting regulation of partial birth abortion. Now there's lots of talk about a wider pro-life strategy to build on this victory. Such a strategy must be one of persuasion as much as legislation. I am not an expert on the abortion issue, but I have learned a great deal about it, strangely enough, by studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates. These debates were about slavery. But look at how closely the arguments parallel the abortion debate.

Dinesh D'Souza is right that partial birth abortions must end, however he makes a classic mistake in his look at the abortion debate in this article. It is the refusal to acknowledge that the two sides on this issue are approaching the abortion issue from different extreme views both of which reject history and science. A slave was a person at all times. The argument over abortion cannot ignore the change in status during the process of pregnancy. That difference makes it hard to claim they are similar issues. I am opposed to most abortions. However it bothers me that the people who I most agree with are rejecting the history and science of the issue.

What history am I talking about?

What would you say if I pointed out that for most of the last two thousand years life was not considered to start with the first contact between a man's sperm and a woman's egg (called conception)? This is not in the bible, else it would not have been until the mid 1800s that the church first took any position other than life starting at "quickening", which happens at the end of the first trimester. That is the traditional Christian view, not what is currently claimed by the "pro life" lobby.

The argument that life starts with first contact of an woman's egg and a man's sperm has a murky history however the one thing you can assure is that it is an "interpretation" of the Bible that has only recently found acceptance in the last 150 years. For more than 90% of the time since Jesus lived, Christians did not accept the modern position of the "pro life" lobby. Does that mean that everyone who thought of themselves as Christians before that time are condemned to hellfire and damnation as the "pro life" lobby insists?

The "pro life" lobby also ignores science as well as church history. There is much scientific evidence that supports the premise of the more traditional Christian view (which is somewhat supportive of the "pro choice" view) of when human life starts. The problem starts with the recognition that an egg is already "life", even when still in the mother.

A quick review of the cycles of pregnancy indicates the following: After the sperm and egg combine, the egg travels to the uterus as a zygote, then emplants and transition to the first stages of an embryo. More than half of all zygotes do not emplant. The embryo then goes through several steps that involves the creation of the amniotic sac, the placenta and the umbilical cord. At some point after the 8th week the embryo in the womb starts to transition to a fetus. This transition is complete before the end of the first trimester and the time of "quickening". During this period before quickening happens, more than a third of all embryos end as natural miscarriages. After this point of "quickening" the fetus has a more predictable chance of survival.

How can the "pro life" lobby simply dismiss this natural phenomenon as supportive of the idea that the soul does not exist prior to "quickening"? Do they really think that God would kill two thirds of the souls he creates with such an unfair and predictable end? During the zygote-embryo stages in the first trimester, the "pro choice" lobby has powerful logic on its side that neither a zygote or an embryo is a person yet. The "pro life" argument is no more compelling than their saying "we reject history, logic, science and the Christian community's traditional interpretations of the Bible and demand that you accept our opinion despite our refusal to acknowledge we have a very weak and very recently invented case for our side".

During the second trimester the fetus develops steadily and around the beginning of the third trimester the fetus reaches "viability". It should at this point be considered a baby, and have the rights of a child. From this point on the "pro life" lobby has overwhelming logic, history and science on its side. Any rational person has to agree that if a baby is viable outside the womb it has to be called a person.

Only the stupid resistance of the legal community to abandoning the long term legal definition of acquiring the status of "baby" and personhood by emergence from the mother's womb creates the problem agravated by the Supreme Court's decision in Roe V. Wade and Danforth that abortion is a right all the way to birth. It is also sad that the scientific and medical community uses the legal definition and refuse to call it a baby until it is "born". Recent scientific discovery has proved that the brain waves of the child after viability cannot be differentiated from the brain waves of a new born child. It is a child!

The Supreme Court and our legal community will have to at some point recognize that there are two people involved from viability on and the mother cannot continue to be considered to have a right to kill this person (not fetus as they insist) for any reason. After the point of viability, "abortion" is murder as "pro life" supporter's claim. At that point the baby has a soul as surely as anyone else alive. The "pro choice" lobby and our courts ignore science and logic when they embrace the laughable Danforth premise that despite it being able to live outside the womb we continue to call it a "fetus" which the mother can abort at will. It is also interesting that the original Roe v. Wade ruling actually prohitibited most third trimester abortions. It was Danforth that destroyed that protection.

We thus have a situation where both political extremes reject the historical, scientific and rational view of "life" during one part of this period called "pregnancy". Each side is clearly wrong on a part of the issue

That is why the argument over abortion is not like the arguments over slavery as Dinesh claims. The process of pregnancy really does transition through stages and thus you cannot accept the zygote-embryo-fetus-baby should have the same rights at all stages. You have to win the argument at each of the four stages. Both sides in the abortion debate simply scream at you that you cannot disagree with them and close their minds to anything but the political determination to ram their views that all stages are the same down everyone's throats.

There are a number of Christians who accept the traditional view that life (and the human soul) starts at quickening. We are not evil for accepting this view. Abortion before this point cannot really be argued violates the Bible unless you wish to believe that every Christian before the mid 1800s was an imbecile and could not go to heaven. I don't agree that re-interpreting the Bible is any more valid than re-interpreting the Constitution. Abortion before quickening should be a medical issue between the mother and doctor (however a minor child should not be able to make the decision without parental support).

I do agree with Dinesh that persuasion could be a powerful tool in ending abortions after viability. I even believe that the case could be made so strong that we could get a rational Supreme Court to end the "right" of a mother to kill her child after viability and call it a baby at that point. That is what I would like to see.

However I cannot believe that there is a logical, religious or legal case to deny abortions prior to quickening on the claim that it is already a person. Neither history nor science is on the "pro life" side at that stage of a pregnancy. It is simply a recent "interpretation" of the Bible with little substance to support the simplistic view of life starting at conception.

Those of us who take this middle position are hated by both sides. That is the shame of their extremism, as it leaves no room to end the worst abuses of both sides.

I don't know why both sides cannot agree at least to this much as they will still be able fight over the second trimester for the rest of our planet's existence. Fighting over abortion seems to be their only reason to exist. I would not want to deprive them of their passionate need to hate the other side.