Why Abortion is Wrong: The Pro-choice Arguments

   Why Abortion is Wrong is a series that attempts to view the issue of abortion from a number of different views and angles. In this series, we answer the age old question: Why is abortion wrong? You can see the whole series here.


   Within any argument, there are two sides. If there was only one, there would be no argument. For any good argument, you must understand your opponent's position. If you don't know what you are arguing against, how can you refute it? So far in this series we have examined the arguments against abortion. Now, it is time to examine and refute the arguments commonly put forth for abortion. Let's begin.

Historical Context

I was doing some research for a post I wrote entitled "The Raging Debate," and I came across an astonishing yet familiar stat: Roughly 50 million abortions occurred between Roe v. Wade and 2008 in America alone. Most of us have seen this stat before, but I find that it is really hard to wrap my mind around such a huge figure without some context. So here are a few historical figures to put the abortion numbers into perspective:

• According to this paper, under the fifth point, the Roman Empire, at its height, had between 60 and 100 million people. That means that abortion deaths in America total between 83 and 50 percent of the Ancient Roman Empire.
• The deaths in the American Revolution are hard to pin down, but this site (scroll down to "Cost of War/Casualties) roughly 53,000 people died in the war. That means American abortion has taken nearly 1,000 times as many lives as the war that gave birth to America.
• According to this site, the American Civil War resulted in the death of roughly 700,000 Americans. That means abortion has killed roughly 71 times as many Americans as that war
• According to this site, World War One was responsible for roughly 8.5 million military deaths. That works out to be 17 percent of the abortion toll.
• Remember the 180 video and the comparison to the Holocaust there? The Holocaust, according to this site, accounted for roughly 6 million Jewish deaths. Abortion has accounted for more than eight times that amount in America alone.
• According to this site, a total of 1,343,812 American soldiers have died in battle throughout history.  That's roughly three percent of the American abortion toll.
• This list (though it is from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt) provides some excellent context. Using a figure of 50 million abortions, found here, abortion in the US could be placed as high as first or as low as fifth, depending on which figure you accept for each event.

The list could go on and on, but the bottom line is that abortion has killed more people than almost any other event in history. The Holocaust is decried as an atrocity, and justly so, but how can we ignore the atrocity right in front of our faces when it has eclipsed the death toll of Hitler's genocide? Abortion kills more than one million babies in the United States each year. We can't ignore it anymore.

In Christ,

Jacob

Another Voice in the Komen Controversy

So I was skimming through the paper on Tuesday and a headline on the opinion page caught my eye: "Abortion Reality Lost in Fight." Curious, I read the article. In it, writer Mona Charen notes that in all the chaos surrounding the Komen funding, the truth about abortions and Planned Parenthood has been pushed aside in favor of "ugly politics." Charen, oddly enough, also brings up the statistic Aubry posted about on Tuesday, that of percentages within Planned Parenthood. According to Charen,

"Throughout the Komen imbroglio, PP circulated another misleading statistic – that only 3 percent of PP’s services involve abortions. As Charlotte Allen revealed in a 2007 Weekly Standard essay, that figure is, well, inventive. They arrive at that number by counting every service individually. When a client comes in for an abortion, she gets a pregnancy test (one service), a pelvic exam (second service), an STD test (third service), a breast exam (fourth service), a package of contraceptives (fifth service) and so forth. But calculated as a percentage of revenue generated, abortion accounts for about a third of PP’s business."

If Charen is correct (the article that she referred to can be found here, and it is a fantastic read), then the whole Planned Parenthood controversy becomes that much more important to pro-lifers. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world, regardless of what percentage abortion plays within Planned Parenthood. That alone is worth fighting. Komen defunded Planned Parenthood saying that because PP was under government investigation, Komen is not allowed to fund PP under Komen guidelines. Many have attacked that reasoning, and I agree that it seems suspect. However, as Charen says, Planned Parenthood does not actually provide mammograms, and the key demographic of PP has an extremely low chance of contracting breast cancer. Planned Parenthood has made a big deal of the fact that no Komen money funds abortion, but the Komen money is still used by an organization that does nothing to find the cure Komen seeks, while providing abortions, whether they are funded by Komen or not. The money Komen sends merely frees up other funds to be used for abortion. The mission of Planned Parenthood does not fit with the mission of Komen. Why, then, should Komen fund it at all?


In Christ,
Jacob

Ron Paul and Abortion

After Rick Santorum spoke with Piers Morgan, Ron Paul took a turn. In this video, Morgan asks Paul, a former OB/GYN, if he would allow abortion after rape. Paul answers, but in doing so nearly contradicts himself. His final answer actually falls under the article I posted a while back under the label "Why Abortion is Wrong." Ron Paul is proud of saying that he is "strongly pro-life," but he misses a key fact that he even states: Life begins at conception. We shouldn't take risks with a life.

The Raging Debate

(Note: I've been unable to get around various school things to get on top of the "current events" situation, so this article is not quite current. I apologize for the delay and hope to get even more current in the future.)

Source: Politifact

As many of you know, January 22nd was Sanctity of Life Sunday. On this day in 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided, and abortion was legalized. Many believed that the Supreme Court's decision would end the growing debate over abortion. Instead, it fueled it. Why? In an article posted on CNN's belief section, R. Albert Mohler Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains. Mohler proposes five key reasons that the Abortion debate has only grown since Roe v. Wade. Each reason is an excellent explanation for the current raging debate, but his last three reasons really struck a chord for me, showing in one stroke why the debate rages and why we, as Christians and pro-lifers, ought to continue that debate:

Third, the death spiral of abortion simply defies adequate calculation. Over a million abortions are performed in America each year. Reports last year indicated that over 40% of all pregnancies in New York end in abortion, a rate that increases to almost 60% of pregnancies among African-American women. The sheer scale of the death toll sears the pro-life conscience. Young people can now see that millions are missing from their own generation. Fourth, abortion has proved to be exactly what pro-life activists warned it would be: a deadly threat to human dignity that would target specific populations. Prenatal testing has produced a deadly reality for unborn babies considered less than acceptable by their parents. The vast majority (90%) of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. Sex-selection abortions are legal in the wide-open “right” to abortion declared by the court. Prenatal testing of other characteristics means that parents can now abort a baby that does not meet their specifications and try again. Fifth, powerful imaging technologies now allow a look inside the womb, a privilege unknown to previous generations. That window has transformed the equation, as millions of parents have seen their unborn children and witnessed the miracle of life. They have seen the little human form and the actions of the unborn child, sucking its thumb as it nestles within its mother. Millions of siblings have seen the images of their unborn brothers and sisters taped to the refrigerator door. Those of us who believe that every single unborn child has a right to be born cannot resign from the effort to protect those lives.

Mohler nails each of these reasons and, in doing so, reminds all of us why we fight against the injustice of abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute (more on that from Aubry later), nearly 50 million abortions have occurred in the USA between Roe v. Wade and 2008. That's 50 million lives lost, an astonishing 1/6th of the population in 2010, going by stats from the US Census Bureau. If that isn't worth fighting, I don't know what is.

Rick Santorum and Abortion

Rick Santorum recently sat down for an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan. They spoke about many topics, but the one that caught my eye was abortion. Here's Rick Santorum speaking with Piers on Santorum's stance on abortion: Watch the video here.

Programming Note

Quick programming note: We Can't Ignore is adding a new page! We're starting a page named "Current Events," and we will address current events in the world of abortion there. If you have any questions, comments, or events/news you'd like us to look at, shoot us an email at wecantignore@gmail.com  or comment on any of our posts. Thank you for reading this and I hope this page educates and encourages you.

In Christ,
Jacob

Why Abortion is Wrong: The Faith-Based Argument

   Why Abortion is Wrong is a series that attempts to view the issue of abortion from a number of different views and angles. In this series, we answer the age old question: Why is abortion wrong? You can see the whole series here.


   First, let's take a quick look at what we've covered in this series so far. We began by stating a logical argument against abortion, which went like this:
Premise 1: Murder is wrong.
Premise 2: Abortion is murder.
Conclusion: Therefore, abortion is wrong.
We then defined murder to be "the killing of an innocent human being with prior intent and knowledge of their act" and defended that definition. In the next post, we examined a couple of counterarguments against the argument and refuted them. Now, let's take a look at why abortion is wrong from a Christian perspective.

Why Abortion is Wrong: The Counterarguments

   Why Abortion is Wrong is a series that attempts to view the issue of abortion from a number of different views and angles. You can see the last two posts for this series here.


   In this post, I'm going to examine some of the key counterarguments pro-choicers might bring up against the key argument for pro-lifers. I did a post on that argument here, and I examined one argument against it, the question of defining murder. Just as a reminder, to disprove this argument, one would have to attack one of the premises. The argument is logically valid, so if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Just as a refresher, the argument is:
Premise 1: Murder is wrong.
Premise 2: Abortion is murder.
Conclusion: Therefore, abortion is wrong.
Now let's take a look at some counterarguments against this argument.

Why Abortion is Wrong: The Logical Argument

   Why Abortion is Wrong is a series that attempts to view the issue of abortion from a number of different views and angles. You can see the introductory post for this series here.

   In this first post in the Why Abortion is Wrong series, I'm going to take a look at the key argument pro-lifers put forth against abortion from a logical angle. But first, a quick lesson on logic. Every logical syllogism (a fancy logical term for a common form of a written argument) must both be valid and sound for it to be true. Valid simply means that the syllogism is set up in such a way that, if the premises, or supporting claims are true, the conclusion must be true. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises. For example, if my premises were "All dogs are animals" and "All animals are alive" and my conclusion was "All dogs are alive," then as long as everyone agreed that my premises were true, my conclusion must be true because the argument is valid. So, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the key argument pro-lifers use against abortion.

Why Abortion is Wrong

Hello everyone! My name is Jacob, and I've been friends with Aubry for several years now. I've been a part of this blog since it began, but I haven't done much on it. I started out writing a series on the candidates for the 2012 presidential election and their views on abortion (found here) but didn't finish because of a couple reasons: first, I didn't believe that it really mattered; it was too early, and not really aimed at what I believed was the key demographic of our blog. Second, and to be quite truthful, probably more key to why I stopped, I gave up. I didn't feel like I really had much to say, and I didn't feel like anyone would listen. I've since come to realize that both of those feelings were wrong, but I still struggled to find the time and the gumption to write. I was thinking about the blog over the weekend, and thinking of what I could write, when I got this idea. Over the next couple weeks, I am going to write a series of posts on why abortion is wrong from several different aspects. I'm going to start with a logical argument and then move on to counterarguments that pro-choice people may bring up against my argument. From there I'll move on to a Biblical, Faith-based argument, and go from there to whatever else I can think of. I hope you'll read through my posts and comment on them, whether you agree with me or disagree. Thanks for reading this and I can't wait to continue posting in the future.

In Christ,
Jacob

What We Know: President Obama

The "What We Know" series attempts to explain each of the 2012 Presidential Candidates' views on abortion. We'll start with the incumbent, President Barack Obama.

The Simple Answer: A quote from the President, found here: "There is a moral implication to these issues [the issues of abortion], but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination."

Behind The Answer: Three long list articles on Obama's view can be found here, here, and here. Some key points from those articles: In 2005, 2006, and 2007, Obama received NARAL(A major pro-choice group) 's highest rating, a 100%, in terms of pro-choice voting. In March 2009, President Obama restarted government funding for embryo stem cell research and ended government funding for adult stem cell research. President Obama is very pro-choice, and hesupports abortion whole-heartedly.

Team Members

Hey everybody.  So, you've probably noticed that I'm the only one posting, but there is another team member involved!  That's my sister, Taryn, and she will begin posting soon.  She has been doing more behind the scenes work so far, which I am so thankful for!  But she will become more active on the blog, soon.  I am also going to introduce a new team member!  Jacob, who is like my long lost fifth brother, is going to be posting and helping us out on this main blog.  He's proof that it's not just girls who should get involved in the pro-life movement, but guys too!  He'll have a page, just like Taryn and I, he will help us with our legislative research that we will be putting up here, and he'll post his thoughts.  Um, yes, he has many thoughts.  I'm excited to have him here, and I think you will be too!!