Ep. 26 - How To Destroy The "Best" Pro-Abortion Argument
Every pro-abortion argument really boils down to this: "my body, my choice." Or, as pro-aborts call it, bodily autonomy. The bodily autonomy argument is supposed to be unassailable and logically bullet proof. It is supposed to end the discussion. It doesn't. Let me demonstrate how to completely annihilate the Left's "best" argument for abortion. I can do it in 5 simple steps.
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This is really the number one pro-abortion argument.
This is the pro-abortion argument that pro-aborts think is irrefutable.
They're very proud of this argument because they think it is the argument that cannot be refuted.
That's how good it is.
And it's the argument now that upon which they've based their entire pro-abortion position, many pro-aborts have at this point really basically conceded or at least decided to move beyond the personhood debate.
So for a lot of pro-abortion people, they're not going to argue with you about when does personhood begin When does life begin?
Is the fetus a human life?
Is it a person? A lot of pro-abortion people will say, well, that doesn't matter.
Call the fetus whatever you want to call it.
Life, not a life. Person, not a person.
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the fetus is.
All that matters is my autonomy.
My right over my own body.
What you'll hear these days is that personhood begins whenever the mother decides that That is now the scientific position of pro-aborts.
That personhood, life begins whenever the mother wants it to.
Because she has autonomy, and this autonomy gives her the Really supernatural ability to grant or rescind humanity to and from her child depending on what she wants.
So if she wants the baby to be a human being at 20 weeks, it's a human being at 20 weeks.
If she wants it to be a human at the moment of conception, it's a human at conception.
If she wants it to be a human...
Right at the moment of birth, then that's when it's a human.
If she never wants it to be a human, then it's never a human.
This is the godlike supernatural power that pro-aborts will say a mother has.
This is what the bodily autonomy position necessitates.
It necessitates either that the humanity and personhood of the child depends on the mother's wishes, Because of her autonomy.
Or the humanity and personhood just don't matter at all.
It's an irrelevant question because the mother has her body and she can do what she wants with it.
So I'd like to take this, what is considered to be this great, brilliant pro-abortion argument, the pro-abortion argument that nobody could possibly argue against.
I'd like to prove that it is actually completely, totally, utterly ridiculous.
Now, I did this in my book, The Unholy Trinity, which came out last year.
I kind of deconstructed the bodily autonomy argument.
I think it's worth reiterating because, as I said, this really now is the pro-abortion position.
Really, this is their entire position now.
So now I'm going to explain why bodily autonomy is a bad argument.
Okay? Number one, the most obvious problem and the first problem that most pro-lifers will mention is that it's not your body.
Your body is not the body at issue here.
The issue is the child's body, not yours.
So your body is A, the child's body is B. A and B are not the same.
They are distinct, separate entities.
This, I'm afraid, is a scientific fact.
You're not going to find any scientist with more than two brain cells in his head who will argue that B actually is A. You're not going to find any scientist who will actually say that the child is the mother's body, because that would be insanity.
So, not your body.
Child's body, your body, not the same.
But, okay, you say, fine, the child's body is not the same as my body.
However, the child's body is dependent upon mine, and I have the right to withdraw my support from this dependent entity.
I have the right to remove my body from this other body, which has attached itself to me, like some alien parasite, right?
And this is how I exercise my autonomy, by I should have the right To say to this tyrannical dictator in my womb, I should have the right to say to it, I am not going to serve you anymore.
I'm not going to be your slave.
I'm not going to be your handmaid.
And here you'll probably also give me some variation of the Judith Jarvis Thompson analogy of a person who, you've heard this analogy before, or some version of it, of a person who wakes up in a hospital attached by wires to some other person, some stranger.
And the wires are keeping him alive.
And a pro-abort will claim that this is what pregnancy is.
It's like waking up in a hospital one day and looking over and seeing there are all these weird wires coming off of you and they're attached to some unconscious person over there.
And then the nurse comes in and says, oh, you know what?
We're going to need you to stay like this for the next nine months in order to keep that person alive.
That's what, that apparently is supposed to be an accurate representation of pregnancy, right?
And then the person who makes the analogy will say, well, what if that happened to you?
Would you not have the right to detach yourself from this other person?
Yes, I would have the right.
However, you should not have that right.
And I'll tell you why.
Number two, because abortion is not the act of merely detaching yourself from this other body.
Abortion is not simply unplugging, okay?
Abortion is not withdrawing from the baby.
Abortion is rather the active, purposeful, direct killing of another human life.
You see, even if I completely agreed with the bodily autonomy argument, which I don't, but even if I did, I still would oppose abortion.
Bodily autonomy argument doesn't get you all the way to abortion.
Because if the idea is that a woman has the right to detach herself from her baby, to extricate herself from the situation, to remove herself from this dependent life form, that would mean, yes, okay, we have to take the other life form out of her, right? It would not mean that we have to kill it Before we take it out.
That's what abortion is.
Abortion is killing the baby directly.
Somehow this gets lost in the abortion debate.
Somehow abortion itself gets lost in the debate about abortion.
And we talk about abortion as if it is simply just unplugging or separating these two individuals.
No, abortion is killing one of the individuals.
On purpose. Directly.
Babies are, quote, viable at 22 weeks now, I think.
And that number is getting lower and lower, which means that the baby can survive outside of the womb at 22 weeks.
Now, yet the pro-aborts who make the bodily autonomy argument, they are, in almost every case that I've ever encountered, they are not in favor of abortion restrictions at viability.
The bodily autonomy pro-aborts, they're in favor of abortion from conception all the way up to the very moment before birth.
But if a woman decides to exercise her autonomy at 22 weeks or 23 or any time thereafter, well, that means, okay, yes, the baby has to come out one way or another.
But why must the baby be stabbed with poison first?
Why must he be delimbed?
Why must he be ripped out limb from limb?
Why must his skull be crushed?
I'm sorry to be graphic, but this is what abortion is in the later terms.
In abortion, the abortionist is saying, okay, we got to get this baby out.
And so his method of taking the baby out is to rip it out with forceps, one limb at a time.
Another way to take a baby out is to just take the entire baby out whole and still alive, and then to take it away from the mother, bring it up to the NICU, and then hope that someone will come and adopt the child.
Now, what...
So...
If we're talking about bodily autonomy, wouldn't bodily autonomy simply necessitate the delivery of the child?
To actively kill the child in the process is a step, a rather large step, a significant step beyond autonomy.
You've gone beyond autonomy.
The only place that autonomy gets you, if I were to agree that you have autonomy, which you don't, we'll get to that in a minute, but that only gets you as far as, okay, get this baby out.
Kill the baby is another step, and it's got nothing to do with autonomy whatsoever.
Killing the baby is just pure murder, and that's all it is.
This is also, by the way, why the life of the mother arguments for abortion are completely bunk.
We're told that sometimes it's necessary to get an abortion to save the mother's life.
It is never necessary.
Never. It is never, ever, ever necessary to kill a child in order to save a mother.
Never. Have I said never enough?
It's never. Anytime someone says, life of the mother, please remind them that has never happened, ever.
There has never been a life-saving abortion ever committed, ever.
Now, it could be the case sometimes that something catastrophically, you know, some catastrophic thing happens in the course of a pregnancy, and now the baby has to come out in order to save the mother's life, and maybe even to save the baby's life.
That does happen. And so what do you do?
You take the baby out.
But the extra step of killing the baby before you take it out, that doesn't do anything for the mother.
That only puts the mother more at risk.
That extra step of killing the baby first is an extra step.
It's a dangerous extra step.
The safest thing would just be to take the baby out.
There's no medical reason why the baby has to die first.
Number three, bodily autonomy arguments, especially when argued using the attached to a stranger by wires analogy, These arguments completely disregard the relationship involved here.
It's no coincidence that when someone does the whole, well, what if you're attached by wires to someone in the hospital?
The person you're attached to, in that analogy, is always a stranger.
Have you noticed that? Always a stranger.
But the relationship that we're dealing with here in pregnancy is that of a mother and child.
The child is not a stranger.
He's not some alien species which has attached itself to you.
That's your child.
To claim autonomy is to claim that your status as the child's mother has no significance whatsoever and carries with it no special responsibilities at all.
But we all know that's not true.
Nobody actually believes that.
Nobody. Society couldn't function if we all actually believe that.
Do we not require by law that parents make all sorts of sacrifices, do all sorts of things for their kids that they're not required to do for strangers?
We say to parents, you must feed your child, clothe your child, educate your child, discipline your child, shelter your child.
All of this is very taxing for the parent.
It is a claim on the parent's autonomy.
All of it is.
It involves the parent's heart, mind, body, soul, bank account.
What the law says to parents of born children is that, yes, you must invest your entire being into this person.
Your autonomy is gone.
Because you have a responsibility to this person.
You are not autonomous as a parent.
That's what the law says and that's what everybody in society actually believes.
Now, if you decide, if you have a child and you decide you're going to neglect your child, you're not going to feed it.
You're not going to provide clothes.
You're going to make your child sleep outside in a doghouse rather than inside your home.
Or you're just going to outright abort your child and kill your child.
You wouldn't be able to go before the judge and say, well, how would you like it if some stranger moved into your house and demanded food?
Well, I wouldn't like it at all.
I admit that.
If some stranger barged into my home and said, give me food, I wouldn't be a fan of that.
But that's not a stranger.
That's your child. You have a responsibility to him.
You have a responsibility to him that nobody else has.
You have a special and unique responsibility to your own children.
Sorry if you don't like it, but that's just the fact of the matter.
So I ask you, if we require by law that parents care for their children, provide for their children, see to their children's every need, or else at least make arrangements for someone else to do all that, what happens at birth That suddenly creates this duty and why does it not exist a second beforehand?
All I'm saying is, again, we all agree that parents of born children are not autonomous and they have all kinds of responsibilities to their children.
And if they don't want to fulfill those responsibilities, they have to find someone who will fulfill them.
And they certainly can't just kill their child.
No matter how stressed out they are, and no matter how draining it is to be a parent.
And we say that to the parent because you're the parent.
That's your child. You are responsible to it.
That's what it means to be living in a civilized society.
So all I'm saying is, logically, we should take that principle and apply it to the womb as well.
Because it's the same child.
Nothing changes. It's the same person.
And your relationship is the same, and therefore, the responsibilities should be the same.
Number four, if abortion prohibitions are a violation of bodily autonomy, then who is the one violating the woman's autonomy?
Well, it would have to be the baby.
I mean, that's who's violating you, right?
If you're saying, I'm violated by being forced to keep this baby in my womb or this fetus, well, who really is the guilty party here?
You say that being forced to carry a baby is a violation of autonomy.
Well, that means that the baby is the one violating it.
And those who make abortion illegal in this equation are merely forcing you to endure that violation, but the guilty party here is the baby, which I guess is why he gets capital punishment.
But wait a second. Here's the problem.
The baby is in the only place he can be.
The baby is in the place that nature has decreed.
He is in his natural environment.
He is following natural order.
So a baby in the womb, that is a part of natural order, okay?
Someone being attached to a stranger by wires in the hospital, that is not really a part of the natural order.
That is something extraordinary and beyond nature.
But a baby in the womb, that's just nature.
It's not a corruption of nature, okay?
So you can't say, well, cancer is part of nature too.
Are you saying I can't get cancer treated?
Cancer is a corruption of nature.
It's nature gone wrong.
A baby in the womb is just, that's nature working exactly as nature has to work in order for the species to be propagated.
So, the baby really is not the one violating you.
I guess nature is violating you here.
But how can nature violate your rights?
When rights themselves, if they exist at all, are natural.
We talk about natural rights.
The Constitution is founded on the basis of natural human rights.
So if you're claiming that you have a right to abortion, which somehow is in the Constitution, even though it must be written in an invisible ink because I've never seen it, but if it's in there, that means it's based on natural rights.
Rights from nature, from the natural order, which is to say from God, but for the sake of this argument, if you want to call it nature, fine.
So nature has decided that all human beings must be born this way, and yet nature has also decided that it's a violation of your rights when humans are born this way?
How could you have a natural right To usurp and destroy this natural and good and healthy process.
How could both of those things be from nature?
And if you're saying that nature is your oppressor, if you're saying that pregnancy itself is an oppressive thing that I should not be subjected to, well, nature is at fault, and fine, nature is your oppressor, but then don't appeal to nature, that is to natural rights, when fighting against this oppression.
Don't appeal to the very thing that is oppressing you, apparently.
Now, if you admit that your right to abortion is not natural, and it's not from nature, but it is just the arbitrary decree of man and governments, Then I would say that the arbitrary decree is arbitrary and thus should be overturned.
And if you believe that rights do not come from nature, and as we've already said, for abortion to work, for the bottomly autonomy argument to work, you have to admit that this right is not from nature because pregnancy is from nature.
So where does the right come from?
Well, it comes from the government then, I guess, in that case.
But then you couldn't very well complain when the government overturns that right or restricts abortion, can you?
Iowa just passed very restrictive abortion laws.
You can't complain about that if you think that rights come from government, because then that means the government can change its mind, and then the rights are gone.
It doesn't make any sense to say, oh, the government is infringing on my rights, if the rights come from government.
If you say that the government is infringing on your rights, then you are appealing to some higher order above the government.
But we've already explained that you can't do that because it's that higher order which has decided that you should have this baby and carry it in your womb.
Number five. Last point.
It really all comes back to this.
Complete bodily autonomy does not exist.
So I've just spent the last four points explaining all these problems with autonomy and everything.
What it really comes down to is autonomy does not exist.
It's not a real thing.
It doesn't exist.
You are not autonomous.
And you never will be.
Human beings are not autonomous creatures.
We are not these entirely sovereign, independent entities with no duty or responsibility at all to our fellow man or our families.
But that's what complete autonomy would have to mean.
It means you are entirely sovereign and to yourself.
And if we talk about an entirely sovereign, autonomous country, what we're saying is this is a country that can make its own laws, do its own thing, and it cannot be controlled to an extent by any other country.
And so if you're a completely autonomous individual, it means that you have no responsibilities at all whatsoever to anyone.
And you would not be able to say, well, okay, but we have autonomy, but we only have autonomy up until the point when we harm someone else.
So if you're pro-abortion, you cannot make the argument that, well, we have the right to do whatever we want as long as we're not harming anybody else.
Abortion is most certainly harming someone else.
There's no dispute about that.
So what you're actually proposing here, think about this.
You're proposing an autonomy that does allow you to harm other people.
You're proposing an autonomy that allows even for murder, which is you're proposing anarchy, okay?
You're proposing that we are so autonomous, so sovereign, So free from any social responsibilities at all that we could even kill other people.
And we can justify it based on the fact that this is me doing what I want to do.
Why did I kill my neighbor?
Because I wanted to kill my neighbor.
Hey, you don't want to kill neighbors?
Don't kill neighbors. Don't like neighbor killing?
Don't kill neighbors. I wanted to kill my neighbor, so I did.
That's why I did it.
I'm autonomous. I used my autonomous, sovereign entity of a body to kill my neighbor.
That's what autonomy means.
So then you have to say, okay, well, this right to a violent, murderous autonomy only extends to those who are dependent upon us.
Well, I would say that's a rather arbitrary designation, and you've already done away with complete autonomy.
By making that designation, now complete autonomy is out the window.
It's gone. But fine.
In that case...
Well, that means certainly, as I've already covered, parents with children of any age up until 18 can do as they please to their children.
They can decline to feed them, clothe them, shelter them, and they can even murder them.
If the principle established in the womb holds, which it must for autonomy.
And then what about those who are dependent on the system?
What about those who are dependent on me?
My children are dependent on me.
There are people who are dependent on me as taxpayers.
What about welfare recipients?
Well, again, complete autonomy would mean that I can certainly withdraw my money from them anytime I want because I'm autonomous.
I mean, if I don't even have responsibility to my child, how could I possibly have responsibility to this person who I don't even know?
So I should have the right, by the logic of autonomy, to withdraw my money and even if I wish to eradicate them because they are dependent at some level on me.
So if the logic in the womb holds, it means I should be able to kill them.
So we see that bodily autonomy gives us the right to do whatever we want to anyone.
Partial bodily autonomy gives us the right to at least murder children up until the age of 18, plus welfare recipients and Social Security recipients and so on.
Now, partial, partial autonomy may preclude the mass murder of those on entitlements, but it still very clearly gives me the abortive authority over any dependent child of mine at any age.
So what sort of autonomy is the kind of autonomy where you're forced to provide for folks on welfare and food stamps and Social Security, and you're forced to provide for your own kids up until the age of 18, But you can still murder them in the womb.
What is that?
I mean, that ain't complete autonomy.
That's not even anywhere close to complete autonomy.
That is partial, partial, partial, partial autonomy, which is a far cry from complete autonomy, which is what pro boards claim we have.
And when you get to the point where you're claiming partial, partial, partial, partial, conditional, temporary autonomy, Which during this period of time gives you the right to do whatever you want to this specific other person up to and including crushing their skulls and killing them.
When we're talking about that sort of autonomy, it becomes clear that, well, actually autonomy doesn't exist.
That's not autonomy at all.
I don't know what that is.
I do know what it is.
It's murder. That's all that is.
That's not autonomy. It's got nothing to do with autonomy.
The logic of autonomy is not involved here whatsoever.
It starts to seem that you're just using autonomy as an excuse.
Hmm. Funny how that works.
So that's the five-step process for deconstructing the autonomy argument, and that's it.
