Pro-Choice Arguments

Sometimes, supporters of legal abortion will concede that an embryo or a fetus is, scientifically speaking, a human being, while denying that it is a person with rights. However, when pressed, they can point to no meaningful distinction between human beings and human persons. “Personhood” is a philosophical term, not a scientific one, and ultimately depends on individual, subjective beliefs rather than common, objective values.

Moreover, history is replete with attempts to exclude certain categories of human beings from the class of  “persons” enjoying human rights, in an attempt to rationalize such injustices as slavery or genocide. Human rights are meaningless unless they belong to all human beings, without discrimination.

See also, A fetus isn’t really a human being and Why do you think the fetus is more important than the woman? 

While there are unwanted pregnancies, there truly are no unwanted children. Even if a pregnant woman does not want to raise the child growing in her womb, someone else does. There are many more couples seeking to adopt than children available for adoption.

But even if a child were “unwanted,” it would still be wrong to kill them for not being wanted — just as it would be wrong to kill a child already born if her mother decided she no longer wanted her.

Moreover, no woman really wants to have an abortion. An unwanted abortion is no solution to an unwanted pregnancy.

See also How often are women coerced into getting abortions?

We all recognize that raising a child in poverty can be a tremendous challenge. But the solution to this challenge is not to dispose of the child, but to provide the resources needed to lift a family out of poverty.

No one would suggest that poor families be encouraged to kill their born children to improve their economic conditions. Abortion is no better a solution if, as we argue, the unborn child is a fellow member of the human family with an inherent right to life. Advocates for this solution should also reflect on how it implicitly devalues poor children, as if they were better off dead.

It should also be noted that abortion does not solve the problem. A poor woman who gets an abortion remains poor. In fact, the guilt and shame often associated with abortion may become an additional burden.

Finally, a woman who lacks the resources to raise a child may choose to place her baby for adoption, rather than end its life through abortion.

See also A fetus isn’t a human being, Why should a woman have to give birth to an unwanted child?, and If you really cared about reducing abortion, you’d support more social programs

Many people believe that the key to reducing abortion is to provide a robust network of publicly funded social programs. And contrary to what many pro-choice people believe, programs that provide resources to disadvantaged families are welcomed by pro-life advocates. Every pro-lifer wants poor families to get the help they need.

However, contrary to what one might expect, the evidence reveals no straightforward association between the availability of social programs and abortion rates. Many nations that spend more on social welfare programs than the United States — such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and France — actually have higher abortion rates. Clearly factors other than social spending have an impact. These could include religious practice, attitudes towards family, and the legal status of abortion.

See also Why don’t you care about babies once they’re born?

While it is certainly true that a woman’s body is greatly impacted by pregnancy, it is not true that abortion is simply a matter of her choosing to do something with her body. The fetus growing within her womb is a separate person with its own distinct genetic makeup. Abortion does not remove some part of the woman’s body; it destroys the body of a separate, unique individual.

That said, the truth is that pro-lifers cannot “force” a woman to choose life for her baby. Abortion is widely available, even with recent changes in the law. That is why we seek instead to inform women about the consequences of abortion and do whatever we can to help her choose life for her unborn child.

See also When does life begin?, How often are women coerced into getting abortions?, Why are you opposed to abortion when it helps women so much?

Neither life — that of an unborn child or that of her mother — is more important than the other’s. On the contrary, both lives are of equal value, and both deserve to be protected by the laws of our society.

Americans are deeply divided on the abortion issue and have been for decades, with roughly half describing themselves as “pro-choice” and half as “pro-life.” But these labels only tell part of the story, and most people’s views on abortion are more complicated. That said, there is a general consensus that abortion should be permitted early in pregnancy but tightly limited later in pregnancy.  Still, many of those who say they support legal abortion consider it to be morally wrong.

While a majority will say that they believe abortion should be permitted early in pregnancy, 56% generally agree that “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights.” Moreover, there is broad public support even among those who identify as pro-choice for measures like parental involvement laws, bans on late term abortion, and restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion. And significantly, 65% of Americans — nearly two-thirds — believe that the overall number of abortions would be reduced if pregnant women were offered more support.

The simple answer to this question — which is the one pro-choice people raise more often than any other — is that a child conceived through rape or incest does not deserve the death penalty for her father’s crime. However, the fully pro-life response to this question must also convey sympathy for the victims of rape and incest, whom research shows are likely to suffer more if they resort to abortion.

Large-scale studies of pregnant rape victims found that only 30–50% chose abortion. Contrary to popular assumptions, many sexual assault victims see giving birth as a selfless, loving act that helps bring healing from the horrific experience of the rape itself. Women who abort children conceived through rape often report that they didn’t feel that they had any other choice, since everyone around them assumed that they would not want to give birth to the baby.

The case against abortion for pregnant victims of incest is even stronger. Incest victims hardly ever voluntarily consent to an abortion. Rather than viewing the pregnancy as unwanted, the victim of incest may instead see the pregnancy as a way to get out of the incestuous relationship because it exposes the abusive sexual activity that family members are either unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge. The pregnancy poses a threat to the perpetrator, who frequently attempts to coerce his incest victim to have an unwanted abortion.

The idea that the violent act of abortion is beneficial to victims of rape and incest is simply unfounded. On the contrary, evidence shows that abortion in such cases can compound the unspeakable pain that victims experience.

Moreover, given that one-third of one percent of abortions are performed under such circumstances, we might ask why this question is so frequently raised. Do these extremely rare cases justify tolerating the other 99.67% of abortions? Would those who raise this objection really be willing to ban abortion if exceptions were made for rape and incest?

See also What percentage of all abortions are because of “hard cases”?

Despite some highly publicized cases, violence perpetrated by abortion opponents is extremely rare. All major pro-life organizations have official policies condemning the use of violence, and no cases of violence directed at abortion-bound women by pro-life activists have ever been substantiated, despite the rhetoric from some abortion advocates.

The few individuals who have committed acts of violence against abortion clinic personnel or property were not part of the mainstream pro-life movement, and in some cases have even admitted they were more motivated by a desire for fame than concern for the plight of unborn children.

In fact, there have been more reported acts of violence perpetrated against pro-lifers than committed by them. Just as it would be unfair to characterize all pro-choice people as violent because of a few criminals, it is unfair to say that pro-lifers are violent because of a few fringe figures.

On the contrary, pro-life activism demands singular patience and peacefulness, which is why the pro-life movement is, in fact, the most peaceful protest movement in U.S. history.

It would be wrong to say that the life of a child with a disability is of less value than the life of any other child. None of us is free of imperfections, and our society prides itself on accommodating those whose disabilities would otherwise prevent them from enjoying the goods of modern life.

A disability can even become a source of tremendous personal growth and meaning. The parents of disabled children often report that their lives are enriched by the experience of caring for a disabled child, and those children grow up valuing their own lives as much as any of us does.

Nevertheless, many parents who receive a poor prenatal diagnosis report being pressured to abort by medical staff, who see no value in that child.

Moreover, aborting a child for being disabled may compound the physical and emotional trauma women often experience after abortion. No child deserves the death penalty for being less than perfect.

See also Where can parents get help dealing with a poor prenatal diagnosis?

It is impossible to know how many illegal abortions were performed prior to 1973, since they were not reported. Still, we have a fairly accurate picture of how many women died from illegal abortions. A woman who was seriously injured as a result of abortion would go to another physician for care; if she died, that physician would accurately report her cause of death as abortion.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, after penicillin became available the number of deaths from abortion stabilized in the 1950s to about 250 per year. By 1966, when abortion was still illegal in all 50 states, abortion deaths had dropped to half that number. In 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, only 39 women died — fewer than one per state.

Unfortunately, women are still dying from abortion. Students for Life of America has documented the deaths of hundreds of women from so-called “safe, legal abortion.”

See also Do you want to return to the days of  “back alley” and  “coat hanger” abortions? and Isn’t abortion safer than childbirth? 

The pro-life movement strongly supports medical intervention to save a pregnant mother’s life, even if that results in the foreseen but unintended death of her child. And in fact, every state limit on abortion provides exceptions for life-saving care for pregnant mothers.

However, it should be noted that these kinds of cases are extremely rare, accounting for approximately 0.1% of all abortions. And in many cases, the medical intervention involved would not technically be considered an abortion — for example, the inducing of labor after premature rupture of the membranes, a condition that can be fatal for both mother and child.

Further complicating this question is a shift in priorities within the medical community. While those treating pregnant women used to recognize that they have two patients — the mother and the child — more than fifty years of legal abortion have diminished the value that many physicians place on the life of a human fetus.

In all such difficult cases, the human dignity of both mother and child should be respected to the greatest extent possible.

See also What percentage of abortions are because of “hard cases”?

Some abortion advocates have claimed that banning abortion means women will be denied medical treatment for miscarriage. However, this claim ignores both the history of abortion in America and the reality today in states where abortion restrictions are in force.

Before Roe v. Wade, when most states banned nearly all abortions, doctors’ ability to care for women undergoing miscarriages was completely unaffected. And that remains the case today, even in states with the strictest abortion limits.

It should also be noted that some abortion advocates have deliberately tried to conflate abortion and miscarriage, exploiting the fact that the D&C procedure used to remove a naturally deceased embryo or fetus is also used in a direct abortion to deliberately kill an embryo or fetus. Banning this procedure for abortion does not affect its use in cases of miscarriage.

See also What’s the difference between abortion and miscarriage? and How is a D&C abortion performed?

The pro-life movement is often characterized as an effort by men to control women’s bodies. But in fact, some studies have shown women to be more pro-life than men. Perhaps they recognize that abortion often serves the selfish interests of men rather than the real needs of women.

The experience of pro-life counselors and the testimony of women who have spoken out about their abortions show that men are more likely to push women into abortions they do not want than to try to force them not to have an abortion. But we never hear abortion advocates speaking out against this kind of influence of men over women.

The pro-life movement calls on men to take responsibility for the children they have helped to conceive. The men who are active in the pro-life movement are responding to the call to step up and be advocates for women and children.

Finally, no one would try to impose this principle — that only those directly affected by an issue should have any say about it — to any other social justice movement. It was not only slaves, former slaves and former slave owners who spoke out for emancipation. It was not only black Americans who fought for civil rights. Nor should it be only women, today, who speak out against abortion.

Though many people believe our society is overburdened by “unwanted” children, the truth is that there are many more couples seeking to adopt children than there are children available for adoption. Each year approximately 115,000 children are adopted in the United States and approximately 114,000 children in foster care are eligible for adoption, while an estimated one to two million couples are currently seeking to adopt a child. That means that for every child placed for adoption, there are at least nine more couples waiting to adopt a baby.

The idea of widespread and dangerous “back alley” abortions prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 is not supported by the facts. The medical director of Planned Parenthood wrote in 1960 that “90% of illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians.”

Likewise, the “coat hanger abortion” is a myth. In his 1979 book, Aborting America, the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL, then known as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, refers to one coat hanger abortion. However, Nathanson, who later became committedly pro-life, publicly confessed to fabricating evidence in order to get abortion legalized. There is no hard evidence to support the performance of a single coat hanger abortion.

NARAL claimed that 1,000,000 illegal abortions were performed yearly, though they believed the actual number to be about 100,000. They claimed that 10,000 women died each year from illegal abortions, knowing that the actual number was a mere fraction of this.

See also If you make abortion illegal, women will die, What risks are associated with abortion?, and What was the legal status of abortion in the United States before Roe v. Wade?

The pro-life movement cares very much about babies, both before and after they’re born. That is why we have established a nationwide support system of thousands of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) devoted to providing emotional and material support for women facing both untimely pregnancy and the demands of being a new parent.

For information on contacting PRCs or donating money or baby items, see Where can a woman get help with an untimely pregnancy?

Research shows abortion has increased rates of child abuse and other violent acts. Thus, decreasing the number of abortions means that fewer children will be abused.

Many people who are personally opposed to abortion — who consider abortion to be the unjust killing of a human being — still believe that abortion should be legal. They say that it’s impossible to stop abortion, so we need to keep abortion legal to reduce the risks associated with abortion. However, history does not support this analysis.

Between 1972 (the year before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion throughout the United States) and 1979, the nation’s abortion rate skyrocketed. But when Poland made abortion illegal in 1993, its abortion rate plummeted.

The law is a powerful teacher, influencing people’s attitudes towards right and wrong. We cannot assume that if abortion were made illegal, the abortion rate would remain steady, with similar numbers of women seeking illegal abortions. The evidence above suggests the contrary.

Those who wish to make abortion rare must seek to make it illegal. That would not end all abortions, but it would dramatically reduce the nation’s abortion rate.

Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right. At one time, slavery was legal in the United States. Slavery did not become wrong when it was abolished after the Civil War — slavery was always wrong. The injustice of slavery ended in large measure thanks to people like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, who spoke out against the unjust laws that kept millions of black Americans enslaved.

Likewise, the pro-life movement is speaking out against the unjust — but legal — killing of unborn human beings.

A person does not have to be religious to be pro-life, and many non-religious people believe that abortion is wrong and should not be legal.

Science shows us that the unborn child is a genetically unique and separate human being from its mother, even while dependent on the mother for survival. Justice demands that the life of every human being be protected by law. And on a practical level, research shows us that abortion hurts women and puts them at greater risk of numerous physical and psychological harms.

These substantial reasons for opposing abortion are completely independent from religion. That said, religious faith does play an important role in inspiring people to take an active part in confronting the injustice of abortion. In other words, pro-lifers who are religious do not oppose abortion simply because their religion tells them to; rather, recognizing that abortion is wrong, their faith compels them to do something to right that wrong.

See also A fetus isn’t really a human being, What risks are associated with abortion?, and Can I still get involved in pro-life activism if I’m not religious?

On its face, it seems reasonable that if it is possible to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by means of contraception, then it is also possible to reduce the number of abortions. But in practice this strategy does not work, due to several factors.

First, while contraceptives do reduce the chances that pregnancy will result from an individual sexual act, the widespread use of contraceptives increases risky sexual behavior overall. This is demonstrated by the dramatic increase in the number of sexually transmitted diseases and illegitimate births over the past four decades, even as contraception has become more and more widely available.

Next, we must realize that contraceptives often fail. Over half of the women who seek abortions each year report that they were using a contraceptive at the time they became pregnant. Of the nearly 12 million women on the birth control pill, eight to nine percent become pregnant each year, which means nearly a million pregnancies occur annually from Pill failure alone.

Another critical factor in why contraception is no solution for the problem of abortion is that the long-term use of contraceptives may predispose women to seek abortion when those contraceptives fail. Contraception severely weakens the link between a couple’s sexual activity and any responsibility to make a lifelong commitment or raise a family together. Pregnancy is no longer seen as a natural consequence of sex, but a negative side effect.

Moreover, the practice of repeatedly taking action — through the use of contraceptives — against the possibility of pregnancy may make it easier to take action — through abortion — to end a pregnancy when it occurs.

Those who continue to insist that contraception is the answer should explain why sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate births, and abortion are endemic in American society today, despite the fact that contraceptives are available at any drug store, widely promoted in our schools, and heavily advertised in the media.

Promoting ever greater use of contraceptives will not work to reduce the number of abortions. Rather, we must work to change societal attitudes towards sex and reconnect sex with its proper context of marriage and family.

See also Is Planned Parenthood helping to reduce abortion by providing contraception?

The pro-life movement does not want to put women in jail for having abortions. Pro-lifers consider women to be victimized by abortion, whether it is legal or illegal. Laws against abortion would impose penalties on the abortionist, not the woman.

According to the pro-choice writer Rachel Benson Gold, when abortion was still illegal, “women were rarely convicted for having an abortion; instead, the threat of prosecution often was used to encourage them to testify against the provider.” Likewise, in states with laws restricting abortion today — including those enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned — penalties are imposed on the abortion practitioner, not the woman.

In fact, it was early feminists like Susan B. Anthony who fought to criminalize abortion in the 19th century. They recognized that abortion exploited and harmed women, so they called for new laws that would prevent doctors and other practitioners from performing abortions.

See also What impact did the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling have on abortion policy?

Overpopulation is not a problem in the United States. On the contrary, the U.S. fertility rate is 1.4 children per couple, which is actually below “replacement” level — the number of births needed to keep population stable. If not for immigration, the U.S. population would be stagnant.

Most European and Asian nations are well below the replacement rate. These nations will soon face a shortage of people of working age, with too few workers to support the elderly in their retirement. Even in developing nations, fertility rates have begun to steadily decline.

There is more than enough space on earth for the world’s population. In fact, every person in the world could comfortably live within the landmass of the state of Texas. The real problem is resource consumption, as developed nations consume resources at an alarming rate. While one solution to this problem might be to limit the number of people allowed to live on earth, a better solution would be to responsibly limit our consumption of the earth’s resources.

Although abortion advocates claim that abortion is necessary for women’s well-being, in fact abortion seriously harms the women who choose it. Women deserve better than abortion.

Abortion increases a woman’s risk of developing breast, cervical, ovarian, and liver cancers. Subsequent pregnancies are more likely to involve complications including placenta previa, premature labor, or ectopic pregnancy. Moreover, abortion is the fifth leading cause of maternal death in the United States, despite significant levels of underreporting.

Women are also psychologically harmed by abortion. Post-abortive women have higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse. They have higher rates of suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide more often. They are more likely to abuse their current children and to get divorced. Post-abortive women are more likely than the general population to seek counseling or hospitalization for depression.

Thousands of women who have experienced the negative impact of abortion in their lives have begun to speak out. They are sharing their stories of how abortion has harmed them on websites like YourAbortionExperience.org and at AfterAbortion.org.

See also How often are women coerced into getting abortions? and Where can a woman get help dealing with the pain of abortion?

In recent years, some abortion advocates have begun to claim that “there’s no such thing as late term abortion,” saying pro-lifers invented the term as a scare tactic. But in reality, the phrase “late term abortion” was used widely throughout the pro-choice movement until very recently — so it can’t have been “made up” by pro-lifers.

While it’s true this term does not describe a particular medical procedure, it clearly refers to abortions late in pregnancy­ — generally after 20 weeks — of which there are 11,210 every year in the United States.

See also What is “late term” abortion? and How many abortions are performed at each stage of pregnancy?

There are many evils in this world, and all who dedicate their lives to fighting these evils are to be applauded. Those who are dedicated to fighting abortion believe that abortion is a serious enough evil to deserve a full-scale effort like the pro-life movement.

It might be helpful to compare the scope of abortion with the scope of other evils. In 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 930,160 abortions performed in the United States, or 2,548 abortions per day.

Since the founding of the United States in 1776, 1.35 million Americans soldiers have been killed in battle. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, over 64 million unborn Americans have been aborted — more than 47 times the number of war deaths. Approximately 6,800 Americans died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, which is 0.04% of the number of abortions during the same period. And on September 11, 2001, more lives were taken by abortion than in the terrorist attacks of that day.

In 2019, 14,014 murders and 122,822 rapes were reported to the FBI — so abortion is 66 times more common than murder and 7 times more common than rape.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, members of some 17 million households will go hungry at some point during the year. Hunger on this scale is a tremendous social problem — even scandalous in a country as wealthy as the United States. But while almost no one dies of starvation in the U.S., nearly a million human beings are aborted every year.

No one would ever dream of criticizing someone who has devoted their life to fighting hunger for having such a singular focus. We recognize a problem of this magnitude deserves dedicated advocates. So too with abortion.

Abortion advocates often claim that abortion is much safer than childbirth. However, this claim does not stand up to a close examination of the evidence.

The official medical term that this claim is based on — “maternal mortality” — actually includes deaths from abortion, so it is patently misleading to claim that the rate of abortion deaths is much lower than the rate of “maternal mortality” as if that term included only deaths from childbirth. In fact, in addition to deaths from both abortion and childbirth, “maternal mortality” includes deaths from hemorrhages, blood clots, ectopic pregnancies, infections, complications from high blood pressure or diabetes and more.

Moreover, no accurate accounting of abortion deaths exists. Some studies show that 4% of all maternal mortality is due to abortion while others show 8%. Anecdotal evidence reveals substantial underreporting. For example, Dr. John C. Willke writes that a pro-life physician friend did not report a girl’s cause of death as abortion because “that family has suffered enough and I’m not going to add to their woes by revealing that she had an abortion.”

Because the records of live births and stillbirths are public, it is easy to correlate deaths related to childbirth. Any woman who dies within one year of giving birth is automatically considered a maternal death for record-keeping purposes. But records from abortions are private. This means that unless a woman’s family reports that she had an abortion or somehow a coroner determines that she had an abortion, her death will not be included in the statistics for maternal mortality or abortion deaths.

In addition, it’s difficult to determine how safe or unsafe abortion really is for women. Only about half of states require abortion providers to report post-abortion complications, and investigation by pro-life advocates has revealed serious omissions in this reporting.

See also What risks are associated with abortion?

Many pro-lifers question whether a society that allows the legal killing of more than a million unborn children each year can retain the moral authority to impose the penalty of death. However, the death penalty cannot be considered morally equivalent to abortion.

Abortion is a far more serious threat to human life than the death penalty. For every execution performed in the United States, there are more than 51,000 abortions. Moreover, the basic principles behind these two forms of legalized killing are fundamentally different.

Behind legal abortion is the principle that the life of the unborn child does not have intrinsic value, and therefore the state may withdraw protection from that life. Behind the death penalty is the principle that the life of the convicted criminal has so much value that to take that life constitutes the ultimate penalty society can impose.

Therefore, there is no inherent contradiction between opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty in principle. But there is a clear contradiction between opposing the execution of human beings guilty of heinous crimes and supporting the abortion of innocent unborn human beings.