I have to tell you, I was planning on holding off on this one for a while. Then some political hopefuls went around screwing up royal and now everyone’s got their pitchforks sharpened.

I want to be very clear in my reaffirmation that this is, decidedly, not a political column. At this point, though, not writing about abortion would be like going to see Premium Rush when you could see The Dark Knight Rises: you’re going to be alone. Sorry JGL. Next time, don’t make an action movie about bicycle messengers and we can avoid all of this.

A common pro-choice argument is that the government has no right to make laws about what a woman does with her body. There’s a problem with that argument.

The pro-life/pro-choice debate hinges on whether or not the unborn fetus is fundamentally part of the woman’s body, or if it is fundamentally a life of its own and only incidentally a part of the woman.

I put those words in bold because they are likely going to get some people very angry, and I want to clarify: these terms are being used in their philosophical sense. Without a doubt, the fetus is part of a woman’s body. What members of the pro-life movement argue is that the life of the fetus (if it is life) has an importance that is self-generated and prior to the importance of any liberties the mother has.

And that’s the problem with the pro-choice argument above. Just saying that the government can’t legislate about a woman’s body, and thereby implying the fetus is part of the body, is what philosophers call begging the question: assuming as true the very thing you are trying to prove true.

Moreover, even if we consider the fetus fundamentally to be part of a woman’s body, the body has by no means traditionally been considered a hallowed ground beyond the reach of legislation. We legislate what drugs can be put in our body, which surgeries can be done on the body and by whom, and even allow for rules based on types of bodies: overweight people are allowed to have higher insurance rates, and only men can be drafted. We legislate about our bodies and what people can do with their bodies all the time. Especially when those actions we are legislating against can harm another life.

That last bit. That’s the crux of the debate. We legislate against murder, driving drunk, rape, and a slew of other things people can do with their bodies that harm other lives. So, really, the debate is a very simple question.

Is a fertilized egg a life?

To answer this, I want to look at the pro-life argument. And I think, in doing so, we can arrive at a much stronger pro-choice conclusion.

In its most simple form, the pro-life stance is that, at the moment of conception, the fertilized egg constitutes a living human-being and therefore deserves to be protected. Most mainstream forms of the argument—as evidenced by presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s platform—allow for exceptional abortions (that is, abortions that are exceptions to the rule, not awesome ones) in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is at risk.

Let’s start by tackling the first two. These concessions are problematic to the pro-life argument because this argument hinges on the inviolability of life. The fertilized egg is inviolable because the definition of life being used is binary: prior to conception, it is not a life; after conception, it is. If we accept such an absolute distinction, and that life is defined as life purely by its state as conceived, then the qualification of allowances for cases of rape and incest is invalid. Once you start making judgments as to the type of life, you cannot claim that life is valuable just because of its nature as living.

Allowing an exception for cases where the fetus puts the life of the mother at risk is equally problematic. Any argument for such an exception has to state, as its grounding principle, that the sacrifice of the fetus is justified because the life of the mother is more valuable. There is no way of getting around that. It is, again, a binary choice: the fetus, or the mother. And this exception says it is okay to pick the mother. We’ll come back to this.

You might suggest that I am being misleading, because the fetus would die either way, so we are not balancing one life for the other. But what about situations where the fetus would live if allowed to mature within the ailing mother for, let’s say, two weeks; an extension that would ensure the mother’s death?

This may seem an unlikely scenario, but it is certainly a plausible one, and it pushes this rationale to the breaking point: a government operating under pro-life regulations, where the life of the fetus is inviolable, would have to force the mother to continue carrying the fetus, an action that would result in her death.

So, if we assume that human life begins at conception, and that all life is inviolable, we find ourselves at a contradiction. A stance that champions the value of human life absolutely could only do so here by extinguishing human life.

As I mentioned above, a pro-life stance could allow for an abortion where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, but that would prioritize (and thereby apply greater value) to the life of the mother. What reasons could we give to assert such a priority? Among them: consciousness, rationality, the ability to feel emotion, memory, physical activity and autonomy. The mother has these attributes and the fetus does not, so the mother’s health is prioritized.

Yet, once we admit to degrees of human life—whether because of the nature of the conception (rape and incest), or prioritizing the health of the mother—the pro-life philosophy begins to fall apart. Suddenly, life cannot be inviolable just because of its nature as conceived: it has degrees of value that start out at conception and progress towards a born baby.

Admittedly, we run into questions of whether or not we should value even the life of the baby as highly as that of the mother. Babies don’t exercise autonomy in a manner similar to that of adults, their brains don’t function in identical ways, and they do not possess language. Why shouldn’t a mother be able to kill her baby if she wants to?

We as a society have decided to draw a line for what constitutes a full-fledged human being at birth—whether this be a naturally born baby or one removed prematurely that can nonetheless survive without the mother. There is debate about the stages prior to birth, but everyone agrees that a born baby is a human being. And this line is in some ways arbitrary.

But arguing, “Any line we draw would be arbitrary, so we should just define life at conception,” is decidedly not the same as believing life begins at conception (and, as we saw above, this belief results in a necessary contradiction).

Once we allow for an arbitrary line, we shift to another discussion, because anyone who grants any exceptions where abortions are allowed is pro-choice. Now all we have left to do is discuss in which situations women have the right to that choice.

But this is a discussion about weighted moralities, not a black-and-white pro-life/pro-choice hatefest. Serious questions need to be answered. Should abortions be allowed in cases of rape and incest? Should abortions be allowed for most reasons in the first trimester? Because the fetus will develop a painful condition or deformity? Because you wanted a boy and got a girl? Because you think your baby looks ugly on ultrasound? Because you want an August baby but conceived in June?

Nobody is pro-abortion. We all have lines we draw, and they’re all arbitrary. We need to pick an arbitrary line that makes sense.

And we’ll talk about that line one week. For now, I’ll sum things up by quoting The Simpsons.

“Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.”