I’m moving through Randy Alcorn’s book “Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments.” Carol Everett, author of “The Scarlet Lady: Confessions of a Successful Abortionist,” says the following about Alcorn’s book: “Must reading for every citizen in our nation–prolife or prochoice.” I agree and encourage you to read the book, even though I’m quoting much of it in these postings. Next I’m going to move with Alcorn from the topic of “Arguments Concerning Life, Humanity, and Personhood,” to a section he entitles “Arguments Concerning Rights and Fairness.” The Prochoice Argument: “Every woman should have control over her own body. Reproductive freedom is a basic right.” Prolife Answer: Alcorn makes the point that any civilized society restricts certain freedoms so that innocent people can be safe. We don’t have a right to exercise the freedom of using our bodies to beat people to death for example. We all (mentally sound people)agree that rape is not acceptable, but with the argument that we have a right to do what we want with our bodies we run into issues such as rape and many others that tell us naturally that there has to be some limitations to the position of bodily rights. Alcorn points out that statisitics show that “750,000 females each year do not have control over their bodies. Nearly fifteen million females have died from abortion since it was legalized.” After establishing, I believe, that the overwhelming majority of the medical community and science community believes a unique individual life begins at conception, I believe the following quote from Alcorn to be right on target: “A female who is killed by abortion no longer has a body or a life, and will never have the privilege of controlling one.” Alcorn notes that prolifers don’t oppose the right to reproduce, but oppose “the right to kill a child after reproduction has taken place.” He states “‘Abortion rights’ are not reproductive rights, but child-killing rights.” Even prochoice philosopher Mary Anne Warren admits that if a real life is in the mother a person has no right to kill the baby: “The fact that restricting access to abortion has tragic side effects does not, in itself, show that the restrictions are unjustified, since murder is wrong regardless of the consequences of prohibiting it; and the appeal to the right to control one’s body, which is generally construed as a property right, is at best a feeble argument for the permissibility of abortion. Mere ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property.” Alcorn also points out that a woman’s “control” over her own body should be taken before pregnancy. He states “Except in the rare case of pregnancy by rape, a child-carrying woman has made choices of control over her body that have resulted in the pregnancy. She has chosen whether to have sex and whether to use birth control. The mother’s first two matters of control–sex and birth control–were personal and private. The issue of abortion is not personal or private. It directly involves the life of another person, and therefore becomes the concern of a decent society.” Lastly, Alcorn makes a point that many women may not have considered. He states “It is demeaning to a woman’s body and self-esteem to regard pregnancy as an unnatural, negative, and ‘out of control’ condition.” He goes on to quote one feminist group that stated “When women feel that a pregnant body is a body out of control, deviant, diseased, they are internalizing attitudes of low self-esteem toward the female body. These attitudes contradict the rightful feminist affirmation of pregnancy as a natural bodily function which deserves societal respect and accomodation.” Grace and understanding to us all, Pastor Kevin Boone
Tags: abortion
