1) Injustice Is No Cure For Injustice
Abortion-choice advocates often point to how women are treated unjustly, having a long history of sexism through the ages where women were marginalized by chauvanistic men and misogynistic society; moreso if they are poor and minority women. Supposedly, abortion offers one means of helping to empower marginalized women who may also be oppressed for their economic status or race. But whatever injustice might be foisted upon women it is no answer to offer up more injustice in its place. Killing tiny human beings is more injustice. The cure for injustice is justice, not more injustice. Whoever thinks injustice cures injustice, they are not terribly interested in justice anyway.
2) Abortion Displaces Oppression Without Resolution.
If you take money from your right pocket and put it in your left pocket, you are no richer than before. Likewise, if we take oppression against women and trade it for oppressing children-in-utero, we are no more ethically rich than before. Instead, we have added foolishness to our immorality having accepted a short-term answer (terminate the pregnancy) to a bevy of long-term problems (dehumanization, weaker families, eugenics, etc.).
3) It is No Liberation To Kill One Class of Human Beings For The Benefit of Another.
We cannot have sincere solidarity on human rights if in that sense of “human rights” we are advancing the rights of one class of humanity (women) by destroying the lives of another class of humanity (children-in-utero). In the case of abortion we are dealing with willful, self-interested discrimination. This discrimination is on the basis of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependence (the SLED argument). But their nature as human beings is beneath dispute, since they are literally homo sapiens. Abortion policy literally excuses aggressive violations of human rights to the point of death over a million times a year in the U.S. or about 1 every 31 seconds.
4) Legalized Abortion Has Made The Safest Place In The World The Most Dangerous Place On Earth
The statistics for abortion are mind boggling. Almost 58 million killed in the U.S. since 1973 and that’s not counting illegal and unreported cases. Worldwide the number is over 1.3 billion. In the U.S. the leading causes of death are heart disease and cancer and they are only around 600,000 deaths yearly, but the abortion rate is easily twice that yearly. Meanwhile, the mothers womb is designed to be warm, nurturing, natural and safe. It should be the safest place for a child, but abortion makes it a hostile holding ground before over a million of them of them are killed each year. One child is aborted for every 4 children born.
5) Abortion Trades Old-school Sexism for New-school Sexism
Early feminists (called 1st wave feminists) in the late 19th and early 20th century almost universally detested abortion. Besides the fact that medical technology hadn’t yet advanced to make abortion very safe for the mother, there was a deeper, more socially astute reason. They worried that abortion access would liberate men to use women for casual sex with no concern for romance, relationship, commitment, marriage, and family (for example, see here). They recognized that most women still wanted a faithful husband, healthy marriage, happy home, and mutually reared children. Abortion was another way for men to “cut and run,” ditching responsibility as fathers or (potential) husbands. Women then would be left holding the baby with no income and no hubby. Modern movements have helped women to enter the university, the work force, and most every public sphere of influence. And these are great! But there has been no strong and comparable movement to hold men to a balanced measure of responsibility. Women may have moved into the workforce but men have not moved into the kitchen. Women can now hold the check book, and the car keys, and but they are still left holding the frying pan and the baby. With the preponderance of single-motherhood and divorce, the plight of women has, in many ways worsened. Gains empowering women have been muffled by losses in safety and security. Abortion-choice tries to solve the disparity between men and women not by holding men to the duties of husband and father, or reinforcing family–both of which can lend greater safety and security to women–but instead by “empowering” women to make the same mistake as men: “cut and run.” Women and men alike can now ditch their child as soon as they find out about him or her.
Most all measures for healthy traditional families legitimize the concerns of those 1st wave feminists. In this age of legal abortion, divorce rates, cohabitation (“living together” unmarried) rates, teen pregnancy, pregnancy out of wedlock, domestic abuse rates are all painfully high, each having risen significantly since the 1970’s when abortion was legalized (see here, here, here, and here). These stats suggest that women’s “liberation” has been compromised by the law of unforeseen consequences. And to these can be added the barbaric practice of sex-selective abortion. Sexism is legally fortified in current abortion-choice policy since women can abort their babies in all states in the U.S. for such wicked reasons as it’s gender or its race.
Intelligent Christian Faith 
None of these are compelling reasons until you make a clear case that a single fertilized ovum is a human being in the way that you and I are human beings. I have yet to see such a clear case made, but I can’t rule it out. As it stands, though, as long as the argument is rooted in the idea that a single fertilized egg is morally, and legally, indistinguishable from a 3 year old for example, it just won’t hold much weight. If the case is made that a single fertilized egg, at the instant of fertilization, becomes fully a human being in every moral and legal sense, you haven’t solved all of the problems that brings up (what is the legal and moral standing of a human being who has no nervous system, no limbs, no will, no mind, can only be detected with a powerful microscope, has a 25% of being aborted by the woman’s reproductive system, etc.) but the potential weight for the above arguments is there at least.
Doug, I’m not aware of any proof beyond a reasonable doubt that killing biological human beings is ethically justified on some additional grounds of age, level of development, location, or environmental. In other words, do you have a strong rebuttal to the “If you don’t KNOW then don’t shoot” objection?
It seems intrinsically diacriminatory to consider one developmental level of human beings as worthy of death for no other reason than their inconvenience to another empowered class of human beings.
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate the compliment. Sometimes I wonder why people have such confidence in the moral ability of evolutionary nature given it’s penchant for killing everything.
I was brought here by researching you after reading your excellent review of the movie “Hail Satan?” It would not be difficult to google my name to find some of my writings on this topic as well.
I respect that you have the right to your opinions, but I question as to if you want to impose this particular opinion unto others via legislation or Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
There are so many holes in your assertion that humans prior to birth are a class of humanity that merit and deserve rights, or that denying these imaginary rights is a form of oppression.
If you sincerely believe this beyond providing a false platform for debate (which I sincerely doubt) my first question would be as to why you are focusing upon abortion and apparently ignoring in-vitro fertilization, which annually terminates approximately 81,000 zygotes. I have many other questions, but this seems like a good starting point. (Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9772233/1.7-million-human-embryos-created-for-IVF-thrown-away.html)
Hey David, thanks for doing your research and going to see for yourself what this Christian apologist has to say. And thank you for the civil response. It’s always a pleasure to have a gracious discussion over important topics, even if we disagree.
It sounds like you view abortion-choice as unimposing, as if it’s not an ideology that yields coercive threat against others. I don’t grant that. It’s fatally imposing on innocent human beings. I’m not assuming here that fetal humans are “persons” (though I think they are). We don’t need to know whether fetal humans are persons just to that killing innocent, non-threatening, humans is wasteful, destructive, harmful, and fatal to fellow human bbeings. Now, to be fair, I understand the pro-life position to be imposing too. But it’s no less than any other basic of humanitarian ethics (i.e., don’t assault others, don’t hurt children, don’t kill babies, don’t destroy family members, etc.). I’m not interested in theocracy any more than you are. I just find the pro-life position to be FAR less imposing than the current abortion-choice policy.
As for in-vitro, you seem to be assuming that I don’t have any problem with that. I think most in-vitro clinics operate in a terribly destructive, wasteful, and unethical manner. They are often comparable to abortion-clinics, in that they needlessly encourage creating new human life, with no intention to protect those embryonic humans, but rather to kill the vast majority of tiny humans they help create. If someone with a law background and some good scientific and legal knowledge about the subject were to put forward a responsible bill limiting the number of embryos created in the lab to ONLY those that will be implanted then I could support that. What about you? Would you support a measure to reduce the wasteful destruction of human life among in vitro clinics?
I don’t know what you mean by “providing a valse platform for debate.” Would you clarify please? I’d suggest human rights predicate on humanity, and fetal humans already have that. We can argue that point, but I don’t think it’s fair and reasonable to ASSUME that premise is false without disproving it. After all, the only thing that born humans share in perfectly equal measure is our humanity, yet we are somehow “equal” in dignity and worth in the eyes of the law. Unless our equality is grounded in our humanity – i.e., biologically homo sapiens – then I don’t know how we could continue to hold to that old-fashioned idea that “all [humans] are created equal.”
Also, you may not know this yet, but I tend to develop my pro-life case in a secular manner and without dwelling on “personhood”, unlike many other prolifers. If you think there exists a right to kill, entailed within the rights of bodily autonomy, then make your case. I don’t assume bodily autonomy includes the moral privilege for mother’s with children to kill their own, innocent, defenseless, non-threatening child-in-utero. I develop my case here [in the link] in a debate with two pro-choicers. I’d love to hear your feedback. My opening statement begins at the 30min mark.