Abortion

Many years ago, I was the moderator of a panel discussion about abortion. I think the topic was ‘should abortion be legal?’ How did that happen? It was part of my engineering training.

Engineers are taught skills in addition to technical and mathematical skills. I was taught to stand in front of a room full of people and give a speech on a particular topic. I was taught how to moderate a debate panel. Sadly, the debates I see on today’s TV often show moderators with no skills in moderating a debate, or at least no willingness to follow the rules of moderating. As moderator, I had to make sure everyone on the panel spoke. I had to prevent the more talkative types from dominating the debate, and I had to ask questions of the less talkative debaters to draw out their views. I’ve long forgotten most of what I was taught, but I remember that debate. The topic of abortion is still debated and has adherents on both sides.

Should abortion be legal? It seems to be a thorny question, with passionate advocates on both sides. But I’m an engineer. Passion isn’t part of the equation. Only logic is.

We are repulsed at killing a small fetus that cannot survive outside its mother. But we are not similarly repulsed at removing a kidney from a human. The kidney, like the fetus, has human DNA. But the kidney is not a person, nor is it a potential person, whereas the fetus is. But then, why is this lump of fetal tissue called a person, while another lump of human tissue is not?

It goes to the concept of a soul. We presume the fetus has a soul and is therefore human, while the kidney does not have a soul—it is merely part of the body’s machinery.

But even if we believe that humans have a soul, which is purely theoretical, what makes us think a fetus has a soul? There is nothing to support such a concept, and there is reason to doubt it.

Assuming there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God, this God would know that a particular fetus is going to be aborted. Why would God implant a soul into a fetus that is due to be killed? Planting a soul into a fetus that is about to be destroyed is pointless. Why would God do that? Logic says God would not.

So, logically, an aborted fetus never had a soul. We can’t see the future, but an all-knowing God can.

If there is no God, then there are probably no souls, and on some level humans are no different from any other animal. We’re not “special”. We’re not “above” all the other animals. We’re simply another species.

And if there is an all-knowing God, such a Being knows what the future will bring and what will happen to every fetus created. Such a God would act accordingly, meaning an aborted fetus never had a soul and never was a person.

To sum my argument so far: if there is no Supreme Being, then the argument about the “specialness” of human life falls apart, and removing a fetus is as immoral as removing a kidney. But, if there is a Supreme Being, such a Being would know a particular fetus would not grow to be a baby and therefore that Supreme Being would not implant it with a soul and, again, removing a fetus is as immoral as removing a kidney.

Many years ago I saw a woman in a motel room. She was naked, kneeling, with her head on the floor. A dark stain spread over the carpet beneath her pelvis. The dark stain was her blood draining out her body. She was dead, murdered by a “back-alley” abortionist who did not know what they were doing. I did not know the woman, but I felt a great wrong had been done to her. It’s an image that, after decades, I still cannot get out of my head. But that was reality; that was the way it used to be. Making abortion illegal never ended abortions, but it often ended the mother’s life and the life of the fetus.

I don’t like the idea of abortions, but I would never presume to tell a woman what to do. It is her body and her decision and she will bear the consequences. I imagine many women who get abortions hate what they are doing but feel they have no choice.

Logic tells us abortions don’t kill human babies; abortions remove lumps of human-looking tissue that will never have a soul. But the entire anti-abortion/pro-choice debate is based on things we can never know for certain, and we make decisions based on opinions and feelings rather than facts. But before you blame a woman for getting an abortion, you might recall the words of Jesus in John 8:7. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”