Regarding Abortion

by Robert Forrest

Any rational discussion of family planning, of birth control, of population control, of abortion and even of considerations of stem cell research will have to address the difficult problem of when a fertilized egg, or embryo, or fetus becomes a human being. Arguably the value of human life should take precedence over most arguments of the pro-choice coalition, but pro-life arguments are, I believe, based on a subtle error.

Opposition to abortion is probably due, at least in part, to ancient instincts to protect our children. When we think of conception and pregnancy we picture babies in our imagination. In human beings, as in many species, the picture of an infant's face awakens these ancient instincts, and in fact releases increased amounts of hormones like oxytocin in the brain, which make us feel that babies are cute and lovable, and deserve protection. These are very old and powerful survival instincts. Perhaps they even underlie some of our more laudable feelings, such as altruism, empathy and compassion, and form a basis for some of our better laws.

It is of course very difficult for many people to separate the idea of conception and pregnancy from the emotional commitment to this imagined baby. We tend to rationalize our emotions, often with religious arguments, but the premise that a being, deserving all the protection that we wish to ensure for one another, is created when an egg is fertilized, is rather arbitrary.Some arguments against this position are:

1. An egg, like other cells in the body is alive before it is fertilized.
2. It is hard to see God's intention in the fact that a woman is born with hundreds of thousands of eggs, each a potential human being, yet almost all destined for destruction.
3. A fertilized egg, the subsequent tiny soccerball-like shell of cells, and early embryos, certainly do not look like babies, and if we did not know the sequence of events in pregnancy we would give them little consideration. Even after various organs in the developing fetus have become recognizable the structure of that most complex organ, the brain, is still in flux, with extensive migrations of cells from one location to another.
4. A recent English study of embryos in the early stages after fertilization showed that a large percentage of them were missing so much chromosomal material that they would not survive long enough for a pregnancy to even be noticed.

Such arguments will probably not convince the committed, but they could be used to back up the following logical argument. The world has a population problem. Its population is increasing by over
a million people per week. If the population of the earth doubles every fifty years anyone with a pocket calculator can determine that by the year 3000 there would be one person per square foot on the surface of the earth.

We will obviously have to have population control long before then. The question is, will we be able to achieve this by effective birth control or will we achieve it by killing our fellow beings in one way or another. Birth control measures seem preferable, but since they are never perfectly effective some abortions will inevitably occur. With effective family planning and birth control measures we can certainly try to minimize the number of unwanted births. But in the not too distant future population control will have to be strict, on the average (I presume that no one will propose such nonsense as emigrating to other planets. We cannot send a million people a week into space). Even with effective birth control measures and a small failure rate the sheer size of the world population will necessitate thousands, if not millions of abortions. It does not make much sense to argue about whether the inevitable is good or bad - one must make the best of it.

The inevitability of abortions in the world of the future should place those who argue that a human being comes into existence when an egg is fertilized in an uncomfortable (if not logically untenable) position. Hopefully, with a study of embryology we could learn to recognize that a fetus gradually becomes a human being, and that (at least early) abortions are not the equivalent of killing another human being. I hope the above arguments have enough validity to bear repeating. People generally resist major changes to their point of view, but with time such arguments may convince the majority.

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