I was reading a report today on Tonuya Rainey, a Miramar, FL woman, who forced her 16 year-old pregnant daughter to take abortion pills in order to terminate the fetus. When the daughter gave birth in the bathroom, Rainey put the 6 month-old fetus/infant in a bag and dumped it/him/her in the trash. Apparently, the daughter reported that the fetus/infant was moving its arms and legs and was breathing. The body was not recovered and authorities are uncertain as to whether the fetus/child was breathing or born dead. This news greatly disturbed me, as I’m sure it disturbs many people out there, and it brings to mind my usual argument on abortion, which goes something like this:

If the fetus is a human being, then he/she/it must be recognized as having human rights. Since my statement is conditional, and it must be conditional because humans do not have “absolute truth” regardless of what some persons believe (even if scriptures are absolutely true, human interpretation is flawed), I do not pretend to advocate for enacting far sweeping legislation that makes it legal or illegal nor do I claim that the act of fertilization confers on a cell (fertilized ovum) human rights. The technicalities I leave to the experts. More importantly, religion and faith should have no place in making this determination. Morality cannot be compulsory… that defeats the purpose of being moral.

But of course, the devil is in the details. At our current stage of technology, fetuses can live outside the mother’s body far earlier than naturally possible and the issue of viability is another headache… only God (or natural law, or random chance, or whatever force(s) govern the universe) knows what is viable or not. Once we establish a baseline argument as to what constitutes the beginning of human life, we can start delineating whether or not abortion is a violation of human rights or when we can consider abortion as being acceptable.

The problem I have with the pro-abortion argument is that it strongly affirms that it’s a women’s “choice” to do what she will with her own body. I understand that but to keep parroting that line, which I hear countless times used in abortion arguments, is to promote a homicidal idea… why do I say this? Because to affirm that basic right to ownership of other human beings (based on “privacy” in this case) as the determinant factor when dealing with human rights is to validate many crimes against humanity. Some examples include: if the prevailing idea is that black people are property, then violations of their rights would be acceptable under this idea, i.e. slavery; if the prevailing idea is that Jewish people are not human, then violations of their right would be acceptable, i.e. Nazi-ism; if property ownership were the final say in all matters, then I could collapse the roof on my own house killing my annoying roommates just because its my house… Of course, my arguments are extreme examples, but then again it was reasonable people who knocked down the first dominoes that led to terrible atrocities: I’m sure that there were reasonable people who thought that denying Jewish people property rights wouldn’t lead to the Holocaust, or that the buying and selling of slaves wouldn’t lead to a Civil War costing hundreds of thousands of lives, or that implementing Marx’s ideas on the redistribution of wealth wouldn’t lead to the deaths of millions of people… all in all, seemingly innocuous ideas can lead to unimaginable atrocities when they are taken too far.

In the case of Tonuya Rainey, I believe that she was convinced of her right over not only the life and decisions of her daughter (unarguably a human being), but also that, as a guardian, the right over the fetus/infant was hers as well, because it was her (daughter’s) body. This is because the prevailing idea is that a person has the right to “choose” what to do with their body (in this case, their child’s body). Were the prevailing idea that the fetus did have human rights if alive, I believe that a rational person would think twice before murdering.

The abortion issue can be boiled down to three important questions: what is the beginning of human life, does a person’s right to their own body supersede another’s human rights, and does the federal government have the authority to pass sweeping legislation over the whole country on this issue. On the first question, I would err on the side of sooner in the pregnancy rather than later. On the second, I do not believe, within reason, that I have the authority to violate anyone human rights, even at the cost of surrendering some freedom over my body. On the final question, I believe that the federal government should not have the final authority without reconciling itself with the highest authorities: the rights of the people and the truth. When the government does not have certainty that a universal rule is both correct and necessary, it should err on the side of freedom and allow states to determine their own fate. Note that religion has nothing to do with this… God’s law is resolved in God’s court, not Man’s. Though I do believe that every person has the right to vote their beliefs and their conscience. I base this opinion favoring life, not on faith in God but rather on my faith in God-given (or rather “Creator"-given as described in the Declaration of Independence) human rights… which is the faith of both secularists and non-secularists who believe in the vision of the Founding Fathers.

-AG