Preface to this “edition”: (last updated Jun 11, 2019)

The initial part of the following text was originally posted at http://www.debate.org/forums/society/topic/22469/, and was later edited slightly and re-posted at http://www.debatepolitics.com/blogs/futureincoming/683-60-anti-abortion-arguments-refuted-part-1.html. Those earlier editions have a problem in that the environments in which they were posted limited the maximum length of the posts, so the overall text had to be broken up into many parts. Here, all of it can be together in one post, and internal links can let you easily jump from one item to another. And as circumstances warrant, it can easily be edited/expanded, to accommodate any replies that purport to point out an error (such as #125), or to present a new argument. The very first edit here, in fact, is to change the title slightly, to indicate that more than 60 argument-refutations follow. Some of the other edits reflect some recent discoveries, or points raised by others, as posted here following the original 60 argument-refutations.

60+ Anti-Abortion Arguments Refuted

On Ending The Overall Abortion Debate

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The debate can be won by the pro-choice group. The Internet was scoured to find as many different anti-abortion arguments as possible –be warned, some of them could be called “raw”, and not even Religion-based arguments are excluded. The purpose of creating the list was to enable full exposure of all the flaws in those arguments, because all of them are indeed flawed. The result is now available for widespread use.

It is possible that no amount of facts and logic can cause some abortion opponents to change their minds. There is, after all, a particular and perfectly natural foundation for a faulty opinion, a foundation that requires extreme effort to overcome, before a different opinion can be formed. But most people are simply too lazy to bother; they would rather keep their opinions, no matter how invalid, and no matter what the consequences….

In this document that foundation is revealed to be “prejudice”, and one of the possible consequences is nothing less than the death of most of the human species. If that isn’t enough to encourage abortion opponents –who claim to be “pro-life”– to introspect their opinions carefully, then nothing will do it, and Society should simply and forever afterward ignore them (like members of the Flat Earth Society are basically ignored).

The order in which these refutations are presented is moderately important. Certain items contain information that is referenced in later items; the reader is assumed to have seen the earlier information. #1 should not be skipped, therefore, and, ideally, they all should be read in order.

As a kind of “quick reference”, it could be pointed out that many anti-abortion arguments assume that an unborn human qualifies as a person, and therefore has a right to life. For refutations about right-to-life, see #3 and #38 and #103. For “secular” refutations about personhood, see #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #14, #16, #26, #28, #41, #42, and #100. For refutations about personhood based on the notion that an unborn human might have a soul, see #8, #23, #27, and #29 (and, differently, #30 and #32).

For those who focus on “responsibility”, see #36 and #85. For those who claim an unborn human is “innocent”, see #27. For those who call it a “human being”, see #17 and #100. And for those who call it a “baby” or “child”, see #33 and #99 –and, related to that, #122.

Update: The word “stupid” appears a significant number of times in this document, such that an explanation is in order. Consider this as a moderately reasonable definition of “stupid”: A mental condition that interferes with accurate communications. Given that definition, then Prejudice and Hypocrisy and Fact-Denial can all qualify as “stupid”. For example, a Prejudiced claim such as “all Samaritans are bad people” means being unable to accurately communicate the possibility that at least one Samaritan might be a good person. It is socially important that such stupidity be exposed and reviled, whenever possible. And for worse-than-that, see the ATTENTION paragraph. (Update ends.)

1. “All life is special. It is unfortunate that we have to kill other things to survive, but killing any other thing at any other time should be avoided.” UNPROVED, because we have no reason to think life is actually that special, two different ways.

First, and more speculative, is the “panspermia” hypothesis, which is as yet unproved, but looking more and more possible all the time:

journalofcosmology.com/PanspermiaHara.pdf

That particular paper describes how the giant dinosaur-killing meteor made an impact at Chicxulub (in Mexico) big enough to splash Earthly life-forms to other star systems, as far as twenty light-years away by now. Well, in South Africa is an even bigger and much older meteor crater known as the “Vredevoort Ring”; stars about a thousand light-years away could have received life-forms from Earth by now, as a result of that impact. And this particular life-form is well-equipped to survive the trip:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

Meanwhile, the Galaxy is roughly three times the age of the Sun, so it is possible that life first arose on some other planet ten billion years ago, and eventually made its way to Earth. We do know that life-forms left traces on Earth almost as soon as the just-formed planet had cooled down enough for the oceans to stop boiling.

bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/madeforlife

So, either “abiogenesis” can happen in perhaps half a billion years, or life simply immigrated after a long prior development elsewhere, and typically arrives at habitable planets throughout the Galaxy, almost as soon as they become habitable, with fresh meteoric “vehicles” routinely being sent into interstellar space by events such as Chicxulub, also happening all across the Galaxy.

Update: Evolutionary evidence suggesting life may have existed before the Earth did. (Update ends.)

So, if life is as common as that implies, then, no, it isn’t particularly special…perhaps no more special than a natural-arch rock formation.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_arch

Second, the more we study exactly how life works at the molecular level, the more it looks like something that might be called “natural nanotechnology”. There is nothing fundamentally mysterious about it! Not even its complexity is mysterious; it is well-known that in an energy-rich environment, water naturally moves uphill (via evaporation and rainfall), and it is also known that complex things can, at random, become more complex:

wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/

As a result of such studies, and other studies about such things as “How does the human brain function?”, and, assuming our technology keeps advancing,

intel.com/ … /moores-law-embedded-technology

we expect to be in a position to, probably within two decades, build machines that would qualify as “intelligent life-forms” in every ordinary sense of both “intelligent” and “life”. They will be able to forage for food and other things:

economist.com/node/16095401

They will be able to reproduce:

britannica.com/ … /von-Neumann-machine

Also, they will be able to interact with us humans much like we interact with each other:

ibm.com/innovation/us/watson

and they will have “common sense”:

latimes.com/2002/jun/10/business/fi-techextra10

such that if one of them was communicating with you remotely, you won’t be able to figure out that it was an artificial intelligence:

popsci.com/technology/ … /chatbot-posing-13-year-old-wins-largest-ever-turing-test

Such features of artificial intelligence will come to pass partly because we know how to make those features evolve:

idi.ntnu.no/~keithd/downloads/newai-short.pdf

Human creativity can be expected to be matched (or perhaps exceeded) by artificial intelligences:

thinkartificial.org/artificial-creativity/

And we will even be able to ensure that they have Free Will, because, while that is something that requires access to utter randomness (thereby precluding “Determinism”), the Universe conveniently makes utter randomess available at the level of Quantum Mechanics:

physique. … /Bell/references/Aspect_Nature.pdf

Wired.com … bells-theorem

So, what exactly is it that makes life –or even intelligent life– “special”? Not the mere say-so of humans, certainly!

Imagine an artificial intelligence able to construct –even mass-produce– a small and limited version of itself, yet possessing the ability to acquire parts and “grow”, such that the small electronic machine eventually becomes another complete and separate artificial intelligence. This small electronic machine would be very much like an unborn human, except that it is seeking parts “in the wild” instead of obtaining them via a womb/placenta.

Let us assume the small machine takes nine months of parts-acquisition to achieve the mental abilities of a newborn human, a couple more years of parts-acquisition to achieve the mental abilities of a human toddler, and perhaps fifteen years after that to become equal to an adult human. That small “growing” electronic machine/life-form is going to be referenced in several parts of the text that follows….

2. “Native American culture mandates that if you kill it, you must eat it. Therefore abortion should be forbidden.” BAD LOGIC, because the second sentence does not necessarily follow from the first, which by itself is a variant of the preceding anti-abortion argument, and seems true enough:

knowledgesutra.com/discuss/tllit-eating-meat-morally-correct

Different cultures have different moral standards, of course, and even for Native Americans, that rule can’t really apply all the time, because when someone kills a tree for firewood or lumber, there is no intention of eating it.

Meanwhile, it is well documented that in New Guinea, various tribal cultures practiced cannibalism, and human flesh was known as “long pig” (because it is claimed to taste like pork).

encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Long%2Bpig

It is also known that certain animals, like cats, will after giving birth normally eat the afterbirth, which happens to be rich in protein and iron.

cats.blurtit.com/q454287

Then there is an uncommon sexual fetish known as “vorarephilia”, which is associated with (typically imaginary) cannibalism:

healthinfo21.com/2010/11/5-paraphilias-andor-sexual-fetishes

Logically, there appears to be nothing but cultural mores to prevent living humans from eating aborted humans, in alignment with Native American culture. On the other hand, most modern Americans (and peoples of other nations) follow different cultural rules than the Native Americans, such that there is no generic requirement to eat something just because it was killed. For example, flies and mosquitoes may be edible, and they are often killed by humans, but….

Anyway, because the logic doesn’t work, this argument against abortion fails.

3. (Updated) “There is such a thing as a ‘right to life’, and unborn humans have it.” There are two parts to that argument, of which the first fails due to BAD DATA, and the second fails in part because it requires the first to exist.

The notion of “right to life” is a human construct; it does not exist in Nature, as any observer can easily find plenty of life-forms failing to notice any such thing as a “right to life” when they kill and eat other life-forms.

More generically, consider the concepts of the “Law Of The Jungle”, and “an intrinsic property”. If some organism intrinsically had the property of “right to life”, then the Law Of The Jungle would recognize that property, and be affected by that property. Instead, though, the Law Of The Jungle is all about “might makes right” (including trickery-strength; see #7 for more about that) —anything that works to promote survival is acceptable to Mother Nature. NO life-form is exempt from being killed in accordance with the Law Of The Jungle. Logical Conclusion: There Is No Such Thing As An Intrinsic Right To Life.

On the other hand, Nature does offer an origin for the notion of a right to life. It is observed that when two members of the same species fight each other, say for a piece of food, or territory or mates, very often this fight is not carried out “to the death”. One will usually concede to the other, and that other allows the loser to leave the scene, alive.

There is Evolutionary value in that, because it quite simply and directly reduces the overall death rate of members of that species, and thereby enhances the long-term survival of that species. Note, however, that when two members of different species fight for territory (because they directly compete for the same resources in that territory), this fight will almost always be fatal for one of them. An observer can see in this paragraph an origin for “prejudice”.

Humans, by inventing the notion of a right to life, have simply formalized that Natural prejudice of each species, for itself over other species. It is a very useful formalization, because it helps humans to get along with each other. Humans have invented so many ways of making it easy to kill other things, including each other, that, by simply accepting an invented/formalized prejudice, we can better cooperate to do wonderful things, instead of constantly worrying about whether or not one is about to be literally stabbed in the back. (For more details about the invention of “right to life”, see #103.)

Carefully note that Nature does not recognize humanity’s formalized prejudice for itself, its claim of a right to life. Floods and hurricanes and earthquakes (and so on) routinely kill thousands of humans every year. There would never be such a thing as a “man-eating tiger” if humans had an intrinsic right to life. The notion of a right to life is a convenient tool that humans find useful, and nothing more than that.

Next, because “right to life” is what it is, formalized prejudice, it also can be “taken too far” –a little prejudice might be a good thing, but too much prejudice is a bad thing (too much of any good thing is always a bad thing).

One result of humans taking right-to-life-for-themselves too far is the current global population explosion. The word “biomass” is now relevant. In general, the total amount of biomass on Planet Earth is relatively constant. Logically, this means that the more biomass that becomes dedicated as human bodies (and as certain other life-forms needed to feed human bodies), the less biomass there can be for all the remaining life-forms on the planet. As a result, many life-forms have already become extinct, and many others are threatened with extinction, because prejudiced humans grabbed –and are still grabbing– more and more of the world’s limited biomass for themselves and their food sources (and for other things like wooden buildings).

pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04

Logically, to the extent that humans think that other life-forms should have some degree of “right to life”, that is the extent to which humanity’s formalized prejudice for itself needs to be restricted. But, in turn, that implies that not all humans should automatically have a full right to life –or perhaps not have any right to life! Any volunteers?

Besides a few suicides, of course not. Well then, there is the legal system, which can specifically remove “right to life” from certain humans, most frequently whenever someone is given a death penalty. In the USA and various other nations, that legal system has also found reason to deny right-to-life to unborn humans. Sure, there are many who oppose that denial. But to base that denial on the mere claim that unborn humans automatically have a right to life, that denial is logically flawed, based on bad data.

Finally, it might be noted that because right-to-life is a human construct, it is a Subjective not Objective/intrinsic thing. Objective things cannot be denied, but Subjective things are always associated with differing opinions. A significant part of the Overall Abortion Debate can be directly associated with attempts to claim that one group’s Subjective opinions are so superior that they can be forced upon all other groups. Yet the very nature of Subjectivity is such that it is impossible to prove such a claim! It is for that reason, therefore, Subjectivity in general must be banned from the Overall Abortion Debate.

Additional Update: It has been claimed that there is some sort of logical flaw, intellectual dishonesty, in concluding that Subjectivity should be banned from the Overall Abortion Debate. But the mere claim is worthless without evidence! It is like saying, “Although what I Subjectively want is not an Objective thing, because **I** say that what **I** Subjectively want is superior to what others Subjectively want, it should not be automatically dismissed.” But since anyone could make such a statement, that is precisely why the statement should be automatically dismissed! Objectivity should be favored whenever possible! (additional update ends)

4. “Human life is special.” IRRELEVANT, because the Earth is full of organisms as unique in their own way as humans. None are inherently more special than any other. And millions upon millions of species have become extinct over the ages. The Neanderthals may have thought they were special, too, but where are they now? And why do so many “special” humans get killed by purely Natural events every year? It is sheer selfish prejudiced egotism for humans to think they are special, and absolutely nothing more than that.

5. “Human life is intrinsically valuable.” FALSE, because in actual fact there is no such thing as “intrinsic value”. All valuations are associated with “desires” of one sort or another, and different sources of desire lead to different valuations. But an “intrinsic value” is something that would be recognized as such, and equally, by every different source of desire. As an example, a simple microbe might prefer to digest something organic, instead of something inorganic, and so, to the microbe, the organic thing is more valuable. If the inorganic thing had been a diamond, the microbe would still prefer the organic thing.

Meanwhile, unliving things like rocks have no desires at all, and most of the Universe appears to consist of unliving things (like stars). So, another reason there are no intrinsic valuations is simply that the Universe started out lifeless after the Big Bang, and therefore was desire-free.

Therefore, just because humans arbitrarily declare that diamonds are valuable, or human life is valuable, for various specific human purposes, that doesn’t make it intrinsically true, not in the slightest. It is a statement of pure egotistical prejudice, nothing more. As another example, a hungry man-eating tiger doesn’t care one whit what humans think about human life, or what deer think about deer life. Again, intrinsic value is something that should be intrinsically recognizable as such. Well, the only thing that tiger will recognize about a human is “fresh meat value”, insignificantly different from a deer, not “life value”….

Update: For those who subscribe to Biblical references, consider that in Exodus 21:22 an arbitrary –including Zero!– penalty can be assessed if a miscarriage is caused to happen. Where is “intrinsic value of human life” in that?

Also, note that valuations can be changed as situations/circumstances change. Think about the low value suddenly assigned to adult human males in any emergency that causes them to declare, “Save the women and children first!” If all humans had “intrinsic value”, they should have equal intrinsic value. Intrinsic properties (like the hardness of a diamond) DON’T change with time, and every adult human once had the intrinsic value of a child (if any!). Therefore, “drawing lots” would be an entirely fair way to decide which humans to save in an emergency, right? OR, the “negative” has been proved! –in this case the claim that humans have intrinsic value is proved FALSE; human societies are not actually based on that claim, because ALL human societies that survived over the long term have assigned higher values to women and children, than to men. (update ends)

6. “Each human life is unique.” IRRELEVANT, because the uniqueness of perhaps 50% of all human conceptions does not keep them from dying of perfectly Natural causes, before birth.

ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/su96/Feature/Feature-The_Facts_of_Life

While it might then be argued that that fact merely makes the other 50% even more precious, it can equally be argued that it is extremely easy for most sexually active adults to make more conceptions, each one just as unique. One result is, every time some employer says, “There’s plenty more where you came from!”, the individual uniqueness of even an adult human can easily be totally ignored. Which means that human uniqueness can also be ignored before birth, as happens whenever a woman seeks an abortion. (For another variation on “human life” arguments against abortion, see #120.)

7. “Raping women into pregnancy, or tricking them into pregnancy, and then running away to continue to ‘sow wild oats’ far and wide, leaving lots of women with the task of raising offspring that carry the valuable and special and unique genes of the perpetrators, is a reason for said perpetrators to oppose abortion.” BAD DATA, because as previously shown, concepts such as “specialness” and “value” and “unique” were examined and found wanting.

The present anti-abortion argument might be considered more evidence for why those concepts are inadequate reasons upon which to base an argument –they are based on opinion, not fact. But there is more material to cover here, than just that.

While never seen in formal Abortion Debates, the present argument does exist “in the wild”, mostly in pornographic literature. Perhaps some male abortion opponents actually (and very silently!) do agree with it. Certainly it is known that many women have indeed suffered from men who ran away after tricking them into becoming pregnant, and it is also known a significant percentage of men are willing to commit rape if they thought they could get away with it:

uic.edu/depts/owa/sa_rape_support

Next, it is also widely known that pregnancy can be one of the consequences of rape. While rape is generally considered to be a crime of violence, that doesn’t change the basic fact that it gives the rapist an opportunity to pass genes on to the next generation.

Consider the “Law of the Jungle”, which is usually defined as, “Whatever works to promote survival is acceptable.” It could also be simplified a bit, into “Might makes right” –provided the definition of “might” is broadened to include such things as “mental might” and “trickery might” and so on, not just/only “physical might”. (For another variation of the overall situation, see the last paragraph of #107.17.)

Meanwhile, there is also a concept known as the “selfish gene”:

edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06

According to that concept, the only purpose of human life is to pass genes on to future generations, and almost nothing else matters at all (well, survival, from zygote to breeding adult, is kind of important, too).

From the preceding information it may be possible to deduce that, since rape has long been a successful tactic for passing human genes on, there could be an actual gene-based tendency, predilection, or influence, toward committing rape –and also for accepting rape, else there would never have arisen the ancient maxim, “If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

scottlondon.com/interviews/eisler

Basically, per the Law of the Jungle, whatever works, for selfish genes to survive and to pass themselves on to the next generation, is acceptable to Nature. Well, Evolutionarily speaking, it is known that because sex is pleasurable it increases the chance that sexual activities will occur, and consequently reproduction can likewise have an increased chance of happening –passing on the genes that make sex pleasurable.

Logically, as indicated above, it makes sense that the success of rape as a reproductive tactic could be associated with certain genes that increase the chance that rape activities will occur, so that reproduction can likewise have an increased chance of happening. Equally logically, even the trick-her-and-run tactic may have some genetic influences behind it.

Modern human societies reject rape, and frown severely upon the trick-her-and-run tactic. Culprits are punished, but always only after they have at least had a chance to pass those influencing genes onto the next generation. If the human species really wants to eliminate those two reproductive tactics altogether, then the most logical way to do it is to never, ever allow either rape or trickery to be a successful reproductive tactic.

Unfortunately, that would entail two concepts that are socially repugnant, even to people who strongly support legalized abortion. First, mandatory abortions would be required, for every pregnancy preceded by rape or trickery. And second, this sort of thing falls under the general umbrella of “eugenics”.

As it happens, rape is already very often an acceptable reason, even to most opponents, for abortions to be done. Trickery might be another acceptable reason (more on this later –see #37— there is another side to this issue). And the purpose of this document is to expose the flaws in all anti-abortion arguments, not to actually promote abortion.

8. “Personhood obviously begins at conception because, if you consider the question, ‘When did your life begin?’, then where would you be if it had been aborted?” BAD DATA, again –that is, this argument fails because it includes a faulty premise about “life”, and confuses it with “personhood”.

First, there are different types of “life”. There is biological life, of course, but one day in the not-distant future there could be machine-life, too. Then there is the phrase “get a life!” which refers to something else altogether. And here is a cartoon presenting yet-another definition:

abortion.procon.org/view.resource

There are other and similarly-facetious definitions, of course, which need not be mentioned here.

The question “When did your life begin?” brings up the concept of “I”, an entity who might offer an answer to that question. So, when does an “I” begin? What exactly is an “I”? Consider these concepts: “body”, “mind”, “spirit”, “ego”, “superego”, and “id”. Some of those items may overlap in meaning, but the average walking human is often claimed to be associated with all those concepts, related to “I”.

Let us examine some of them more closely. In recent years it was discovered that the average “physical human body” is actually composed of something like 9% human cells and 90% bacterial cells. They mostly co-exist symbiotically, needing each other to survive, as a sort-of overall “society of organisms”, or even an “ecosystem”.

Scientific American: The Ultimate Social Network.pdf

The human-cell portion of that ecosystem begins to exist at conception; it is certainly a living organism. The womb is a fairly sterile environment, so this part of the overall (future) body grows alone, until birth. After birth, through such agencies as simple exposure to the real-world environment, and certain key things like mother’s milk, the next phase begins, of a physical human life. It starts entering into symbiosis with essential bacteria, becoming a full ecosystem of mutually beneficial organisms. After the process completes, the extremely small bacterial cells will outnumber the large human cells by about ten to one.

Abortion opponents may now have a dilemma, even without examining other aspects of a “human life”. Did it really begin at conception, if such a crucial-for-its-existence part of it, 90% of its cells, even though none of them are human(!), don’t get involved until after birth (and when did that 90% begin to exist, anyhow?)???

Then there is “twinning”, which poses an additional problem. The details of how twinning happens were discovered in the 20th Century, and, basically, a few days after conception, a single human organism might split to become identical twins –or even identical triplets.

Wonderquest/TwinsTrigger

Well, since identical twins/triplets simply don’t physically exist as individuals until days after conception, exactly when should it be claimed that “life” began for just one of them?

A completely new factor, in the description of “human life”, was discovered a couple decades ago. An extremely relevant video documentary about this is presented at intervals on the “Discovery Health Channel”, titled, “I Am My Own Twin” (and sometimes appears elsewhere under the name “The Twin Inside Me”).

It turns out that when fraternal twins are conceived (two completely separate egg-fertilizations), the resulting organisms don’t always stay separate. It is possible for them to merge together, to “jointly as a team” construct a single overall and often fairly ordinary-looking human body. The brain might be constructed by one member of the team; the heart might be constructed by the other member of the team. And so on.

This process is called “chimerism”, and it is basically just another variation on the theme of a “society of organisms”. The relevant fact here is, the merging of the two original organisms occurs several days after conception, much like the formation of identical twins/triplets. When exactly do we say that this chimeric human life began? The two conceptions might have occurred hours apart!

Moving on, let’s examine another concept. The human mind develops differently from the body, and it is our minds that have allowed us to become the top predator of this planet, to an extent never equaled by any prior species here. Not only do we consume a vast variety of other animal species, from bugs to whales, we also consume mountains and forests and rivers! For many who support abortion rights, the human mind is what qualifies us as persons; the body is just a “vehicle” for the mind (and your eyes are equivalent to twin windshields of that vehicle, through which you see stuff). The mind is certainly more closely associated than the body, with the concept of “I”, since it is the mind that must construct the answer to “When did your life begin?”.

Well, when does that “I” begin to exist? This question now presents a dilemma to abortion-rights supporters, since it doesn’t seem to have an exact answer, partly because some things are still unknown, about the full definition of what an “I” is. It is claimed that basic brain activity begins in an unborn human at about 6-8 weeks after conception; this activity is associated with low-level stuff like the heartbeat, and little else. Some higher-level brain activities may begin about 22-24 weeks. Or does it really happen that way?

tigtogblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/fetal-brain-development-myths-and

Well, regardless, the overall type and magnitude of those brain activities are easily exceeded by many ordinary animals. If we were to declare that an unborn human is a person because of that level of brain activity, then animals like frogs and rabbits should be declared to be persons, too. Maybe even certain insects would qualify, such as an adult praying mantis. (Have you ever looked closely into the non-faceted eyes of one? That bug is aware!)

The fact is, a human typically does not begin to exceed most ordinary animals in terms of brain activity until about a year after birth. The “I” grows so smoothly from such a minimal start that nobody knows how to specify what its most relevant “beginning” really is.

One thing that might offer a clue involves not just “awareness” but “self-awareness”. If we choose to expect that the “I” capable of answering the “when did your life begin?” Question must be self-aware, then we have an actual Test for detecting self-awareness. This test is commonly known as the “mirror test” or “rouge test”, and the evidence indicates that humans do not acquire the ability to pass that test until about 18 months after birth, well beyond any consideration of an association of a self-aware “I” with an unborn human!

Update: Another thing that might offer a clue involves the learning of language and other things exhibited by persons (see #10 for more details than will be presented here). Language (and also mathematical proofs) requires an ability to creatively manipulate abstractions. This is an aspect of human brain development that is not automatic, and only happens well after birth (like the continued growth of the cerebral cortex happens regardless of the environment in which a human is raised, so long as that human survives). Furthermore, a particular type of Nurturing is required, for that particular brain-development to happen. That means it is fundamentally independent of the overall process of continuous growth of a human’s body, which began at conception. And no “I” can express an answer to the “When did you begin to exist?” question, without being able to creatively manipulate abstractions. (Update ends.)

Finally, about the “spirit”. There are different definitions for that, just as there are different meanings for “life”. Here the “soul” definition will be used; this document is not going to shy away from Religious concepts. That’s because even those concepts don’t lead to valid logical self-consistent arguments against abortion; those concepts are mostly used for nothing more than illogical claims.

Update: Since this was originally posted, it has become apparent that more than one definition of “soul” is used by different abortion opponents, and it happens that one of those definitions has been disproved by Science. For thousands of years it was thought that living matter was somehow fundamentally different from non-living matter. Souls were associated with a kind of “life force” that kept living things alive. This notion is called “vitalism”. However, in 1828 chemists working with purely inorganic matter managed to synthesize a particular compound, urea, that was only previously known to be produced by living things. Since then, chemists have shown that every organic compound in any living thing can be synthesized by means independent of living things. A living thing may be much more complicated than, say, a battery-powered watch, but it is exactly equivalent in the sense of NOT needing any special “life force” to function. Plain ordinary chemical reactions suffice quite nicely. Anyone promoting “vitalism” these days is basically deluded or lying. So, the type of soul that will be referenced here is the type described in such classic works as Dante’s “The Divine Comedy“. (Update ends.)

Well, here’s some actual self-consistent logic, based on at least one actual fact. Anything that can begin to exist as a result of some purely physical process can also be destroyed by some other purely physical process. Meanwhile, souls are supposed to be immortal, immune to physical destruction. Logically, this means it is impossible for a soul to exist as a physical thing, and it cannot begin to exist as a result of some purely physical event, such as a human egg-fertilization/conception. It means that if a soul is to begin to exist, whenever that might be, some sort of non-physical process is required, such as an Act of God.

It is likely that abortion opponents who base their arguments on Religion won’t have a problem with that. However, this next thing is rather different. The Law of Cause and Effect is mostly in charge of the day-to-day workings of the physical Universe. Not God.

miltontimmons.com/ChruchesVsLightningRod

Science has discovered that, regardless of whether or not God exists, and regardless of whether or not the Universe was Created, the way the Universe works does not require God to be behind the scenes, consciously manipulating events. Review this previously presented link:

physique. … /Bell/references/Aspect_Nature.pdf

Wired.com … bells-theorem

Because the Law of Cause and Effect exists, God can Rest, letting that Law do all the boring work in the Universe, such as throwing most lighting bolts from one cloudy part of the sky to another cloudy part of the sky, hundreds of times a day on trillions of planets for billions of years.

However, note that that discovery does not prevent God from deliberately doing something-or-other to the Universe on occasion; all the discovery really means is that, from God’s perspective, the Universe is much like a stage play (Shakespeare was right!), with lots of total randomness built into it to make it interesting (mostly via the Free Wills of intelligent beings), and God could just sit back and enjoy the show, if that was all God wanted to do. (And if God decides to throw some equivalent of a water balloon at the stage, giving some planet a Flood, well, by Religions Definition, God has the power to do that, and Science so far can’t say anything about it except “So far that hasn’t happened here“.)

The preceding means that no ordinary human conception requires God to be involved. God might or might not choose to be involved, for example to Cause the Start of Something That Yields a Virgin Birth. However, just because some Religion might claim that God is always involved, for the specific purpose of creating souls at conception, that doesn’t mean that Religion is correct –or even has any real idea of what it is talking about!

Thus, because of the Law of Cause and Effect, DNA is entirely in charge of the process of conception, and also for the later growth process of the resulting “zygote”, not God. And that fact wasn’t known to humans until the 20th Century, well after various Religions had arbitrarily claimed God creates souls at conception, when they also thought God had to be involved to make a conception happen in the first place –but God, of course, knew the real facts, regarding the Law of Cause and Effect, all along.

It is understandable that Religions made that claim about souls, to explain various then-unknown things, such as the physical activity of an unborn human in a womb (which turns out to have the Evolution-based purely instinctive purpose of encouraging bones to strengthen in a reduced-gravity environment; ask any astronaut).

Previously, centuries earlier, Religions had made other claims (“The Earth is at the center of Creation”; “God is directly influencing most day-to-day events”) to similarly explain various other unknown things.

However, when Science proves that such claims are wrong, or unnecessary, then Religions need to stop spouting nonsense. All they do is look stupid, and lose devout membership. They were definitely wrong about the Earth and day-to-day events such as lightning, and because Religions refused to admit it for a long time, they were also proved stupid, and they did indeed lose a lot of devout membership.

Meanwhile, Religions claim that the soul is the source of Free Will for a human, that it is the most important aspect of a person, and is intimately associated with the concept of “I”. This is the primary reason why, by claiming that unborn humans have souls, Religions conclude that unborn humans also qualify as persons.

On the other hand, the conclusion has a weakness. What if it can be shown that the idea, of unborn humans having souls, makes no sense? Why should the claim be believed, then? And why should unborn humans be called persons, then?

So let’s start with DNA and the Law of Cause and Effect, which are in charge of growth in a womb –what does an unborn human need Free Will for? The claim (and, logically, the conclusion) goes against fact!

Then there is that other fact, previously mentioned (#6), about 50% of conceptions failing to survive until birth –and God most certainly knows that. Furthermore, God has direct access to the DNA, and can “read” the genetic code, and will know exactly which zygotes will die from fatally flawed code. Religions claim God is smart, so why would a smart God make souls for known-to-be-doomed zygotes (what do they need souls for)? A better question might be, why are Religions so stupid as to make claims that are so obviously inconsistent with each other, that God is smart, but makes souls as automatically as a mindless machine, just because human conceptions occur?!? Far more likely is the probability that human preachers invented the claim out of sheer prejudiced egotism.

Next, recall the “twinning” problem. Imagine God creating a soul for a zygote at conception, but a few days later the organism splits into triplets. Since souls are immune to merely physical events, this means only one of the three will have a soul, that God has to “come back” to the scene to create two more souls. On the other hand, God is supposed to be smart and knowledgeable. If God knows in advance that there will be triplets–or even that there might be triplets– then isn’t the smartest thing to do is simply wait for the splitting to happen, before making any of the three souls? Yet this violates the claim that God creates souls at conception! But so what? Religions have been wrong about their claims, before!

And what about those “chimera” humans? They each start with two conceptions, and days later two human organisms merge to work together as a single team/organism, in just one overall human body, without death happening to either original organism –so chimera-humans should have two souls, right? Unless Religion is wrong again, and a smart God doesn’t always create souls at conception, but waits until a better time.

Finally, think about this: If a body is a vehicle for a soul, well, when building an automobile, even we humans are smart enough to not install a driver before the vehicle is ready to be driven –and God is supposed to be lots smarter than us!

There are still other reasons (to be presented later, in #23, #27, and #29) why it would be dumb for God to do what Religions illogically claim, regarding making souls at conception (the “vehicle” argument isn’t the only one why God might wait the whole time until birth).

In the end, regarding the concept of “I”, when good data such as scientific facts are considered, or when actually-self-consistent Religious claims are thoroughly evaluated, perhaps the most appropriate/relevant word is “gestalt”. If the living “I”, a person, is more than the sum of its parts, then it can’t begin to exist until all the crucial parts are together. And that is why this anti-abortion argument fails; just because the human-DNA part begins to exist at conception, it isn’t more important than the other parts added later, from things having absolutely nothing to do with growth in the womb.

9. “Unborn humans are persons, generically.” FALSE. For proof, just imagine a flying saucer landing in front of you, and an extraterrestrial non-human alien entity emerging and politely asking you for directions to, say the Alpha Centauri star system. You might not know the answer to that question, but would the alien qualify as a person? If so, why? Because whatever generic characteristics that particular non-human possesses, that lets you identify it as a person and not as an unusual type of animal, unborn humans don’t have those characteristics. Measurably animal-level are the minds they do have!

Update: The first crack has formed in the parochial and prejudiced association of “human” with “person”. The utter collapse of that definition is inevitable, just a matter of time. Also, see #100 for an extension of this anti-abortion argument and refutation. More, consider that the existence Abigail and Brittany Hensel prove that “human” can equal two persons, while the existence of a hydatidiform mole proves that “human” can equal zero persons. It should be most extremely obvious that abortion opponents are just plain wrong about that equating! (Update ends.)

Regarding those small “growing” electronic machines previously mentioned (#1), the thought-experiment involving them seeks to match their development with the way humans develop. So, even after nine months of parts-acquisitions, these machines would also be merely animal-level in their mental abilities. Not persons, yet. Anyone who has no problem with that, but does have a problem with equating unborn humans to mere animals, is simply exhibiting prejudice.

10. “Personhood is an innate characteristic of the human species; therefore unborn humans are persons.” FALSE. The statement requires supporting evidence which is what, exactly? The fact that some humans exhibit personhood! This logic may appear circular, but it really does matter what order statements are made. So:

A. Traits of personhood are defined.

B. Some humans are observed to exhibit those traits.

C. It is now claimed that personhood is a species-wide characteristic, on the basis of that evidence. If NO humans exhibited traits of personhood, then humans cannot be claimed to possess that characteristic.

D. All humans must now be declared persons, since that characteristic has been claimed to exist species-wide.

HOWEVER:

A. Traits of serial killers are defined.

B. Some humans are observed to exhibit those traits.

C. It is now claimed that being serial killers is a species-wide characteristic, on the basis of that evidence. If NO humans exhibited traits of serial killers, then humans cannot be claimed to possess that characteristic.

D. All humans must now be declared serial killers, since that characteristic has been claimed to exist species-wide.

ABSURD! In both cases, step C is illogical. And there is no other way to reach step D from step B. The net result is that not all humans can automatically be called serial killers, and not all humans can automatically be called persons.

Update: There actually exists proof that personhood is not an innate characteristic of humans (an unusual thing; it is normally very difficult to “prove a negative”). The proof is as simple as the existence of so-called “feral children“. Basically, there is a sort of “window of opportunity”, during the growth of the human brain, in which it becomes possible to learn things such that certain important unique characteristics of personhood result (like the ability to creatively manipulate abstractions). If those things are not learned, then the result is a human that is just a clever animal, like an octopus or the average gorilla is a clever animal but not a person. Logically, if personhood was actually an innate characteristic of humans, it would be impossible for feral children to exist!

Furthermore(!), we know that personhood is actually an acquired characteristic. This was proved by Koko the Gorilla, who happened to have been raised from infancy by humans, in very much the same way that human children are raised. The key datum is, gorillas are not considered to “innately” possess personhood. Nevertheless, Koko acquired as much personhood as the average human toddler exhibits (only reasonable, since she has about the same amount of brain as a human toddler). So, basically, the normal way in which humans are raised allows them to acquire personhood, just like happened with Koko. It happens so consistently that the mistaken belief has appeared, regarding “innate personhood”. However, young humans that “miss out” on that normal human raising, much like all other gorillas than Koko, simply become “feral”, clever animals like gorillas. (Update ends.)

Finally, is personhood an innate characteristic of mere electronic machinery, even it if is “growing” machinery that we know can one day achieve person-class mentality? Anyone who says “no” to that question, but also says “yes” for the equivalent question about an unborn human (biological machinery), is simply exhibiting prejudice.

11. “An unborn human is a person because there is no way to determine that it is not a person.” FALSE. The key to proving it involves focusing on the characteristics that non-humans must possess to qualify as persons, and not as mere animals. It would be nice, after all, in the distant future, to avoid misidentifying strange-looking intelligent beings Out There Among The Stars.

For example, just one of the many characteristics of persons is an ability to identify self from “outside” self. While it is not the best thing to test, for reasons that will be obvious, it is an easy test for any organism equipped with a decently working vision system. Basically, many ordinary animals cannot recognize themselves in a mirror (they act like they think it is some other animal that they see, behind glass). Meanwhile, adults of some highly intelligent animal species, such as the chimpanzee, elephant, dolphin, and octopus, are very able to recognize themselves in a mirror. Most humans can also, of course –except that very young humans cannot.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouge_test

Their brains haven’t grown the capacity for self-recognition, even six months after birth. Logically, this means that unborn humans, with even-less-developed brains, don’t have that capacity, either. Similarly, for any/all other species-independent characteristics of personhood that can be tested, very young humans fail to pass those tests, and so less-developed unborn humans will obviously fail them, also. And that small “growing” electronic machine will also fail this test after only a year of parts-acquisition, per the conditions of the thought-experiment.

Update: This anti-abortion argument and its refutation are greatly extended in #100. (Update ends.)

12. “Personhood is associated with the human body, and since unborn humans have human bodies, they are persons.” FALSE, the proof beginning by imagining a future scenario in which certain medical technologies, now under development, are perfected. The primary relevant technology is called “regeneration”; they are working on ways to encourage a human body that has lost a limb in an accident to grow a new one.

phys.org/news187879295

So let us imagine a horrible accident in which someone literally loses his head (decapitation), but rescue workers are able to arrive before brain-death occurs. Well, the head is on the floor over here, and the body is on the floor over there. If we put the body on life-support until it can go into a regeneration vat, it will eventually be able to grow a new head. If we put the head on life-support until it can go into the vat, it will eventually be able to grow a new body. So, which thing should the rescuers save, to save the person? Per the known Scientific Facts, personhood is associated with minds, not bodies, and the mind of a human person is always associated with the brain, which is in the head.

Note that this also explains why, for various humans who are on full medical artificial life-support, and have been verified to be “brain dead”, the “plug” is allowed to be pulled. In those cases, the persons are dead, even if the bodies survive. Also, consider that the existence Abigail and Brittany Hensel prove that “human” can equal two persons, while the existence of a hydatidiform mole proves that “human” can equal zero persons. Meanwhile, measurably animal-level are the minds that unborn humans have!

Likewise, the artificial-intelligence mind of that small “growing” electronic machine is not in the parts of its body that move about and make acquisitions and process that stuff to do such things as generate energy; its mind is in its electronic brain, of course.

13. “Abortion might kill an Einstein.” UNBALANCED, since abortion might kill a Hitler. The two possibilities cancel each other out, leaving this argument Neutral, with respect to the Overall Abortion Debate. More, it hints how any other anti-abortion argument based on “human potential” is also flawed.

14. “Human minds are special, so when brain activity begins, that is when personhood begins.” PARTLY IRRELEVANT AND PARTLY FALSE. The special-ness of a human mind, such as might be exhibited by the average human walking about, is not something possessed by an unborn human. The amount and type of brain activity it has, even just before birth, is purely animal-level, nothing more. And, how special they might become after birth is a matter of “potential”, a flawed concept. (Also, see the “update” section of #10)

This is another reason why that small “growing” electronic machine keeps getting mentioned (#1). Until it has acquired enough electronic brainpower to qualify as a person, hardly any technology-geeks on Earth would hesitate if told they could each have one of those machines, to disassemble for lots of cool parts, thereby “killing” it. Because it was just an animal-level machine. So, once again it is prejudice that gets exhibited whenever someone complains about killing an equally animal-level human, which has biological machinery instead of electronic machinery.

15. “Unborn humans have capacities that ordinary animals lack.” FALSE, because this is like saying half-dollar coins can be stuffed into a coin-roll constructed to hold dimes. That smaller coin-roll has a strictly limited capacity, and so do unborn humans. The concept of “capacity” is directly related to something that exists right now. An unborn human does not “right now” possess the capacity to be a person-class being. Of course, as time passes, the capacities of unborn humans can grow –especially after birth– to indeed exceed the capacities of ordinary animals. So we are actually talking about “potential”, not “capacity”. Therefore the “as time passes” thing is irrelevant to the Overall Abortion Debate (because the humans being aborted do NOT exceed ordinary-animal capacities); see above, regarding “human potential” and “human minds”. (NOTE: there are “stronger” versions of this anti-abortion argument that will have their faults exposed later, in #28 and #59. Also, for a more detailed explanation about “capacity”, see #114.35)

16. “Unborn humans are equivalent to ordinary humans who might be asleep or in a coma, because eventually they can wake up and act like persons.” FALSE. The lie here is to equate “potential” abilities with “actual” abilities. That is, the average sleeping or comatose human has certain already-existing abilities that simply aren’t getting used during sleep/coma. (Does a professional boxer become a ex-boxer just by taking a nap? If during sleep abilities can be claimed to only potentially exist, then it should be impossible to ever exercise the ability to wake up! Also see #107.43) The unborn human only has potential ability; it utterly lacks actual person-class abilities, and won’t have them until it grows enough brain-power to accommodate those abilities.

Now consider that in the distant-enough future an average individual person will probably experience death. At that time, then, the person will exhibit the traits of a corpse. Well, if we can claim an unborn human should be treated as a person now because in the future it will exhibit the traits of a person, then why shouldn’t all abortion opponents be treated as corpses right now, because in the far-enough future they will all exhibit the traits of corpses? Since there’s too many of them to embalm all at once, the simplest thing to do is just round them up and — only because their own logic declares them to be equivalent of dead — bury them in mass graves just as they are!

Well, let us first kindly give them a chance to recant that idiotic logic, before any such burials occur…. Meanwhile, measurably animal-level are the minds that all unborn humans currently have!

Update: Certains aspects of the preceding, and other points made throughout this document, appear to have been independently stated in this linked article.

For more about comparing coma victims with unborn humans, see the Update section of #112.

There is an alternate way of stating the claim that abilities might as well not exist during sleep or coma (called “the episodic problem”), which puts even more focus on the using of the ability. But the Fact is, the ability to use an ability is not as important as the having of the ability that might or might not get used.

As an analogy, let’s consider a time, perhaps a thousand years ago, when the usual way to decide whether or not someone had died was to note that breathing had stopped. (They didn’t switch to heartbeat-stopping as an indicator until much more recently.) So, in those days, all you had to do, to pretend you were dead, was hold your breath.

By the “coma criteria”, the lack of exhibiting a function means that the function doesn’t exist. Therefore, in that past time, if an abortion opponent encountered some guy holding his breath, the abortion opponent would pronounce him to be dead. And, after the guy decides to start breathing again, the abortion opponent gets to look as foolish as the abortion opponent’s “coma criteria”.

Moving forward to the era in which heartbeats were tied to life, the abortion opponent would think that by encountering someone whose heart had stopped beating, then that person was dead. Nevertheless, the abortion opponent can still be revealed as foolish. Our “victim” might have a secret trusty partner helping him do the fooling (and who would have to know how to re-start a heartbeat before brain-death occurs).

–and at least one person could have fooled the abortion opponent all by himself, and (this linked page isn’t clear about it) might even have been able to fool a modern brain-wave test for death. (Update ends.)

17. “Unborn humans are human beings.” PROPAGANDA, a distortion and/or mis-use of the language. The word “being” has a number of definitions, one of which relates to “existence”. So, in that sense, because an unborn human exists, it would qualify as a “human being”. However, likewise so would a radish plant qualify as a “radish being” (and a rock would qualify as a “rock being”). But since that latter phrase is not normally used in casual conversations, it logically follows that in those conversations, which so frequently include the phrase “human being”, the word “being” refers to something other than “existence”. The actual relevant definition can be inferred from other phrases that are used from time to time: “intelligent being”, “extraterrestrial being”, “alien being”. The word “being” is simply a synonym for “person”.

Since a radish plant is not a person, that is why the phrase “radish being” does not get used in ordinary conversations. Likewise, because ordinary animals are also nonpersons, that is why we don’t use phrases like “rabbit being” or “bacterium being” in typical conversations. So, if an abortion opponent wants to claim that the word “being” only means “exists” in the phrase “human being”, then that abortion opponent should be willing to prove it by always using “being” when talking about rocks and trees and houses and roads and …. Otherwise, the propaganda becomes utterly obvious; abortion opponents are claiming that an unborn human qualifies as a person, without offering any evidence other than the label “being”. Meanwhile, measurably animal-level are the minds that unborn humans do have! (How often do you encounter the phrase “fetus being”?)

Update: See #100 for a significant extension of this anti-abortion argument and refutation –and especially see the first “update” there. (Update ends.)

Meanwhile, True Artificial Intelligences, when they eventually begin to exist, will qualify as “machine beings”, even though their offspring, those small “growing” electronic machines previously mentioned (#1), won’t qualify as persons until after many months of acquiring parts. Abortion opponents had better start getting used to the concept of “machine beings”!

18. “Any uncertainty regarding the personhood of an unborn human means that we should err on the side of assuming that it has it.” WHAT UNCERTAINTY? Just because abortion opponents try to create uncertainty about personhood, by invoking prejudice, or spouting bad data and propaganda, that doesn’t make their anti-abortion arguments valid –not to the slightest degree.

19. (Edited): “Abortion is immoral.” IRRELEVANT, because morals are provably arbitrary. Some cultures consider eating pork to be immoral, while others don’t. Some say nudity is immoral; others say it is “often seen and seldom noticed”. Likewise, some cultures consider abortion to be immoral, while others don’t. The unsupported opinions of one group do not deserve to be arbitrarily forced upon other groups, else all groups might end up with something truly ridiculous, perhaps “The middle toe must be removed from each foot, because its existence is immoral”. Hopefully, that statement reveals the most fundamental thing about “morals”, which is that, in each culture, they were imposed “by fiat” without any accompanying explanation or logical foundation –it was largely “follow these rules or be killed”. But that is actually a recipe for slavery to Authority, not morality! Still, the main point is that because morals were imposed by fiat upon culture after culture, without an accompanying explanation or logical foundation, that is what makes them arbitrary.

Now think about how many –or how few– abortion opponents will consider it immoral to dismantle one of those small “growing” electronic machines previously mentioned (#1). It may be appropriate to once again use the word “prejudice”.

20. “Facts that disqualify unborn humans from personhood also disqualify newborns from personhood, and therefore infanticide should be moral.” IRRELEVANT, for at least two reasons. First, it has nothing to do with providing a reason to prohibit the abortion of unborn humans, all of which fail to qualify as persons.

Second, “morals” are decided by cultures, for reasons that those cultures find acceptable. So, in ancient Rome it was perfectly normal/moral for physically deformed newborns to be allowed to die of exposure/neglect –and this didn’t appreciably affect the ability of the Romans to conquer every place they could reach. In our current American culture, personhood is a legal definition, and encompasses such things as business corporations, not just humans. That legal system currently grants legal personhood to newborn humans, in ignorance of the scientific facts of the matter.

That ignorance is probably excusable, since the Laws were written before all the relevant facts were discovered. Now it would certainly be possible to adjust the Law, one way or the other. It could be adjusted to become aligned with the scientific facts, to make infanticide of very young infants generally legal –but extremely few in the nation seek to do that. Or, the Law could be adjusted to include unborn humans in the definition of “person”, and certainly very many in the nation seek to do that.

However, that latter goal is not an intelligent thing to do, since it outright-denies the scientific facts about personhood (see #12 for an example of the evidence). Indeed, there are interesting Questions, “How is personhood, which includes intelligent behavior as one of its generic characteristics, being exhibited by abortion opponents who stupidly deny scientific facts?” and “Are they really as equivalent-to-dead as their own logic indicates?”

Update: It should be noted that if the Science indicates that infanticide might be allowable, then it most certainly also indicates that very-late-term abortions should also be allowable. So, think about that for a moment. Today we have technologies that let us inspect the unborn, and those technologies are only going to improve with time. Logically, if some sort of physical defect could be used as an excuse for infanticide, that defect could be detected before birth, and a late-term abortion could be performed instead.

Next, if there was an easing of the rules allowing adoptions, then just about any post-natal rationale for infanticide could instead be turned into a rationale for letting the infant be adopted. Between the two notions, there would be very little reason for anyone to ever want to commit infanticide –and so there is no need to change the Law to allow it.

Finally, consider those post-natal humans which have developmental problems such that they exhibit a severe mental handicap. Per the Objective Generic Scientific Data, they can no more qualify as “persons” than any unborn human or ordinary animal, even though the Law arbitrarily grants person status to all post-natal humans. It can be years after birth before severe mental handicaps become notice-able, such that the word “infanticide” could not possibly apply if they were killed. Note that one known human might have needed a full century to develop the characteristics that most humans do in about three years (but nobody knows for sure). In general, though, the main fact regarding such seriously handicapped humans is that they are unable to care for themselves –if they are not pampered like pets, they will die. It might now be considered “interesting” that pets do have certain Legal protections…for more about this, see #103. (Update ends.)

21. “The Biblical Sixth Commandment forbids murder, and thereby also forbids abortion.” FALSE –not the first part, but the second. Murder involves the killing of a person, and unborn humans don’t qualify as persons. (Meanwhile, it might indeed be a violation of that Commandment, murder, to kill a frightful-looking non-human that was merely walking down the ramp of a just-landed flying saucer.)

Therefore, abortion, which kills an unborn human non-being/non-person, is exactly equivalent to killing any other type of ordinary non-being/non-person animal. Any objection based on the human-ness of the unborn is strictly and purely worthless/stupid selfish egotistical prejudice, on the part of the objector. And this time it wasn’t even necessary to mention the word “machine”!

22. “Children are a gift from God.” GENERALLY FALSE. The physical Universe operates primarily under the Law of Cause and Effect. God is not part of its ordinary day-to-day operation, as proved by the invention of the lightning rod:

miltontimmons.com/ChruchesVsLightningRod

Likewise, children are usually another possible-but-uncertain result of the Law of Cause and Effect (described in more detail later; see #36); God is no more necessary than a petri dish, for sperm to fertilize egg.

Now, this is not to say that God never even occasionally Acts to give someone the gift of a child. However, since God isn’t an idiot, it is extremely unlikely that anyone being given that direct-from-God gift will be someone who afterward would seek an abortion, and, besides, in a classic story, wasn’t the Virgin Mary specifically asked for permission, before she became pregnant?

Nevertheless, in the vast majority of pregnancies, God is not involved in the process of conception, simply because God doesn’t need to be involved. That’s just the way the Universe works (or was Created to work, if you want to put it that way).

23. “Unborn humans are persons because God gives them souls at conception.” GOD IS NOT THAT STUPID. Some flaws in that argument have been previously presented in this document (#8); here an expansion can be done, because of additional relevant concepts introduced between there and here.

“What do zygotes with fatally flawed DNA need souls for?” has already been mentioned (#8). Something different is based on psychological studies known as “sensory deprivation experiments”:

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0003/ai_2699000310

God knows all about “sensory deprivation”, of course, and how it can cause someone to start going insane after only a week. Well, a soul locked into a new zygote is exactly in a sensory-deprivation environment, isolated and lonely, and will be unable to experience any senses for months (the sense organs have to grow, first!).

Religions knew nothing about sensory deprivation experiments when they arbitrarily Pronounced that God creates souls at conception. But since God is supposed to be smart and knowledgeable and Loving, why should anyone think that God is going to inflict that horrible thing, months of sensory deprivation, on new/innocent souls?

Update: It has been pointed out that young children appear more able to see things like “ghosts” (loose souls?) than adults. This implies that the souls of children are not so “locked up” in sensory-deprivation as the present argument would indicate. That is, if a soul became associated with a human organism at conception, it would still be able to interact with other souls. So, now imagine being in jail with communication privileges; in terms of doing some physical thing or other, the soul is still completely immobilized in a body being automatically constructed in accordance with the instructions in its DNA. How does such a situation benefit either the soul or the body? And why would God think that a new/innocent soul deserved to experience such a situation? (Update ends.)

The notion of a Loving God directly relates to the Overall Abortion Debate. Compare a woman, fully ensouled, to a just-fertilized ovum. The zygote won’t have a soul until God creates one for it. Before God exercises Free Will and creates that soul, is there any reason why God should love the zygote more than, or even as much as, the woman? Since God does not stupidly confuse “potential person” with “actual person”, the answer should be obvious.

Next, if that woman becomes pregnant, then God will know the exact probability that that woman might seek an abortion, and may just plain know, due to sheer omniscience. If we assume that God knows the woman will get an abortion, then see the logic:

A. If God gives the zygote a soul, then the abortion will be murder, and the woman can be condemned by God.

B. If God doesn’t give the zygote a soul, then the abortion will not be murder, and God has no problem with the woman.

C. Therefore, if a murderous abortion occurs, it occurs partly due God’s Choice to create a soul, while knowing an abortion would be done!

Basically, Item A violates the fundamental claim that God is Loving. That is, a Loving God is not going to create a soul for a new zygote, just so the woman can be condemned when she aborts an unwanted pregnancy!

Thus the fundamental inconsistency in Religion-based anti-abortion arguments is revealed. If God is Smart and Omniscient and Loving, then God isn’t going to be part of deliberately putting people into situations where they must be condemned.

It is now appropriate to speculate about machines having souls. In a purely secular argument, the topic wouldn’t arise; the ability for either biology or machinery to tap into the total randomness of Quantum Mechanics, to allow Free Will to exist, makes souls unnecessary, since the Religious Dogma is that the main purpose of a soul is to provide Free Will in humans, and having a soul is related to the Essence of Personhood.

Can the two notions be reconciled? Perhaps. One of the key things about Quantum Mechanics is that it is full of probabilities, and it happens that there are ways to manipulate at least some of those probabilities.

physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/47856

Suppose that a soul specializes in manipulating the probabilities associated with Quantum Mechanics. In this way a soul could send signals though certain appropriately-tiny natural biological structures in human brain cells, which are sensitive to Quantum Randomness, and thereby influence the overall actions of a human body.

Well, as it happens, in the current quest to develop True Artificial Intelligence, things that we learn about how the human brain works are being copied into electronic hardware.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network

zdnet.co.uk/news/ … /ibm-neuron-chips-mimic-brain-processing

Logically, if we specifically include Quantum-Mechanical “taps”, to allow access to total randomness, consistent with the purely secular notion of where Free Will could come from, then in theory an actual soul could use those taps in the same way it uses equivalent natural brain-cell structures. There actually wouldn’t be a reason why a True Artificial Intelligence couldn’t have a genuine God-created soul! The only question now is, “When might it be given one?…”

24. “Abortion is dangerous.” EXAGGERATION. Abortion can be very dangerous when performed by an amateur with makeshift tools in a society where it is illegal; abortion is seldom dangerous when performed by a well-educated professional with tools specially designed for the task, in a society where it is legal. Meanwhile, birth is sometimes dangerous, also, in all societies, and may even be more dangerous than abortion.

jama.jamanetwork.com/article

All pregnant women are at risk for complications.

Since the fact that birth can be dangerous doesn’t stop many many women from carrying pregnancies to term, the fact that abortion is occasionally dangerous doesn’t stop some women from seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Nor should it.

25. “Abortion encourages discrimination against handicapped unborn humans.” IRRELEVANT. Unborn humans are animal bodies with animal-class minds, as all the scientific evidence indicates, and humans have been killing defective animals for millennia. There is also an issue involving “compassion”. Lacking it are the abortion opponents, who basically say (without even realizing it), “We want this defective human body to be born, just so that, after it becomes part of a person, it can suffer a (possibly short) lifetime of terrible inconvenience.” Meanwhile, the compassionate abortion proponents basically say, “No human being should have to learn, after birth and almost before anything else, how much richer life could be, if only he or she had a fully healthy body.”

26. “Terms such as ’embryo’ and ‘fetus’ are de-humanizing.” IRRELEVANT. This document specifically avoids using those terms as much as possible, and still all anti-abortion arguments fail to withstand close scrutiny. Meanwhile, a white blood cell is exactly as fully human as a just-fertilized ovum, yet nobody mourns when hundreds of white blood cells die after a paper-cut causes minor bleeding. It takes much more than mere “human-ness” for an organism to qualify as a person! Indeed, if you want to associate souls with personhood, you can entirely exclude human-ness altogether. An extraterrestrial alien person can in theory have a soul and be most extremely non-human, after all!

27. “Unborn humans are innocent.” FALSE. Consider the crime of “manslaughter”. One need not have any intent whatsoever to commit that crime to be declared guilty of it, after the fact (provided that it was indeed a fact). Similarly, an unborn human is guilty of committing assault, at least three different ways: First, it sucks someone else’s blood like a vampire; second, it dumps toxic biowaste products into someone else’s blood –worse than a vampire!; and third, it infuses addictive drugs into someone else’s blood, like the very worst sort of drug pusher. The drugs are “HCG” and “progesterone”; the withdrawal symptoms are known as “postpartum depression”.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin

womenshealth.gov/ … /depression-pregnancy

linode.com/files/Addiction%20to%20Oestrogen%20and%20Progesterone.pdf

Update: See #98.1 for a fourth type of assault. Note that in fictitious works about vampires, just the assault of unwanted blood-sucking suffices to give vampires, full person-class-beings, a death sentence. And unborn humans are mere mindless animals! Thus in the case of unwanted blood-sucking, it doesn’t matter if an unborn human is as mindless as a typical parasite, or as mindful as a fictional vampire; the classic penalty for that action is death.

For another point of consideration, note the distinction that the Law makes between adult criminals and juvenile criminals. It is claimed that the juveniles deserve some leniency because they supposedly don’t fully understand the magnitude/extent of their crimes. Abortion opponents can be expected to expound upon that, when trying to refute this anti-abortion Refutation. Unborn humans, after all, have no understanding at all of what they are doing. They are exactly/only animals. Yet abortion opponents still claim unborn humans should be treated like persons, despite acting purely like mere animals. The Stupid Hypocrisy should be obvious, of abortion opponents. They cannot have it both ways. And, as the “vampire” perspective above shows, it doesn’t matter, after all. Either way, as persons or as mindless animals, unborn humans are guilty of horrible assaults, for which an accepted penalty is death (because abortion is legal). (Update ends.)

It should be noted that the “placenta” is the tool used by the unborn human, to commit those assaults. Remember that most women experience “morning sickness” in response to the toxic biowastes being dumped into her body, as pregnancy begins. While a woman’s body usually adapts to the assaults, abortion is the only known way to force those assaults to end quickly, when unwanted. Yes, there is an alternative to abortion, “forgiveness”, just as many more-ordinary assaults are forgiven (legal charges are not pressed). But forgiveness is always optional, not mandatory.

Note that the preceding is another reason why God is not so stupid as to put new/innocent souls into unborn humans at conception; in just a few days a soul would become guilty-by-participation of assault, starting when the zygote has passed through the “morula” stage and become a “blastocyst” that implants into a womb. God is not so stupid as to put a soul into the situation where Assault becomes part of its Record for Judgment Day, even before being born!

Note that this can also give us a clue regarding when one of those small “growing” electronic machines might be given a soul. Suppose such a machine invaded the house of an abortion opponent and dismantled all the accessible personal computers in that house for parts, so that it could continue its growth process –this document has previously mentioned “acquiring” parts ((#1)) while carefully ignoring “where”, because now is the place to do that. The abortion opponent could certainly regard such an event as a special sub-type of assault, “vandalism” (which assaults a person’s possessions). If the abortion opponent is non-prejudiced, the assault must be accepted as a necessary price for irrationally believing that an animal-class entity should be considered a person.

Meanwhile, God understands the situation, so if God isn’t going to create a soul under conditions that link it to biological assault, then God isn’t going to do it for a vandalizing machine, either. In which case, of course, the abortion opponent can destroy the soulless potential machine being, and also stop opposing abortion of equally soulless unborn humans! IF there is no prejudice involved, of course.

Finally, there is another and totally different relevant thing that can now be mentioned. Evolutionary biologists know that there are two major reproductive strategies followed by the majority of sexually-reproducing organisms in nature, called “R strategy” and “K strategy” (those are the extremes; many gradations exist between them).

bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection

Imagine an alien species as intelligent as humanity, but biologically different in that its normal reproductive event yields a thousand offspring at a time. These are quite small and are released “into the wild”, where they will forage for food, and can grow to eventually become persons –except that most of them will die in the process, eaten by other life-forms. (The notion is not far-fetched; right here on Earth the octopus is one of the smartest animals in the ocean, and it is an R-strategist, having 20,000 to 100,000 offspring before it dies.)

Humans are K-strategists; we normally have very few offspring at a time, and give them lots of nurturing and protection. But intelligent R-strategists will care very little about their offspring. Those small “growing” electronic machines previously described were deliberately introduced in terms of R-strategy reproduction, because they can be mass-manufactured by their True Artificial Intelligence “parents”.

As long as two or three biological offspring reach adulthood for each breeding pair of R-strategist adults, no matter how many thousands of their other offspring die, the species can continue to survive. And it should be obvious that the intelligent adults must accept that situation, because anything else is a recipe for an ultra-extreme overpopulation disaster.

The facts about K-strategy reproduction make it completely understandable how humans can object to killing some offspring by abortion. Caring for offspring is built-in! Nevertheless, it is usually very easy even for humans to make more –and to even make more offspring fast enough to end up with an overpopulation problem. Logically, therefore, humanity needs to learn that its natural tendencies to care for offspring can be over-done, and it is that thing, the over-doing of caring for offspring, which must be overcome. Too much of a good thing is always, always a bad thing!

28. “Personhood and right-to-life can be associated with a particular kind of organism, and one of the characteristics of that kind is the ability to actively develop itself the point of qualifying for personhood. From the moment of conception, unborn humans are that kind of entity, and therefore abortion should be forbidden.” BAD DATA, because the argument fails to specify, or to be associated with, all the relevant facts. The biggest problem with this argument is that it applies to intelligent R-strategists as well as K-strategists —and most of the offspring of person-class R-strategists must be allowed to die in the wild, to prevent an ultra-extreme overpopulation disaster.

Note this anti-abortion argument also means –if it was valid, of course– that vast numbers of those small “growing” electronic machines must be allowed to, in essence, dismantle our technological civilization while seeking parts to actively develop themselves to the point of qualifying for personhood.

In simpler terms, this anti-abortion argument fails because it assumes that “Potential must be fulfilled!”, and even tries to hide the fact that it is making that assumption, by invoking the prejudice of “right to life”. Tsk, tsk!

Updates: Review the “update” portion of #10, and think about gorillas having the potential to acquire personhood. There is no outcry regarding insisting that their potential must be fulfilled, and so prejudice is again being exhibited by abortion opponents.

It might be noted that just because most offspring of R-strategists must die, that does not really prove the concept flawed, the concept upon which this segment’s anti-abortion argument is based. For more on a fundamental conceptual flaw, see #114.54. (Updates end.)

29. “There is no significant difference between an unborn human just prior to birth, and a newborn human.” FALSE. The “modus operandi” by which an unborn human survives, up until the moment the umbilical cord is cut, involves committing the assaults described previously (#27). It purely selfishly takes resources. After birth, its “modus operandi” for survival becomes utterly different. It is unable to take anything other than breaths of air; it can only survive over the long term by accepting gifts. This typically includes the gift of being offered a teat full of milk; a newborn has to be carried to the teat, because it is physically unable to go there by itself.

Update: The particular anti-abortion argument being debunked here is sometimes associated with more details, than just the bald claim that a nearly-born human is essentially the same as a recently-born human. The key datum, to abortion opponents, is the viability of preemies. If the umbilical cord is cut (see #44) after viability, the organism dies by drowning in amniotic fluid, and it doesn’t matter if it is a preemie or fullterm unborn human. An adult can drown, too, if he was scuba diving and his air hose was cut. The placenta (along with the umbilical cord) is viewed as being no more than a temporary lifeline, natural instead of artificial, for the developing human.

Well, simply because some preemies do survive, it logically follows that the average the nearly-born human is probably viable, and could probably survive if removed from the womb at the same time the umbilical cord was cut. (If a still-birth would have happened, then the unborn human likely did not actually qualify as “viable”.)

Note: In this part of this refutation, technological assistance for helping preemies to survive is being deliberately excluded. We’ll get back to that later, but most folks in the Overall Abortion Debate know full well that such assistance affects the definition of “viable” (see #42).

Anyway, this more-detailed anti-abortion argument appears to be confusing “potential” with “actual”. The unborn human is actually using its placenta. Near the end of a normal gestation, it can potentially survive without it. But it does not actually survive without it until birth. Preemies basically put the theory, that they are potentially able to survive without a placenta, To The Test.

So, a Question: If most unborn humans are potentially able to survive without a placenta after, say 8-1/2 months of gestation, why aren’t most humans born after 8-1/2 months, instead of after 9? The most reasonable answer appears to be: “They are not ready yet; they have significantly greater odds of survival by waiting those 2 extra weeks.”

That is, Of preemies born at 8-1/2 months, and don’t receive technical assistance to survive, what fraction dies? There must be statistics about this, somewhere (not every country HAS the technical assistance to give to preemies).

To more clearly understand the point being developed here, suppose we deliberately induced all pregnancies to end with birth after 8 months of gestation, instead of the normal 9? We can be certain that some fraction of those newborns will die, that would not have died if they had been given that extra month of development in the womb.

That fact is not the point, though. Here: If An Abortion Opponent Thinks That At 8 Months The Unborn Is Equivalent Enough To A Newborn, For Legal Person Status, Then Why Not Deliberately Induce All Pregnancies To End At 8 Months?

That death rate is why abortion opponents wouldn’t do it. We recognize that most human gestations last 9 months because the typical unborn human needs 9 months of gestation time.

Another way to look at the situation is to consider the unborn human organism before it becomes viable. DNA tests clearly show that significant portions of the placenta are part of the overall unborn organism; it is a “vital organ“, just like the heart is a vital organ. It (along with the umbilical cord) is not the “natural temporary lifeline” that the more-detailed argument describes –at least not until the fetal portion of the overall unborn organism becomes viable. Well, we all know that different humans develop at different rates, and no one can say for sure exactly when a particular human fetus becomes viable. That’s why some die (are “still-born”) even after 9 months of gestation, to say nothing of larger numbers dying if born after 8-1/2 months or even 8 months of gestation.

Therefore, despite the more-detailed argument regarding “potential”, the actuality is more important. The typical unborn human needs its placenta, period, all the way until a typical birth after 9 months of gestation. Preemies that survive are simply lucky.

And now for “viability” and technical assistance. This is one of those “slippery slope” things. Artificial wombs are actively being researched. Currently such things only qualify as “Science Fiction”. But once perfected, technically assisted viability will begin with conception! While I’m sure abortion opponents have absolutely no problem with that, there is more to that slippery slope!

The word “potential” does not include any degree of magnitude of potential. A potential avalanche could be either tiny, or humongous. Both a zygote and a full-term fetus each have the potential to become a healthy newborn human, but the magnitudes of those potentials are not identical (especially since about 50% of zygotes, conceptions, fail to eventually become confirmed pregnancies). A key fact, though, is that neither the zygote nor the full-term fetus can fulfill its potential without help (the fetus doesn’t claw its way out of the womb; it is pushed out!).

Recognizing that fact leads us to a kind of “third option” in the Overall Abortion Debate. Abortion actively interferes with what an unborn human organism is doing. Prohibiting abortion, however, is not exactly the same thing as insisting that the unborn human receive active help. For example, the drug “RU-486” can be taken as a “morning after pill”, and it works to make the uterus unable to accept implantation by a blastocyst –the woman would be refusing to provide the help that the unborn human organism is seeking. In an alternate scenario, imagine a woman refusing to help a full-term fetus be born –she might take “muscle relaxant” drugs. Eventually the placenta would detach from the womb and the unborn human would die, because of that refusal to actively help it become born.

We may now conclude that it is very likely abortion opponents must deny that “third option”, and generally insist that help must be actively provided, for the potential of an unborn human organism to be fulfilled. And it is that conclusion that lets us understand the full Slippery Slope. See, modern stem-cell and cloning research has proved that any ordinary human body-cell that happens to contain a full set of human DNA has the potential to become a healthy newborn human. Each such cell is a living thing; all it needs is appropriate help, to fulfill its potential!

(More update:) Let’s focus on human cuticle cells, which are 100% human, alive, and routinely killed in large numbers during manicures and pedicures just for the sake of “good looks”. The human cuticle cell has the full set of DNA, just like any healthy human zygote, and many other types of cells in the human body. DNA is equivalent to computer code; different sections of the code are different programs for doing different things. So, the cuticle cell is “specialized” in the sense that it runs the section of DNA code that tells it how to behave like a cuticle cell; a muscle cell is specialized differently, running the section of DNA code that tells it how to behave like a muscle cell, and the zygote is NOT specialized, though it runs the section of code that tells it how to behave like a zygote (more on that below).

In the overall realm of biological science, stem-cell researchers (NOT to be confused with clone-researchers) are looking for how to “activate” a common cell to start running the SAME section of DNA code as a zygote –because then the activated cell will be a “totipotent stem cell”, able to become specialized as any other kind of cell, and will be extremely useful in helping human bodies heal from major damage –for example, a whole new leg could be grown, which would include bone cells, marrow cells, nerve cells, cartilage cells, tendon cells, ligament cells, muscle cells, lymph cells, skin cells, sweat-gland cells, hair-follicle cells, cuticle cells (of course!), toenail cells, and probably others as well. Each type of cell normally processes only part of the overall DNA in the cell, the code associated with its specialized purpose, but every single one of all those cells has all the DNA.

The zygote itself IS a totipotent stem cell; that’s why it is un unspecialized. As such, it is running the DNA code that tells it to divide multiple times, so that there will be plenty of cells that later can become specialized, as all the various types of cells in a whole human body.

And ANY ordinary specialized cell that contains the full set of DNA has the code for how to behave like a zygote. IT HAS THE POTENTIAL to divide many times and yield a complete human body. The potential simply needs to be activated. Do note that the activation process will begin with a command that in-essence says, “stop running that section of the DNA code, and …” –we know that an invading virus includes exactly that command, plus another command telling the cell to start running the DNA (or even RNA) code in the virus. The stem-cell researchers simply need to figure out how to tell a typical specialized cell to start running human-DNA zygote code, and anyone who is silly enough to think the researchers will never, ever succeed at that simple thing needs to think again! After they succeed, just a couple of relatively minor details will need to be addressed.

One detail involves “telomeres” and “telomerase”. The telomeres should be lengthened before telling an ordinary specialized cell to start running the DNA code of a zygote. Telomeres are naturally lengthened in the gonads as gamete cells (sperm and egg cells) are produced, but that’s not the only way it can happen –there is DNA code that can be run, to do that!.

The other detail is the fact that a zygote has a built-in food supply, making it easy to do its first few cell-divisions. The totipotent stem cell needs to be fed the materials it needs to do its first few cell-divisions. Our current experiments with “pluripotent” stem cells (can only yield a subset of the body’s cell-types) indicates that if simply placed in the body at a damaged area, it can OBTAIN the nutrients it needs to start dividing and forming the cells needed to repair the damage.

Logically, an ordinary specialized cell that has been activated to become a totipotent stem cell can also obtain nutrients (if made available to it) for its first few cell-divisions. After that, the mass of cells will be totally equivalent to a blastocyst, and if placed inside an appropriately “ready” uterus, would have a good chance of implanting and ultimately yielding a complete human body.

Well, for any abortion opponent who insists that “human life” is oh-so-important, that potential-fulfilling help must be provided, then why shouldn’t that abortion opponent be dissected into more than 30 trillion living human cells, each of which is given the help, to fulfill its potential, that the abortion opponent insists must be provided?

Will abortion opponents begin to see just how idiotic is their claim that human life matters, when millions of living human cuticle cells belonging to tens of thousands of female abortion opponents are routinely killed in beauty salons around the world every day, despite each one of those cells having all the potential of a zygote? A fundamental problem with many anti-abortion arguments is the sheer ignorance upon which those arguments are based! Ignorance is not a crime, but it causes more problems than it solves, and therefore ignorance should be cured with education whenever and where-ever possible. And that is why, when all the relevant data is considered, the Overall Abortion Debate will be won by pro-choicers. Human life is not that important!!! (Updates end.)

So, at birth the human is behaving utterly innocently, and this is the logical time for God to give it an equally-innocent soul –because God doesn’t have to do things the stupid/ignorant way, as portrayed by Religions that didn’t have all the facts (e.g., those concerning sensory deprivation or jailed uselesness, and unborn drug-pushing), when making various Pronouncements about God and soul-creation.

Meanwhile no equivalent to birth was described for those small “growing” electronic machines. One simple way to do something equivalent is, after nine months of acquiring parts, the machine displays a preprogrammed-message, “It is now time to stop foraging for parts that are outright-taken. Completion of this project will henceforth depend upon gifts being provided.”

If God was waiting for the machine to achieve a state equivalent to the innocence of a newborn, to give it a soul, that time would then have arrived.

Finally, exactly where along the development process might a member of an intelligent biological species of R-strategists be given a soul by God? Well, at some point the surviving offspring must seek out some adults, in Evolutionary terms originally because there can be more safety in a group, but now primarily in order to learn social skills and other things, such that a culture could be developed, the having of which is another hallmark of persons. It is not unreasonable that they could be given souls at about that group-joining time, no matter what their age might happen to be.

30. “In cultures that subscribe to the idea that souls can ‘reincarnate’, abortion interferes with the long-term growth of a soul.” TEMPORARILY, AT WORST, because souls are immortal. Each of them can afford to wait, for a baby to be born into a family that wants it, to reincarnate. (Keep in mind that in this Religious philosophy, God does not make souls routinely; God would only need to make souls if every soul that wanted to reincarnate had done so, and yet there were more newborns available, awaiting souls.)

31. (Edited): “Abortion is unethical.” FALSE. Ethics, unlike morals, can avoid being arbitrary (see #19), and it avoids arbitrariness because, in every ethical system ever devised, an Objective Foundation is declared, upon which that ethical system logically follows. For example, consider the statement, “More people benefit from getting along with each other than benefit from not getting along with each other.” We have lots of evidence supporting that statement; therefore the statement is Objective, not Subjective. So, logically, an ethical system can be devised that has the specific goal of encouraging people to get along with each other –and even, when possible, to get along with various mere animals, also. A horse, for example, is willing to work for the resources we provide it –that interaction between people and horses is ethical. Note that it doesn’t matter in the least that such an ethical system might have many things in common with a typical “moral” system –the basic truth is that the ethical system was derived from Objective Fact, and makes logical sense, while the moral system was arbitrarily imposed by fiat and without explanation.

Meanwhile, unborn humans don’t qualify as “people”, and their behavior as animals is utterly selfish; they make no effort whatsoever to “get along” with others. They are basically operating only under the Law of the Jungle (“might makes right”, and their drug-pushing is intended to cause women to like being pregnant). Therefore pregnant women can ethically, if they choose, in turn apply the Law of the Jungle toward unborn humans, and abort unwanted pregnancies.

32. “Abortion gives a woman bad karma.” TEMPORARILY, AT WORST. This anti-abortion argument also is associated with “reincarnation” philosophy. So, logically, if a woman has an abortion in this lifetime, then, afterward, while her soul is waiting to reincarnate –waiting for some specific new baby to be born/available– bad karma can simply mean that that unborn human might get aborted, thereby frustrating the soul. And if the woman had had several abortions during her lifetime, her soul might be frustrated by several future abortions.

Nevertheless, her soul is immortal, and can afford to wait –and wait– for a baby to be born into a family that wants it, to reincarnate. Remember, “p