By whatever means, a woman has conceived and there now exists something that, if properly nurtured, will develop into a self-sufficient human being. The couple may not have intended a pregnancy, and parenthood may be undesirable for any number of reasons. There may not appear to be much of a pleasant future for the child. We have the technology to end the pregnancy in a manner that is relatively safe for the mother. The questions are, what are the ethical considerations surrounding the choice to continue or end the pregnancy, and what should be the disposition of the law toward the practice of abortion?
Freedom and rights of choice have to do primarily with decisions that affect one's own self. When our decisions affect others, restrictions come into play out of consideration for the rights of those whom our decisions affect. Most people would agree that there are different ethical obligations upon us depending on whether we are affecting an inanimate object, vegetable life, animal life, or human life. Generally, our consciences tell us to give consideration to life that can feel pleasure or pain (sentient animals), and the highest consideration to fellow humans. The deciding factor, then, is how we should categorize the zygote/embryo/fetus.
First, I acknowledge the difficulty of this question from a common-sense standpoint. The characteristics we generally associate with humans, such as consciousness, moral judgment, the ability to communicate, reason, take care of ourselves, etc., are not really universal. Children develop their "humanity" gradually. Age and infirmity may cause us to lose some of these abilities. When we sleep, we are unconscious, but we would rarely consider a sleeping, mute, or schizophrenic man or woman to be no longer a person. But when it comes to embryos in the early stages of pregnancy, we are dealing with a cluster of cells that has no more consciousness or "vestige of personhood" than algae, and does not look at all human. It is also true that if I lose an arm, or have skin peel off because of a sunburn, I do not consider the arm or the flaky skin to be another person. I do not attribute personhood to them at all, but treat them as inanimate objects to be reattached, kept, or disposed of according to my wishes. On the other hand, we regularly classify life forms based on their DNA. If a hedgehog has died, no matter what the condition and appearance of the carcass is, we still call it a hedgehog if we find it has hedgehog DNA. If we find a duck egg with the offspring inside in its earliest stages, it is a duck because it has duck DNA. A child born with unusual sexual characteristics is classified as a boy or girl based on the chromosomes. An embryo has human DNA distinct from that of its mother or father, with its own chromosome pattern (XY for a boy, XX for a girl).
I think from a scientific standpoint, the DNA has the last word. There is no question the cells are alive, are classifiable as human, and are not part of the mother's body. We can therefore say this is a separate human life. The only place philosophy and religion enter into this question is whether or not this human life has a "soul." Mormons and some Catholics believe God infuses the embryo or fetus with a soul some days or weeks after conception. Historic Jewish and Protestant belief is that one does not have a soul; one is a soul (Gen. 2:7)–the body and soul are inseparable from conception to death. Atheists and the unreligious might well say they have no "soul" at all, but are only bodies. And of course, what happens to the entity whose life ends is entirely a religious question. But we do not deny an atheist the proper protection of his life because he denies he has a soul. The question is not the status of the unborn soul, but the quality of the unborn body as a distinct (and unique) human life form.
Beyond science, the Bible strongly supports a continuity between who we are at conception and who we are as adults (Ps. 139:13-16; Jer. 1:5; Luke 1:35, 41). The Bible's first several chapters (Gen. 1-9) and other passages (e.g., Psalm 8) establish that all humans are made in the image of God; they are God's representatives, or deputies, so that they may care for and rule over the earth. As God's representatives, that which we do to one another, we are in effect doing to God (Prov. 14:31; 17:5; Matt. 25:45; Acts 5:3-4; Jam. 3:9-10). So insulting to God is the destruction of one of His images that He requires the life of humans and even animals who take human life without His sanction (Gen. 9:5-7). As a human created by God in His image, the unborn at any stage is one of Yahweh's ambassadors. There is no room in the biblical teaching on life for mercy-killing, or to end a life for one's own benefit, no matter how much a benefit that might seem to be.
On a side note, this is what makes sex so sacred: God could easily make new people from dirt (Gen. 2:7; Luke 3:8), but He saw fit to give us the privilege of participating in the creation of life. We actually have a say on the bringing of new images of God into the world. Once we have one of God's deputies in our presence, we are obligated to treat him or her accordingly. So, if we recognize the Bible as our ethical authority, we say that abortion is generally wrong.
Abortion is one issue in which calculated evidence is joined by a strong emotional element. In many abortions, the victim is physically recognizable as a baby, and the methods used resemble something out of a bad horror movie. If a killing is considered more heinous when the victim is murdered in his own home, and even worse if a child is killed in his own bed, then certainly killing the unborn in the womb is the worst kind of murder. For many believers, it is this combination of emotion and logic that makes abortion not just wrong, but unthinkable.
A special case, of course, arises when one innocent life must be sacrificed to save a number of others. Consider the recently very relevant question of whether to shoot down a hijacked commercial airliner loaded with passengers to prevent it from crashing and killing thousands. With regard to abortion, the unborn child can hardly threaten the life of anyone but its own mother. In the vast majority of cases in which the mother's life is in jeopardy, the baby will die, too–ectopic pregancies, for example. In this case the choice is clear; the unborn's death is assured and immanent, and aborting the child saves the mother's life. While this is the right moral decision, the fact that it does involve killing, however justified, means that grief and reflection on the seriousness of the situation are in order. Any time we must kill, whether in the execution chamber, the battlefield, or the operating room, it is a tragic situation.
Under our Constitution, the legislature cannot establish a religious ethic as the basis for its laws. This does not change the fact that the government is accountable to God for protecting the lives of those who live within its borders. Amendment XIV defines citizens as those "born or naturalized in the United States" but extends the due process clause not just to citizens but to all persons ("nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"). These words of the Constitution take precedence over any executive order, legislative action, or court decision (Article VI). Since, then, we have the technology to establish objectively the personhood of the unborn, acts of Congress and the famous Supreme Court decisions which allow abortion are technically illegal. Realistically, however, it would probably take an additional Constitutional amendment or at least a reversal of the S.C. rulings to abolish legal abortion in the US.
The final issue that arises is how the government should enforce laws against killing the unborn. It would be absurd to suggest a significant difference between killing someone you can physically see and killing someone you cannot. There is no ethical ground for allowing the death of the innocent at one point along the lifespan and not on another. Governments should therefore deal with abortion as a subset of infanticide. Whether this involves fines, imprisonment, banishment, or physical or capital punishment should be consistent with the punishment for crimes of equal severity.
For a concise statement of my beliefs about human life, see my Declaration of Faith.
