1) “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”–we have fought hard to establish in legal precedent a liberal interpretation of “men” such that gender, social class, and race are not relevant distinctions, but rather it is our “created” status wherein our equality begins. But a radically distinct genetically unique human being begins at conception, so should not legal human status begin at that point?
2) If a mother who wants the preborn recognizes it as a “baby” then does it cease to be a baby if the mother does not want it?
3) 99.9% of pregnancies come from consensual sex. It is not as if the majority of pregnancies normally result from something else. So even though sex and pregnancy are practically separable through contraceptives what moral grounds exist to treat pregnancy as a radically distinct “choice” from that of consensual sex? That is, if a woman had the choice to get pregnant then her choice would still be respected if she is then understood to have the responsibility to deal with the living human consequences of her choices, right?
4) Does one’s “bodily sovereignty” include infringing on another body?
5) What kinds of discrimination are we okay with? Age? Race? Mental ability? Size? Level of Development? Location? Environmental? etc.
6) Does the right to liberty, including the right to privacy, trump the right to life?
7) If its illegal manslaughter or murder to intentionally kill a preborn baby that the mother wants then should aborting an unwanted preborn baby count as legal manslaughter?
8) If abortion is legal manslaughter then would that not indicate the baby has some sense of personhood in the eyes of the law?
9) It is currently illegal to assault and kill your pet dog, even though it is your property and it resides on your property and you may have not objection to killing it. This law reflects a moral value against animal abuse. But human preborns are at least animals, so isn’t it equally immoral to assault and kill a human preborn?
10) If a mother has full sovereignty over a human preborn in utero, then does that mean people can own other human beings?
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Intelligent Christian Faith 
1. Assign whatever status you would like to the resident in the uterus of a woman. The question is does someone else get to use your body for their benefit without your consent. The answer, of course is, no.
2. Does playing with semantics somehow strengthen the argument?
3. I’m not sure where the 99.9% comes from, but I see it often on sites advocating forced birth, a minimal amount of googlefu takes one to wikipedia with enough contrary statistics to make one seriously consider validity of the 99.9% claim.
So having intercourse magically changes how rights work? No, it doesn’t. A woman always has the right to decide how her body and her resources are being used.
4. Nope. No one gets to use my body without my consent – adult, child or fetus.
5. We’re okay with all sorts of discrimination. We’re pretty “okay”with the 21 children that died just this minute from preventable causes. And I’m pretty sure we’re okay with the 800 women who will die today from being pregnant/giving birth. So other than trying to bait some sort of rhetorical trap – “because liberals are against Discrimination” – this point is irrelevant.
Would you like some rhetoric from the other side? – When forced-birthers get out the movement and start trying to save the children who are dying from preventable diseases – you know doing something other than trying to strip women of their rights – then maybe you might be entitled to use the term pro-life, as of now, the anti-choice label is much more accurate.
6. Yes. See Madeleine Albright’s thoughts on people’s rights to their lives circa the Iraq War.
7. It isn’t illegal.
8. No, abortion is an abortion. Manslaughter is not equivalent to an abortion, assuming otherwise is begging the question.
9. This would be relevant if dogs/cats/hedgehogs were inside a person’s body using their resources. Since they are not, the rights we give to animals are also not relevant.
10. A mother has full sovereignty over her body and her resources. If other beings want to use those resources, they must have her consent. No consent, no use of her body.
Questions answered. Good day.
1. “The question is does someone else get to use your body for their benefit without your consent.”–if we weren’t talking about a conflict of recognized moral values: life versus autonomy then you might have a point here. But someone life is not a rightful choice for someone else to take. Your language seems a bit loaded, like pregnancy is a disease and motherhood a curse. I see them more like deeply responsible privileges, they carry great duty but are very important. Your last point saying that the fetus acts “without [the mother’s] consent” is not entirely correct except in cases of rape. She had a choice to get pregnant or not, and there are many and various free-acts we make which incur responsibilities, even to our bodies, yet we have made a prior choice that obligates us to later responsibilities.
2. Does playing with semantics somehow strengthen the argument?”–You breezed past a revealing question here. It is immoral to kill babies (I assume you agree but you may not), if that fetus is a baby then killing it is immoral. Moreover, you either would have to say that “preborns change their nature to ‘baby’ if they are wanted” or you need to tell pregnant women that they aren’t carrying a baby inside of them.
3. About the 99.9% I was estimating from a bevy reports and surveys gleaned second-hand, first-hand, by reports, online, in journals. But it’s well known to be in the high ninety’s. For example, the NY Times reports it as 99% (http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/13/us/rape-and-incest-just-1-of-all-abortions.html). On you point over intercourse, yes actions have consequences and there are few actions as consequential (in normal people’s lives) as sex. Its not like the possibility of pregnancy is a surprise. Likewise, if I put my name in a lottery to adopt a baby, but i’m only doing for ulterior motives (i.e.: to impress a girlfriend, or to help a buddy make his “sign-up sheet” quota, etc.), then if I’m chosen to adopt that baby I cannot rightfully distinguish those two acts as if they are morally unrelated–my entering the baby lottery and my winning the baby lottery are morally interrelated actions and it is moral to follow through on the consequences of that action, and immoral to buck my responsibility as a willful, albeit reluctant, parent.
4. When I asked, “Does one’s ‘bodily sovereignty’ include infringing on another body?” You answered strangely saying, “Nope. No one gets to use my body without my consent – adult, child or fetus.” You answered “nope” and then your explanation says “yes.” Which is it? Does the mother get to infringe on the bodily sovereignty of the preborn or not?
5. Your response here goes off on a tangent. There are justifiable kinds of discrimination (i.e.: employers discriminating against job applicants who are lazy, chronically late, drug addicted homeless). so that is not my point. My point is that every human adult, including all bloggers here, has gone through the different stages of development from fetus to adulthood. And we have several real categories of unethical discrimination in our society including age discrimination, sexual discrimination, and racism. There is currently a growing pushback in canada among feminists who are now starting to OPPOSE abortion because “abortion on demand” has been interpreted by many as “justifiable cause to abort female preborns just because they are girls.” By your rubric that kind of sexual discrimination is okay. You are also arguing that developmental discrimination is also okay at least in some cases. Would this likewise apply post-birth people who are developmentally impaired?
6. You conceded my point. Life is the more basic right than liberty, hence the preborn deserves to live even if the mom would prefer to use her liberty to kill it.
7. You didn’t answer the question. There is a serious legal precedent issue here. We currently have laws on the books designed to protect preborn lives even counting willful killing of the mother and preborn as two homicides. Law codes are liable to contradict each other at times, especially when laws are introduced which require new amendments, new legal precedents, etc. Abortion is just that kind of law. In North Dakota (I think) abortion is even defined a legal manslaughter. I’m still interested in your answer.
8. see 7.
9. You seem to be hanging your entire argument on the location of the preborn, and perhaps its viable dependence on the mother. I get it. But my point is more simple than that. Animal abuse is unethical. Humans are at least animals, hence abusing humans is unethical. If you grant that, you can still keep your other point about “location” and the point I make would not touch it. I guess to make this point touch yours I have to use an animal that is small enough to be inside of a person, and then incorporate that into the illustration. For example, it is animal abuse even if you chomped down on someone’s endangered pet lizard while it was still alive, and even if the owner approved of you doing it, and even if you did not directly approve of it but you guys were all goofing around and you lost the bet so you had to eat the lizard. You consented to acts leading to that lizard being placed in your mouth, though you did not DIRECTLY consent to having that lizard in your mouth. Just because it’s inside of you does not free you from ethical duty to protect higher order animal life. This illustration is a bit stretched, but it’s hard to find analogies pregnancy. We don’t usually have scenarios that are comparable in every relevant way? I suppose we might try illustrating with an animal pregnancy. If my friend’s pet dog is pregnant but depressed, and that dog obviously does not want to have that puppy (dog fetus?) it is still unethical for me to abort that puppy just because the mother dog did not want it, especially if the dog’s master does want that puppy. (i.e.: in theological terms, we should not take human life because it is owned by God and it’s not ours to take).
10. You did not answer the question, Does the mother’s bodily sovereignty give her the right of ownership over another human being? You seem to be saying, “Yes, a human being can rightfully, and ethically, own another human being.” Is that what you are saying?
1) Wrong. It is not the status as being “created” that leads to equality. If this were so, all created beings would be entitled to the same civil rights. We do not give equal rights to animals, plants and inanimate objects because they are not human, even though (in your worldview, they have been created). It is our membership in the human species entitles us to equality before the law. And yes, all human beings are allowed to be aborted equally. This is irrelevant.
2) No. If she calls it a baby, she is aborting what is to her, a baby.
3) Wrong again. She consents to sex, not to being a parent. Doing something with consent that has a risk of a negative outcome does not mean one consents to the negative outcome. One who consents to ride in a car does not consent to being killed by a drunk driver even though she knows this is a risk. It just has nothing to do with the ethics of abortion.
4) No, of course not. A mother who aborts is denying the pre-born the use of her body for its survival. She is not taking anything from its body.
5) On a very basic level, discrimination is okay if it is based on a characteristic that is objectively relevant to the process being applied. Most democracies generally try to eliminate discrimination on the basis of membership in a group that has been unjustly marginalized. Some groupings are justly marginalized, criminals for example. But this is a complicated issue and I fail to see the relevance to the abortion issue. I no not agree that abortion is age discrimination because, legally, the pre-born are not persons entitled to legal rights. I do agree that people who favour male children are sexist. But that does not mean abortion is unethical. That would be like saying those who hire only men are sexist, so the practice of hiring inherently is sexist.
6) Depends on the facts. No, a pre-born does not have the right to kill the mother to be born. Nor does a mother have the right to kill a child to live in a more quiet house.
7) Abortion isn’t illegal where I live, it is not murder or manslaughter. Killing a pregnant woman gets you one murder victim in the US as well, show me the statue if I am wrong.
8) Calling something “legal manslaughter” is self-defeating 😉 No, seriously, manslaughter is a crime, it can never be legal. At law, abortion is not manslaughter, it is legally ending a pregnancy. The pre-born are not persons at law. Keep in mind, this is a technical use of “person”. Corporations are “people” but they cannot be murdered. They can however be guilty of murder. One might believe that “dogs are people too.” But if you kill a dog, you cannot be guilty of murder or manslaughter.
9) We make crimes against animal cruelty because it is behavior we find inexcusable, not because the animals are beings with “rights”. Animals do not have the same rights as humans with respect to assault and more. We accept treatment of animals as fine which we would consider as unspeakably cruel if applied to humans. We hit them, choke them with collars, verbally abuse them, whip them, confine them in their own filth, kill them and eat them. All in the name of pet ownership and food production. And these are all generally held to be perfectly legal, if not morally acceptable by most.
10) No she has sovereignty over her body only and the pre-born is part of her body. I think it makes no sense to speak of the unborn as independent sovereign human beings. But if YOU do, then you also must accept that this independent sovereign human being has no rights to her body to sustain itself. This would be inconsistent, we then it would have the right to force her to give blood after birth, if the child required it. This would be illegal, the law would let the child die before forcing the mom to give blood. I think this the way it should be.
420olon,
1) Straw man. You jumped on the “created” part and left out the “men” part. Both aspects are part of my point: all MEN are CREATED equal. That is, humanity affords broadly conceived equally of human rights from the point of creation onward. It is a straw man fallacy to accuse me of equating men and trees since both are “created.”
2) Irrelevant. The question concerns the nature of the embryo/fetus, not simply what it is subjectively termed by the mother. Her name for it, I’m suggesting, points out what is widely believed (or known) which is that fetus is a baby.
3) I agree that she did not consent to being a parent directly, but if you read my responses to the last objector, I point out some ethically weighted decisions are highly consequential and there is a natural, intrinsic, or otherwise deeply involved effects that flow out of certain decisions. I do not choose to be incarcerated if I commit a hit and run, but there is always that chance that my committing a hit and run leads to me getting caught (a pretty “natural” consequence of that behavior) and I do not have any innate moral right to “choose” whether to own the responsible consequences of my actions.
4) You contradict yourself, just like the last responder. You have not rebutted my above point that human rights begin for humans at the point of creation. You said that one’s bodily sovereignty does not entitle infringement on another’s bodily sovereignty, but immediately after you said that one’s bodily sovereignty DOES entitle infringing on another’s. Which is it?
5) You err by assuming that ALL human and legal rights are recognized as beginning only with personhood. That point is for you to prove. I disagree with it and have made my initial case for my position. From what I’ve seen, that is only true in some cases, and is not stated in the Declaration of Independence nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nor the Magna Carta. etc. etc. Human rights begin at the creation of the human being, and that individual human life is initially created at conception. I agree that some human rights don’t even make sense apart from the EXPRESSIONS of personhood, but even then, the conceptus has all the latent potency of a person and it would be immoral (all else being equal) to deny it all possible future exercise of personhood. It is developmental discrimination in a literal sense, the only question then is whether that form of discrimination is justifiable (like the NBA discriminating against short, low-jumping, no talent people, or employers discriminating against lazy folks applying for a job).
6) I should clarify, does the mother’s right to liberty trump the preborn’s right to life? After all, it is a living human organism and a “member of the human family” hence it should be afforded the rights extended to it by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml).
7) Wrong in the relevant case namely, the Unborn Victims of Violence act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act). The fetus is defined as a “child in utero.” With for legal consistency we can define the act of abortion as the intentional homicide of a morally innocent or morally neutral living human child in utero.
8) Wrong. There are legal kinds of manslaughter such as, “involuntary manslaughter” and “justifiable homicide.” Moreover, there are protective laws for preborn babies in non-abortion contexts and illegal abortion contexts (such as in Ohio http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2919.13 and New York article S125.05-3 in http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article125.htm#p125.05).
9) You are helping to make my point. It is still illegal to kill a persons pet dog even though we recognize that humans are more morally valuable (“sacred”/”sanctified” in the secular sense, i.e.:the legal sense) than pets, yet we allow the willful homicide of unwanted preborn children but (inconsistently) reject and deem illegal pet abuse, even if the animal isn’t killed.
10) The preborn is NOT part of her body, it just inhabits her body. You do not seem familiar with the pro-life case on this point. If that pre-born were part of her body it would have to have the same genetic material as her (it does not), it would not have half the genetic material of the father (it does), it would have to be the same gender and bloodtype as the mother (it may not be), and it would not be attacked by the mother’s immune system as a foreign entity. It is not part of her body. Also, your rebuttal assumes that mothers don’t have a duty to care for their children. We’ve already seen in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act that the fetus is a “child in utero” hence the relation between the mother and preborn is that of a “mother and child.” It seems odd to get all indignant about a child’s expectation for a mother’s care. That is a natural right of children towards their parents and a natural duty of parents to their children.
1) I disagree. I do not think that anything is created in the sense you are using the word. Nor do I think our laws should reflect your religious views. Equality works just fine ignoring these issues. The law should treat all humans substantively equally. Again your only argument is that you think legal “persons” should be interpreted as to include the preborn.
2) If you want to call a single cell a baby and truly empathize with it the same way you would a newborn, go ahead. If you define a baby that way, fine. I say it is okay to let “babies” so defined die, up to the point they are born.
3) Sure. But even if she wanted to get pregnant and does, and changes her mind, should we force her to be a parent? Of course not. This is why we allow adoption. The question here is whether she can end the pregnancy or be forced to carry it to term . We’re back to whether it is moral to end a pregnancy. What she consented to during sex is not relevant.
4) I think I am pretty clear, IF the preborn were persons, they would not have the right to use the mother`s body parts to live without her consent. Aborting a preborn does not infringe its bodily sovereignty. I do not think the preborn are persons with the right to protection of security of the person. We are back to this one issue again.
5) Article 1 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…” Not created free at conception. I should pause to agree that some jurisdictions provide rights to the preborn. Mine does not. This is not a good think in my view and risks the fate of Savita Halappanavar.
6) The pre born should have no right to life in my view. See point 5 re the UNDHR.
7) Yes you have a bit of a legal consistency issue with that legislation which is why I believe it was introduced. I think it is a bad idea. However, abortion is not murder or manslaughter, it is ending a pregnancy. Again the only issue is whether, morally speaking a preborn is should be considered a legal person. If you can make that moral case, the laws should probably change. But I am not convinced.
8) What you are talking about are defences to criminal offences. If someone has met the legal elements of the crime, they may avoid conviction by proving a defence, such as self-defence and duress. The elements of homicide include intentionally ending a legal person’s life. The pre-born are not recognized as legal persons and therefore one cannot meet the elements of the offence. If you can show that the pre-born are persons in the criminal law context by reference to the statutes you noted, you might succeed in getting to homocide or manslaughter. And the fact that it was an abortion would not be a defence. The accused would be convicted of homocide. I expect there are exception in the legislation you mention, but I will check it out. Of course this was the whole point of introducing this legislation. We will see whether it succeeds. But you are framing this wrong.
9) The point is you do not think we should treat the preborn like animals or pets but as human children. If we were to treat them like pets should we allow euthanasia? Again your only point is that they should be treated as human persons. Just develop that point.
10) I am familiar with this argument and it is flawed. We do not consider parts of human bodies with different genetic make-ups to be separate human persons. Look up human chimeras. We also do not consider sex as the test for individuality, I am sure you are familiar with hermaphrodites.
But I will grant you that pregancy is a unique situation. I think the bodily sovereignty arguments are pretty good for pro-choice but they fail too. Abortion is not the same as saying no to an organ donation request or blood donation. I think both conception and birth are the clearest times we can say the second individual starts in any context. I think the law should draw the line at birth for practical reasons. One is the problematic case of the danger of the life of the mother. I think legal abortion is better than risking the lives of mom to try and save the preborn and the mom. I think it would be terrible to have to investigate moms and doctors for ending pregnancies to save mom`s life. I simply have little empathy for the fetus in the first trimester, but I admit I have lots it the third.
I think abortion is never a happy situation for anyone and every pregnancy should be good news. The best way to do this is to push sex-ed and contraception. Where mistakes are made pregancies can be ended early and easily is the next best thing. I just think that making abortion illegal creates more harm than it solves. I tend to agree with Singer on the philosophical side of things. We should only prohibit ending life where the entity involved has an interest in continuing by way of a self-reflecting consciousness. But I also grant that this means infanticide is not immoral and I cannot accept that. I empathize with newborns way too much and think that killing them results in a harm to that sensitivity which I think the law should prohibit. I further recognize that this position buts me at odds with my situation as a happy omnivore. I admit this hippocracy but resolve it the same way. I just empathize so much less with animals compared to newborn humans to be overly bothered by killing them. I try to be vegetarian and avoid food production that causes undue suffering, but I quickly fail. I am working on that hippocracy.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. But I thought I would lay out my position.
(I am, broadly speaking, pro-life as to moral position, but maintain that abortion should be legal. I don’t know what you call that, but here are my answers)
1) “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”–we have fought hard to establish in legal precedent a liberal interpretation of “men” such that gender, social class, and race are not relevant distinctions, but rather it is our “created” status wherein our equality begins. But a radically distinct genetically unique human being begins at conception, so should not legal human status begin at that point?
I disagree with the term “radically distinct”, which is an odd term that you leave undefined, but I disagree with it insofar as I understand it. I don’t think a fertilized ovum is “radically distinct”, in that it has no personality, no mind, no emotions, no will or plans, is utterly incapable of living anywhere but the womb, etc. So no, legal status should not begin at the point of conception. That just strikes me as nonsensical.
2) If a mother who wants the preborn recognizes it as a “baby” then does it cease to be a baby if the mother does not want it?
A mother thinking or feeling that a being is a baby does not make it a baby, rationally, legally, or morally. If a mother is delusional and thinks her shoe is a baby, does it cease to be a baby if she doesn’t want it? What?
A mother’s intuition (in the philosophical sense, not the “women’s intuition” sense) that something is a baby is certainly subjectively compelling for her, but doesn’t change the status of that thing, or person, in any way. It could be a cyst that was mis-identified by the ultrasound technician, etc.
3) 99.9% of pregnancies come from consensual sex. It is not as if the majority of pregnancies normally result from something else. So even though sex and pregnancy are practically separable through contraceptives what moral grounds exist to treat pregnancy as a radically distinct “choice” from that of consensual sex? That is, if a woman had the choice to get pregnant then her choice would still be respected if she is then understood to have the responsibility to deal with the living human consequences of her choices, right?
The practical argument here is that sex would continue to be a near-zero risk for all men and would become a lifelong risk for all women. You’re saying that we should take something as ubiquitous as sex, given the success rate of contraception hovering in the upper 90s but never 100%, and say that the man risks almost nothing while the woman risks her entire life, livelihood, etc., for the same behavior, which is simply cruel. That’s like saying, if a man drives a car and crashes it, he walks away, but if a woman drives and crashes a car, she has to pay a quarter of a million dollars, surrender part of her body for nine months, and then take responsibility for another living being for the rest of her life. The practical argument, here, is that we should probably come up with a better alternative that is not catastrophically disproportionate and unequal.
4) Does one’s “bodily sovereignty” include infringing on another body?
Frankly, no. No one is going to argue “bodily sovereignty” as an argument against eating meat or cutting down a tree, but animals and plants have bodies. “Bodily sovereignty” implies that someone is a moral actor (as some would argue animals are), meaning that they posses a will and a sense of self. A fertilized ovum has neither.
5) What kinds of discrimination are we okay with? Age? Race? Mental ability? Size? Level of Development? Location? Environmental? etc.
Without context, this question doesn’t make any sense to me. Example: I’m OK with discriminating such that people who become doctors have demonstrated the mental capacity and ability to practice medicine, but I am not OK with discriminating in terms of “mental ability” in any general sense.
6) Does the right to liberty, including the right to privacy, trump the right to life?
Sometimes. Example: during the American Revolution, the perceived right to liberty of the Colonials trumped the perceived right to life of the British soldiers. On the Amistad, the perceived right to the captives’ liberty trumped the perceived right to (some of) the slave-traders’ lives.
7) If its illegal manslaughter or murder to intentionally kill a preborn baby that the mother wants then should aborting an unwanted preborn baby count as legal manslaughter?
The question isn’t quite clear to me, but one could argue this case from the point of view of the woman’s bodily sovereignty. This does seem inconsistent if it is legally manslaughter to cause a miscarriage, say, but if abortion is legal. I don’t think the solution is to make abortion illegal, since then every miscarriage (25% of pregnancies) would result in a manslaughter investigation.
8) If abortion is legal manslaughter then would that not indicate the baby has some sense of personhood in the eyes of the law?
Given that situation, in the eyes of the law, yes.
9) It is currently illegal to assault and kill your pet dog, even though it is your property and it resides on your property and you may have not objection to killing it. This law reflects a moral value against animal abuse. But human preborns are at least animals, so isn’t it equally immoral to assault and kill a human preborn?
Not necessarily, no. Unlike a fertilized ovum (my answer to your insistence on the phrase “human preborn”, which is it self loaded and begging the question), a pet can experience pain physically and emotionally. A pet has a brain and nervous system and can suffer. A fertilized ovum is incapable of suffering, and will not be capable of suffering for a few months after fertilization, and even then, will not be as capable of suffering as a dog or cat for longer still.
10) If a mother has full sovereignty over a human preborn in utero, then does that mean people can own other human beings?
This is a ridiculous question on its face, at least to me. You have not demonstrated that a fertilized ovum is a “human preborn”, nor even defined how you are using “human”, and a “human preborn” may or may not be a legal and moral agent with legal and moral rights (you haven’t demonstrated that either). In stark contrast, a ‘human post-born’ does unarguably have legal and moral status (that is, very very few people would argue otherwise). I don’t think you’ve done the work for this question to make sense.
Additionally, this is ridiculous because of the nature of slavery, to which you are referring. The fertilized ovum/”human preborn”/zygote/embryo/blastocyst/etc. is in no way under the mother’s control physically. She cannot force it to do or not do anything, even if she wanted to. It has no conscious will for her to subvert or defy, at least not according to any research I’m aware of. In contrast, a person who is a slave is by definition forced to do and not do things. That’s the whole point of slavery, from what I can tell.
So I would say that this question is a poorly conceived red herring with regard to this discussion for a number of reasons. Including: not only does a mother not have full sovereignty over a “human preborn”, full sovereignty and ownership are not even equivalent things.
As a broadly prolife person do you predicate human rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness on humanity or do you demand some other basic criteria before a human being can be treated as broadly equal under the law? If some humans have no innate right to life, in your view, then that undermines your claim to “prolife” status.