The following is an excerpt of Scott Klusendorf’s article “The Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist.” This piece was excerpted particularly for its stance on Partial Birth Abortion. We can win if we force abortion advocates to defend killing babies. The national debate over partial-birth abortion (PBA) is a case in point. Though President Clinton has twice vetoed [...]
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Abortion Archive
Mar
26
Pro-Life Arguments and the Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist
Pro-Life Arguments- SYNOPSIS The past few years have witnessed a stunning development in the pro-life movement. Many pro-life leaders now think we can make abortion rare by downplaying the moral question, “Does abortion take the life of a defenseless human being?” They favor a new strategy that appeals to the self-interests of women rather than [...]
Mar
26
Anti-Abortion Arguments: What Are Some Anti-Abortion Arguments?
Anti-Abortion Arguments- THE GRADUALIST THESIS Those who defend the gradualist thesis, such as Daniel Callahan and Robert Wennberg,29 argue that the unborn entity increases in value as it develops physically. Unlike the theories critiqued above, in this view there is no one decisive moment at which the unborn entity moves from nonperson to person. For [...]
Mar
26
Personhood: What Constitutes Personhood?
Several ethicists, such as Michael Tooley,17 Mary Anne Warren,18 James Rachels,19 and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott,20 have put forth criteria that a being must fulfill in order to be considered fully human. For some these criteria apply to any entity, whether before or after birth. In fact, according to Tooley, birth has no bearing on the [...]
Mar
26
Attainment of Sentience: Is Sentience a Dividing Line for Life?
Some ethicists argue that the unborn becomes fully human sometime after brain development has begun, when it becomes sentient: capable of experiencing sensations such as pain. The reason for choosing sentience as the criterion is that a being that cannot experience anything (i.e., a presentient unborn entity) cannot be harmed. Of course, if this position [...]
Mar
26
Viability: Is a Fetus a Person Once it Can Live Outside the Mother’s Womb?
As I noted in Part Three, viability is the time at which the unborn human can live outside her mother’s womb. Some have argued that prior to this time, since the unborn cannot survive independent of her mother, she is not a completely independent human life and hence not fully human. Bioethicist Andrew Varga points [...]
Mar
26
The Right to Life: When Does Life Begin?
Throughout the history of the abortion controversy, many have put forth criteria by which to judge whether a human organism has reached the point in its development at which it is fully human. Some criteria are based on so-called “decisive” moments in fetal development. Others are based on certain conditions any entity — born or [...]
Mar
26
Prenatal Development: Conception through Five Months
Realizing that many popular arguments for abortion rights — such as some of the ones found in the first two installments in this series — have little logical merit, many philosophers, ethicists, and theologians have presented more sophisticated arguments for abortion rights. These radical and moderate pro-choice thinkers agree with pro-life advocates that the abortion [...]
Mar
26
Ad Hominem Attacks: The Ad Hominem Argument for Abortion
“Ad hominem” literally means to “attack the man” (or person). Therefore, “to attack ad hominem is to attack the man who presents an argument rather than the argument itself.”25 Instead of dealing with what a person is actually saying, one attacks the person. This is a bad form of reasoning because it ultimately does not [...]
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