The Bloodwood Tree

The Victorian Parliament are currently debating the “Abortion Law Reform Bill“. The main features are:

- that a Registered Medical Professional can perform an abortion without question up to 24 weeks (about 6 months pregnant).

- Abortions can still be performed after this time up until the time of birth if another professional (doctor or nurse) agrees that the woman’s “current and future physical, psychological and social circumstances” warrant it.

- If a registered health professional has a conscientious objection to the abortion, they have to state this up front and refer the woman to another professional that is known to not have any objections.

There are a lot of smokescreens in the abortion argument. The real issue is not actually a moral question of whether abortion is right or wrong, but 2 questions firstly scientific, then moral -

1) From a scientific point of view, are unborn babies human?

2) From a moral point of view is it right (perhaps under certain circumstances) to kill humans?

From a scientific point of view, the first question seems a little strange. I don’t know of anything in the animal kingdom that changes species with age. If I accidentally hit a kangaroo in my car, I check the pouch believing that if there is a joey there, it is a kangaroo. Because it is hairless and completely at my mercy doesn’t make it less of a kangaroo, and because we can’t physically see the baby doesn’t mean that it’s not a baby. The argument is used to arm teenage girls that want to have abortions, but by telling them to call their baby a foetus rather than a baby all it arms them with is denial. Do you disagree? Remember this is not a philosophical, moral or legal argument, it’s a biological one. The question is a simple one - are Homo sapiens still Homo sapiens if they are young or can’t be seen through the wall of the mother’s body? Are humans the only species on earth that changes species with age, or is this just a convenient argument?

The moral argument is more complex simply due to the fact that we don’t all share the same morals. While some believe that it is never justified to take another person’s life, others believe that it is OK in cases of war or if we think the other is bad enough to deserve the death penalty. Some take a kind of natural selection approach - the strong have the right to take other’s lives so long as their society is not offended and they receive enough benefit. Trade arrangements are a good example of this. By placing the right sanctions in place and using market power, many rich western countries are able to keep developing nations in crippling poverty with massive death tolls. The clinical language of “free markets” allows the perpetrators to free themselves of guilt, but the fact remains that if they had not pushed as hard for profit, hundreds of thousands would still be alive.

If unborn humans are still actually humans, then where does abortion fall in this argument? Clearly, no one can say that the unborn child has done some great wrong that deserves death; the argument is generally about the welfare of the mother or the wider family, sometimes the community. In the very small percentage where an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother due to birth difficulties etc, there is a dilemma as to who has the greatest right to live. If however most abortions in western nations are carried out to preserve the mother from issues such as post-natal depression, the shame and hardship of being a single mother or the inconvenience of having to give up a working career, then the question is: is taking another person’s life the only answer? Some point to the effectiveness of abortions in population control amongst the poor and where resources are scarce, but again, unless it can be shown biologically that babies are a different species, this is only talking about reducing the population by killing people.

Biblical morality is the antithesis to natural selection. Protection of the weakest is of highest priority, so while we should do everything within our power to care for single mothers and remove obstacles to their welfare, the highest priority goes to protection of the weakest, those who “cannot speak for themselves”. Jesus said “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet forfeits his own soul?” In the same way, how does a society show love to a pregnant teen by convincing her that it is OK to “treat her for pregnancy” as if it was like removing her appendix, then leave her with the knowledge in the back of her mind that she has taken the life of her own baby when her womb was supposed to be the safest place on earth? She may avoid some very difficult times, but at what cost?

This bill allows 2 people to decide that because giving birth may cause the mother emotional hardship, they have the right to take the life of her child up until the point of birth. If they were to wait a few hours until after the child was born, we would be horrified and call it the worst kind of murder; but our society is being asked to suspend this moral character that instinctively cares for the weak. 24,000 children die every day of easily preventable diseases, but 126,000 children are killed by abortion every day. That’s 1 every 0.7 seconds. If humans are still humans when they’re young and can’t be seen, then this is almost certainly the highest cause of infant mortality on earth.