Letter to the Editor: Texas Abortion Law

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On September 23, The Exponent published an opinion piece titled, “America’s Regression on Women’s Rights.” The piece discussed and criticized a recent law passed in Texas that allows Texans to sue parties involved in abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The author’s arguments may be valid in a strictly legal sense, but, given the moral overtones of the piece, I do not believe it was written from a primarily legal perspective. This renders all arguments employed in the piece fallacious.

If euphemisms like “women’s rights” and “healthcare” do not beg the question at hand, they certainly obscure it. The morality of abortion has nothing to do with American courts and case law; it hinges exclusively on the status of unborn human life. If, from the moment of conception forward, human life possesses inherent dignity and value and individual humans are “persons” in the sense that they are entities possessing said dignity, abortion is most certainly not healthcare. It is the deliberate extermination of the most innocent and defenseless people in society. If, on the other hand, human life mysteriously acquires this dignity, value, and personhood only after exiting the womb or at some arbitrary intermediate stage of development inside it, abortion is morally neutral up to the point where these characteristics are conferred.

The status of unborn life is the real issue in contention, and to have any fruitful dialogue on abortion requires that it be acknowledged. Precedent, consensus, and anatomy do not establish truth or confer moral obligation. Pro-choice Americans would certainly (and rightly) scoff at the invocation of prior court decisions, public opinion, or skin color to maintain the Plessy v. Ferguson status quo of segregation and “separate but equal.” Pro-lifers must likewise disregard appeals to Roe v. Wade, the majority, and one’s reproductive organs when discussing the morality of abortion, and pro-choicers should ditch logical fallacies when advancing their position. This is not to say appeals to Roe and democratic rule cannot be valid in an exclusively legal argument, but it is to say that they are utterly unconvincing and invalid to anyone morally opposed to abortion.