This may sound pedantic, but I think this distinction is important. I agree with you that there are no sound arguments against abortion. That’s why I am pro-choice. But there are logical arguments against abortion. These are arguments which start with false premises and reason validly to false conclusions. Logic is of no help in dealing with arguments like that. You have got to use research to prove factually that those premises are false.
I had to do a lot of research of that sort when I taught a course on the philosophical issues related to abortion, and your article confirms most of what I discovered. The so-called evidence that abortion is bad for the mother is bogus. I also came to the same conclusion as you about third trimester abortions. They are the real moral dilemmas for the abortion issue, and both sides seem to ignore why they are so different from the silly “life begins at conception” arguments.
The problem is that the premises required for the most important arguments about abortion go into really hairy philosophical territory, where there are good but indecisive arguments on both sides. I am passionately pro-choice, but not because I think the anti-choice advocates are all liars and fools. There are people on both sides of this issue that think the answer is obvious, and can be found by consulting common sense and/or scientific fact. My course on abortion twas designed to destroy this self-confidence, by showing how confusing this topic is when you think clearly about it. That is the strongest argument for why this is really a religious question, and why the state has no business making this decision for anyone else. My uncertainty does not weaken my commitment to the pro-choice position. On the contrary, it is because the issues can’t be easily resolved either way that having an abortion must remain a matter of personal choice: Not because the question is simple but because it is too complicated for anyone to be sure what the right answer is.
This series of linked essays is based on the texts from my abortion course, and the discussions we had in class. My goal is to enable the reader to experience first hand just how difficult these questions are. At the end of that course, most of my students concluded that they were anti-abortion and pro-choice. It is my hope that paraphrasing our class discussions will help foster a level of tolerance which is regrettably lacking in the current public debates on this topic.
