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Those opposed to the pro-life movement think that their opponents have a nefarious motive for their activism: "they don't really care about babies. They just want power or control, or they just want to win." In the following debate, the Hitch makes this explicit. Watch Bill Craig's response. Starts at 1:16: Craig's response is right. The Hitch presumes that Christians don't have the intellectual resources to care for people in the present. All they have is a hope that the future, post-resurrection world will be better. All the Christian talk about life is really a veiled attempt to control others. Craig's response is the denial of this premise. He argues that we do indeed have the intellectual resources to care about people in the present. It is because people are made in the image of God that each person has intrinsic moral worth and comes with a set of inalienable rights. In other words, Christians have good reason to care for people in the present...

This is my final post this week in honor of those who march today. I am a person. So are you. A person is the kind of thing that one ought not kill without a good reason. If the little being inside the womb is also a person, then it ought to be protected as much as is possible. If so, then the state should secure this protection by granting legal rights to the little being in the womb. According to the Christian, something is a person if it is made in the image of God. Furthermore, only persons are made in the image of God. Although God created cows, mountains, vegetables, and clouds, none of them are made in his image. God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27) God is a person. He is aware of himself. He can make choices, think, and act in accordance. He is the paradigm of personhood. Being made in his image is to at least be like God in those ways without being the same as God. Thus, if something is made i...

[This week, my blog is dedicated to those out marching for the lives of the most vulnerable ] Imagine you are placed into a time travel capsule and sent 100 years into the future. Before you are jetted off, you are allowed to make some changes to the activities of human beings in the present that may make your life better or more tolerable 100 years from now. You have been studying climate science and it seems to you that there is a 50% probability that some of our activities in the present will have bad consequences 100 years from now. So, you make some changes to human activities that will perhaps mitigate the harmful effects of those activities. Then you are sent into the future. If what I have said sounds reasonable it is because there are people who are going to live in 100 years time and, if predictions turn out correctly, they will wish people living 100 years ago would have made changes to their lives in order to mitigate the effects of those activities on those living in ...

I am glad that I exist. I hope you are too. To be glad about one's existence is to prefer it to be the case that one exits rather than one does not. If I am glad that I exist, then I don't want the history of the world up until my existence to be significantly altered. This is because my existence is contingent upon an incredibly complex history leading to the joining of a particular sperm with a particular egg. Any other pairing would have produced someone else and thus I would not exist. If I am glad that I exist now, then I don't want the history of the world after I began to exist to include any event that would entail that I do not exist now. If so, then I ought to think abortion is not morally permissible.  If I am glad that I exist now, then I also don't want the history of the world after I began to exist to include any event that would entail that I do not exist now. One significant alteration to the past would be my mother having an abortion when I was i...

In honor of all those marching in the cold , this week my blog is devoted to polemical refutation of pro-abortion arguments. Jennifer Wright argues that pro-lifers ignore facts . Six of them. Well I don't want to ignore facts. So, what are they? Are they true? Are they relevant to the moral status of abortion? First fact: fetuses are distinguishable from babies:  They can pretend fetuses are indistinguishable from babies, despite the fact that medical evidence tells us fetuses cannot live unsupported , even with a respirator before 21 weeks.  In other words, a fetus is a baby only if it can live unsupported. But if this was a condition for babyhood, it would be morally permissible to kill many babies who are already born. Many babies are born premature or with health conditions and are supported by things like respirators. We wouldn't say it is morally justifiable to kill them. Thus, just because a fetus requires the support of the mother to live, it does not...

According to Jean Kazez, it is implausible that life begins at conception. She suggests that an entity with life-status must be an entity that has continuity and can be individuated. To have continuity an entity must have identity conditions at t1 and t2. To be individuated an entity must have some set of conditions that set it apart from another entity. Kazez argues that the entity in the womb has neither until it is 14 days old. Thus, life cannot begin at conception. Her argument is as follows: (1) If it is a life, then it is a unified, continuous individual. (2) An embryo is not a unified, continuous individual. (3) Therefore, an embryo is not a life. Kazez assumes the truth of (1) and provides a couple of reasons to accept (2). First, in the first few days of development the conceptus can split and develop into two or more individuals. At best, the collection of cells that compose the entity at this stage are like a "flock of birds" - there may be some form of lif...

The Maverick explains : It is often said that a human fetus is a potential human life. Not so! A human fetus is an actual human life. Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother. It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And let's be clear that a potential X is not an X. A potential oak tree is not an oak tree. A potential neonate is not a neonate. A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker. But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn. And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it. The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities. So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you nee...

Victor Reppert's reconstruction of the Roe v. Wade argument is illuminating: There is a constitutionally guaranteed right of privacy, of which we can be certain. In the case of abortion, the right of privacy must prevail unless there is a countervailing right of which we can be certain, such as the fetus's right to life. This protects a woman's right to consult with her doctor and decide whether or not to get an abortion. Just as it is a violation of privacy rights to make birth control illegal, it violates privacy right to prohibit abortion, unless a countervailing right can be established. But the fetus's right to life cannot be established. Reasonable persons can disagree as to whether fetuses have a right to life or not. One may, based on one's religion perhaps, believe that they have this right, but this right cannot be demonstrated in the same way that the right of privacy can be demonstrated. Therefore there is a Constitutional right to abortion. Re...

Having 'moral status' equates to being the kind of thing it is wrong to kill. According to Elizabeth Harman, if a woman decides to have an abortion, then the fetus does not have moral status. If the mother decides not to have an abortion, then, due to the future life of that fetus, the fetus has moral status. I have moral status. If my mother had decided to abort me, then I would not have had moral status. When I was a fetus, my mother decided not to abort me and, in virtue of that fact, I had a future life. Consequently, I had, and still have, moral status. This is a terrible and silly argument. First, moral status of the kind in question is not something one has accidentally. One does not have it in virtue of any fact apart from the existence of the kinds of things that have it. For any x, if x has moral status, then x has moral status at any time at which x exists. Human persons have moral status at any time at which they exist. Second, if this is not the case,...

My house has parts--walls, foundations, windows, etc--and there are things that are inside my house--children, saucepans, guitars, etc. Being inside my house does not entail being part of my house. But there are boundary cases: Are my curtains or appliances part of the house or merely contained within the house? If they are inside my house and not part of the house itself, then I can take them when I leave the house. If, on the other hand, they are part of the house, then I should not remove them when I leave. Recently, in response to a question I posed about abortion, someone wrote this: When the fetus is still within the mother it is part of her body. Terminating is therefore her choice. After it is born it is no longer part of her body and therefore not her choice... Surely women can be trusted to make decisions about their bodies on their own, just as men are (do you see anyone trying to make smoking illegal?). The US government has no right, in any situation, to force a w...

Do you acquire the rights associated with personhood or are they essential to you? Consider rights in general, the right to vote, for example. You didn't always have this right. You acquired it. So, perhaps personhood is like the right to vote. You acquired it at some point in your development. The right to life goes along with being a person. If you are a person, anyone who kills you has committed a moral and legal wrong. Most pro-choice arguments talk about this right as if it is acquired at some point in the womb. Prior to counting as a person, however, it is morally justified to kill the entity in the womb. Personhood, however, is not like the right to vote. A right to do some thing or have some social standing is parasitic on the more basic question of what kinds of things are things that can have those kinds of rights . The most obvious answer is that persons have rights. But if so, then the kind of thing you are is a person and it is in virtue of you being the kind ...

"You were always wriggling" mom says. "I could never get a nappy on you without a fight" "I still can't stop fidgeting," the boy says. "I know," chimes in dad, "I have to sit next to you at mealtimes!" "Haha. You wriggled so much in my womb I couldn't sleep." Mom hugs her son. "During labor you you managed to get the cord wrapped round your neck and had to be pulled out extra quick." "I'm glad you made it, son" "Wait a minute," the abortionist interjects, "there was no "you" in the womb. "you" refers to a person, but you were not a person in the womb. You were once an  it. In fact, my last sentence does not make sense. You did not exist so you couldn't be anything. You began to exist at some time when the object from which you are made became a person. So, strictly speaking, the object moved in the womb." "Oh," says mom....

Some positions are best opposed by trying to show what would follow from their view. Modus Tollens is particularly helpful in this way and takes the following form: if A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A. They have the useful feature of providing the user with a tool for showing horrible consequences that can force someone to reject the antecedent. For example, a favored argument against abortion is to suggest that if abortion is morally justifiable, then infanticide is justifiable. The anti-abortionist relies on the consequent being plainly intolerable and should lead to the rejection of the antecedent. Those who are consistent are forced either to accept the consequent (amazingly there are such people ) or to give up their defense of abortion. As someone who thinks abortion is an abhorrent evil I am often on the look out for good arguments of that form. Recently, I was perusing through some articles and low and behold I found a good 'n. The first premise was as follows: ...

Imagine you are one of the thousands of people who have been looking forward to receiving a brand new Samsung Galaxy Note. However, after hearing news of their vulnerability to spontaneous combustion, you call Samsung and are told that there is indeed a possibility of your phone exploding in your pocket. If you so choose you may decide to stop the delivery and the phone will be destroyed along with all the other phones that have yet to be delivered. The trouble is, you really want the phone. If you choose to receive the phone it may never explode, but you will always live in fear that at any moment it could go off. And then there will be the accompanying costs and hassles in the form of upgrades, new parts etc. And if it does explode, there will be greater costs. You are not sure how much but you ask yourself: "what if the phone burns my house down?" Although the phone looks great you decide to stop delivery and condemn the phone to the flames. Maybe they'll make a...

Bill Nye  Bill Nye argues that an abortion is analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman's uterine wall ( here ). So... If a fertilized egg is a human, then the woman is responsible for the death of any human that does not attach to a uterine wall.  The woman is not responsible for the death of the human.  Therefore the fertilized egg is not a human and abortion is justifiable.  This is a bad analogy. An abortion is not analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman's uterine wall. No one is blaming anyone for miscarriages or for fertilized eggs not attaching to the uterine wall because no one has done anything obviously blameworthy. The issue is the intentional abortion of a pregnancy. Consequently, (1) is false and the argument is unsound. If, on the other hand, intentionally aborting a pregnancy is morally blameworthy, then we have a duty to prevent it.

The picture of a dead lion and the videos of Planned Parenthood workers went head to head this past month. Who won? Time will tell. One thing we do know is that evidence, the type of evidence you can see and hear, doesn't always change a person's mind. "How can anyone, any human being, see that poor defenseless lion and feel no moral outrage?" some people said. "No one with any moral scruples can watch the Planned Parenthood videos and remain a supporter of such an organization," others cried. Yet, for some reason, many people defy the supposedly obvious evidence. Are they mad, irrational or psychopathic? I suppose many people just throw their arms in the air and give up. "How on earth can I persuade someone about the evils of Planned Parenthood or big game hunting if they cannot see what is in front of their face?" Of course, they did see it; they just didn't get it. There are many other evidences that seem, to some, to be incontro...

Pastor, Kevin DeYoung writes: "at present, one of the worst heresies is to be in the same zip code with someone who takes a firm stance on homosexuality" (see here ). Heresy, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek claims, is no longer deviation from dogma or even reason, but deviation from the crowd. If holy text and universal truth go the way of the dodo, then the crowd is all that we have left. And, although no one is quite ready to burn the heretic (in this country, at least), there are many ready to silence him.

Inconsistency is good. What? Surely I should be stripped of my qualifications, marched down to logic 101 and given a thorough going over! Not so fast. First, one has to ask: consistent with what? For there are two articles I have read this week that demonstrate consistency of the kind I do not want. First, Mary Elizabeth Williams writes on the anniversary of Roe v Wade (see here for the full article):

A Roman Catholic mental health worker is suing the British National Health Service for unfair dismissal. Apparently Margaret Forrester handed a colleague a booklet highlighting the trauma experienced by women who had had abortions. She was summoned to a meeting, challenged about her views and moved to another role. (read the full story here ). I was struck by the following comment: "She was told during the disciplinary proceedings that part of the problem with the booklet was that it was “religious in tone”, according to Mrs Forrester’s legal papers."

A recent article in The Journal of Medical Ethics argues the following: " What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled"  You can read the article here or a summary here . A baby, like a fetus, does not yet possess the properties necessary to be regarded as a person, our authors argue; Infanticide is no different from abortion (On this latter point I concur) In 1980 Mary Anne Warren wrote: "Some human beings are not people, and there may well be people who are not human beings." Warren suggested that fetuses should not be recognized as people and should not be granted rights. She also suggested that one day when robots possess qualities like intelligence and self-awareness they should be regarded as persons. It is not an inconceivable leap from fetuses to newborns (it is just a few inches from womb to world). The problem is how we define "...