Bad Abortion Arguments

Over the past 48 hours, I have collected every bad argument regarding the issue of abortion that I have seen on social media, from various pundits, and even from our own “president.” As a public service, I have listed them all here, along with my response to each.

Bad Argument #1: Roe v. Wade is the Law of the Land!

Just as a basic civics refresher, federal laws in the United States of America are created by the legislative branch of our federal government (i.e. congress.) This is literally enumerated in the very first sentence of our Constitution (following the Preamble.)

Article I, Section 1: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

The judicial branch (i.e. the Supreme Court) does not, and (constitutionally) cannot, create laws. They can only interpret laws and decide whether or not those laws are consistent with our Constitution. (See Article III of that same document.)

When the Supreme Court issues a ruling on the constitutionality of a law, that ruling does, in effect, become the “law of the land,” but this does not mean it is permanently ensconced forever. A Supreme Court ruling can be overruled by a new law passed by congress. It can be overruled by a new amendment. It can also be overruled by the Supreme Court themselves – which is exactly what has happened with Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court has overturned the rulings of previous courts multiple times throughout its history. The most famous example, arguably, was their Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954, which effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of the 1896 Supreme Court. That “law of the land,” which allowed states to practice segregation, stood longer (58 years) than Roe (49 years.)

Bad Argument #2: A fetus is just a clump of cells, so it doesn’t have any rights.

The “clump of cells” argument went out the window many years ago, when we began to better understand the concepts of genetics and DNA. A fetus is, in fact, a human being. We know this because it shares 100-percent of its DNA with other humans. This is science. “Clump of cells” is nothing more than an excuse to end a human life while pretending that it isn’t a human life.

I had an interesting discussion with a leftist earlier today in which he claimed that there is a big difference between a fetus and a child that is brought to term by parents that “want it.” In this way, he turned a fetus into the quintessential Schrodinger’s Cat, in which it can be both human and inhuman at the same time, and its true state of being is entirely determined by the feelings of the observer.

In this day and age where men can become women, women can become men, and human beings can become cats or babies, through their sheer willpower, this argument above is not surprising, sadly enough.

As for whether or not a fetus has rights, nothing in the Constitution addresses this question…which is why the Supreme Court will (probably) overturn Roe v. Wade.

Bad Argument #3: This overruling is a violation of the right to privacy!

Our so-called “president” and fearless leader, Joe Biden, made this argument earlier today:

The draft opinion calls into question the fundamental right to privacy – the right to make personal choices about marriage, whether to have children, how to raise them.

First, it is worth noting that there is no such “right to privacy” law in the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that the state cannot deprive any person of liberty, which can be (and has been) vaguely interpreted to include privacy. However, there are two types of privacy, and abortion isn’t relevant to either type.

The first type of privacy is protecting your information from others. The right to keep an abortion secret has never been in jeopardy, before or after this ruling, so this type of privacy does not apply.

The other type of privacy is the ability for a person to make her own choices. This right only exists to the extent that the person’s choices do not infringe on anyone else’s rights. Abortion presents a competition of rights between the mother and her baby. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of this type of privacy in matters of school choice, school instruction, marriage, forced sterilization, and contraception, among many other examples. None of those cases involve the life of another human being, which is directly impacted by the choice being made.

Bad Argument #3: This is about women’s rights! Men shouldn’t be able to make laws about women’s bodies!

Our own illustrious V.P., Kackling Kamala, weighed in on this argument yesterday:

How dare they tell a woman what she can or can’t do with her own body!

That is rich coming from a woman who advocated for forced vaccinations not so long ago.

This tired old argument has been made for half a century (at least.) If a person cannot make a law that determines what another person can do with his/her “own body,” then hardly any laws would exist at all. If you decide to rob a bank with your own body, the government should be able to determine whether you can or not. If you decide to commit murder, the same applies. Abortion is an act of intentionally ending a human life. By definition, that is murder. The government should be able to decide if you can use your own body to commit murder.

The left does not like to call abortion “murder,” despite its obvious technical truth. Not all murder, however, is illegal. If a person kills another in self-defense, that is justified and legal. If a person kills another in the course of war, that is also justified and legal. If a person kills another as a form of ultimate punishment determined by the state, that, too, is justified and legal.

We can (and have for decades) quibble over whether or not murder, in the case of abortion, is morally-justified and should be legal. The entire point of the Court’s ruling is that this is a subjectively moral decision by nature, is not addressed by the Constitution, and should be left to the people of each state and their representatives.

Bad Argument #4: 70% of Americans are pro-choice!

If this is true (and it is only true if you play games with the definition of “pro-choice”), then there should be no problem allowing those Americans to vote for elected representatives who share their view on this issue. Right? What am I missing?

Bad Argument #5: Religious zealots should not control women’s bodies! This is just like Handmaid’s Tale! Religion has taken over government!

Those of us with common sense know that religion has nothing to do with the issue of abortion. It is an issue of science and morality. The science clearly defines when life begins. The morality determines the conditions under which we should be legally allowed to end that life. Religion may dictate morality for some people, but not all. There are many non-religious people who have strong opinions on the morality of abortion (one way or the other.)

As for Handmaid’s Tale, it is always interesting to me that leftists claim to be so disturbed by that TV show (based on a novel), and yet seem to have no problem whatsoever with the religion-led governments in the Middle East that actually subjugate women, allow for them to be raped, and force them to become pregnant against their will. Handmaid’s Tale scenarios are happening right this minute, not only in Sharia-Muslim-majority countries, but in the Uighur concentration camps in China. If these people who are so concerned about Handmaid’s Tale are truly concerned, they could start by boycotting Disney.

Bad Argument #6: This ruling is racist!

Ah, yes. When in doubt, always call something you don’t like racist. This is the way of the modern-day leftist. This argument is especially entertaining because we all know abortion kills four times as many black babies as white babies. We are supposed to believe, apparently, that killing fewer black babies is “racist.” Okay, then.

Bad Argument #7: Women will die!!

Without the ability to hire a medical professional to kill their babies, we are told by leftists that women will perform these procedures themselves in “back alleys,” which will lead to their deaths. This “coat hanger” myth was made popular in the years leading up to the Roe decision. It has been thoroughly debunked countless times. In fact, the man who was responsible for creating this myth, Dr. Bernard Nathanson (co-founder of NARAL) has openly admitted that his numbers were fictional, designed solely to sway public opinion.

This myth expects us all to believe that every abortion performed today takes place in a clean medical facility, conducted by trained medical professionals. Those of us who have paid attention to the news over the past decades know better. Hundreds of botched abortions happen every year – and those are only the ones that are reported. The story of Kermit Gosnell is not a standalone example, horrifyingly enough.

Further, America does not exist alone on its own island. We can look to other nations where abortion was outlawed or drastically restricted and see that women’s health actually improved in those nations. It is worth noting that the U.S. is one of only seven advanced nations on the planet that allows elective abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy.

Bad Argument #8: Republicans don’t care about kids after they’re born!

This argument is ridiculous on so many levels, it would take an entire article of its own to cover them all. The most glaringly stupid premise of this argument is that because Republicans expect and want people to pay for their own stuff, that means we “don’t care.”

The argument goes something like this. If you don’t pay for someone else’s food, then you want them to starve. If you don’t pay for someone else’s housing, then you want them to be homeless. If you don’t pay for someone else’s healthcare, then you want them to die. If you don’t pay for someone else’s childcare, then you don’t care about their children. On and on it goes, down the line, on every single issue imaginable.

Nonsense. One can simultaneously care about a person and believe that person is far better off providing for themselves than to have others do it for them. These ideas are not mutually-exclusive. Nor do these ideas exclude the temporary “safety net” for which Republicans have advocated since the time of Lincoln. I would argue that Republicans care MORE about people than Democrats, as our solutions of self-reliance benefit people more than their solutions of dependence.

Bad Argument #9: Pro-Becky.

There is a cut-and-pasted meme circulating around social media that begins:

I’m not pro-murdering babies.

I’m pro-Becky, who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life-sustaining organs.

I’m pro-Susan, who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.

On and on (and on) it goes, citing the absolute worst-case, rarest, fringiest, scenarios possible in which an abortion could seem justified. There are a few obvious points to make about this meme. The first obvious point is that, while the author claims to be opposed to murdering babies, he/she is clearly okay with murdering some babies. As long as we are all speaking the same language, and we aren’t couching our language with deceptive terms for murdering babies, I’m okay with that. Kudos to the author for that.

Second, it is a well-worn tactic by abortion advocates to cite the rarest scenarios imaginable to justify their position. The “gotcha moment” happens when you hypothetically agree to allow abortion in those incredibly-rare cases, and then ask if abortion should also be allowed when the criteria doesn’t fit. Inevitably, their answer is yes. Pretending that the situations listed in this meme represent the majority of abortion decisions is laughably deceptive.

The numbers aren’t precise, but the best measurements we have suggest that less than one-percent of all abortions are performed on women who were raped. According to the State of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, there were over 70,000 abortions performed in 2018, and just 101 (0.14%) were due to rape. Only eight (0.01%) were due to incest. Only 194 abortions (0.28%) were due to “a life endangering physical condition.” Only 1,034 (1.5%) were due to the “physical health of the mother that is not life endangering.”

In other words, less than 2% of all abortions in Florida during that time were caused by the scenarios mentioned in that meme. The vast, vast, vast, majority (98%) of abortions are caused by various degrees of inconvenience. 75% of those abortions were classified as “elective,” and another 20% were due to “social or economic reasons.” You may believe that it’s morally-acceptable to kill a baby because the mother can’t afford to keep it. That is a debate worth having. Instead, the left attempts to get bogged down by ridiculously-rare scenarios that have nothing to do with almost all abortion decisions.

With the decision on the legality of abortion soon to be punted back to the states where it belongs, “Becky” and “Susan” could still get their abortions if the voters of their states decide that these rare conditions are valid exceptions to the rule. The Supreme Court’s ruling does not change their fates one iota.

Bad Argument #10: The Slippery Slope.

I saved the worst, and most annoying, for last. I would estimate that the majority of arguments I have seen and heard over the past two days employ the “slippery slope” fallacy. Leftists insist that this ruling will open the door for (among countless other things) banning birth control, ending gay marriage, ending interracial marriage (sorry Justice Clarence Thomas!), overturning Brown v. BOE, and – I swear, someone actually Tweeted this today – ending the right of women to vote!

The most disgusting slippery slope argument I heard was from – surprise, surprise! – our fearless leader, President Unity. Our “president” has a nasty habit of using highly-inflammatory hyperbole and demagoguery to describe things he doesn’t like. For example, when he called Georgia’s election integrity laws “Jim Crow 2.0.” Or when he described Florida’s parental rights law as “Don’t Say Gay.” The list is practically endless. He did it again today, completely fabricating hyperbolic scenarios from pure fantasy:

What happens if you have states change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit? The way the decision is written? What are the next things that are gonna be attacked? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that has existed in American history.

Note to self: take a breath. Count to ten.

This may sound ridiculous if you are a regular reader of this column, but I tend to give Biden too much benefit of doubt. Seriously. Stop laughing. When he stammers and blabbers and says ridiculous – oftentimes racist – things, I chalk that up to being a demented old man who doesn’t know what he’s saying. When he makes unbelievably, inconceivably-stupid, decisions over and over again, I assume that he isn’t actually making those decisions. He’s nothing more than a figurehead. The real decisions are being made by people behind the scenes, who tug on his puppet strings.

In this case, I cannot give him the benefit of doubt. When he says such insulting, hateful, vile, things about half the country – including over 74 million American voters – it isn’t because he’s demented, and it isn’t because someone told him to say it. It is simply because he is a truly disgusting piece-of-trash human being. If you doubt that assessment in any way, simply YouTube some of the old clips from his career as a senator. He has always been this way. This “lovable old grandpa” persona that some folks on the left (and right!) seem to have is a mirage. He is an absolutely reprehensible person, through and through.

His note at the end about “extreme” political organizations is especially timely, given that violent groups of leftists have been rioting in the streets for two days (and counting), destroying property and assaulting police officers. Biden calls Republicans “extreme” because we support the idea of the state legislatures creating laws instead of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, his supporters are out in the streets – yet again – committing violence in the cause of denying the democratic process. Which group is “extreme” again?

In order for any of these hysterical slippery-slope scenarios to happen, the Supreme Court would have to erase a century (or more) of established laws. They would need to effectively erase most of the Bill of Rights. They would need to strike down every discrimination law on the books and wipe away the equal protection clause.

Leftists can be very unserious people, prone to hysterical fits of rage over things that simply aren’t true, but do any of them – Biden included – actually believe the nonsense that pours out of their pie holes? Or are they just whipping themselves into a frenzy to increase voter turnout in November? Once again, I will give them the benefit of doubt and assume it’s the latter.

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Justice Samuel Alito’s draft is 67 pages in length, not including the appendix. No one in his right mind would ever read it for fun, and so that is just what I did. Below, I have summarized it to the best of my ability so that you don’t have to block out the time to read it yourself. Consider this another public service from your favorite (and humble) Substack writer.

Justice Alito began by noting that the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973 drew an arbitrary line at viability (the end of second trimester) without explaining why. At the time Roe was decided, thirty states prohibited abortion at all stages. Roe struck down those laws in all states without a Constitutional basis for doing so. Justice Byron White called this “an exercise of raw judicial power.”

In 1992 (Planned Parenthood v. Casey), the Court decided that stare decisis obligated them to follow the law even if it was wrong, as it would undermine respect for the Court and the rule of law if overturned. However, in the Casey case, the Court threw out the trimester scheme of Roe and replaced it with a rule under which states were forbidden to adopt any regulation that imposed an “undue burden” on the “right” to abortion. (With no clear definition of “undue burden.”)

Since the Casey ruling, twenty-six states have expressly asked the Court to overrule Roe. Opponents asked the Court to reaffirm both Roe and Casey. The Court ultimately decided that Roe and Casey must be overturned. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion,” Alito wrote, “and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely – the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In order for abortion to be a “right,” those who make this claim must show where this right implicitly exists within the text of the Constitution. Roe held that this right exists as a function of the right to privacy, which is also not mentioned in the Constitution. Roe claimed that this right emanates from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

“Roe expressed the feeling that the Fourteenth Amendment was the provision that did the work,” wrote Alito, “but its message seemed to be that the abortion right could be found somewhere in the Constitution and that specifying its exact location was not of paramount importance.”

As to the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection clause, Alito wrote:

The regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny unless the regulation is a mere pretext designed to effect an invidious discrimination against members of one sex or the other.

In other words, the abortion issue is not a women’s issue simply because only women can give birth. There are other overriding factors involved; namely, the life of the child.

Regarding the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, Alito wrote that this clause includes two categories of rights: those guaranteed by the first eight amendments, and fundamental rights that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. The Court decides which category a right belongs by asking whether the right is “deeply rooted in our history and traditions” and whether it is “essential to our nation’s scheme of ordered liberty.”

The Court examined numerous prior cases in which this determination was made for various rights, and determined that abortion does not fall into either category of protected rights. No such right to abortion ever existed until the latter part of the 20th century. Not only was it not a right, but it was a crime up until then. “Roe either ignored or misstated this history,” Alito wrote, “and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis.” When the Fourteenth Amendment passed, abortion at any stage was illegal in three-quarters of the states.

Alito cites numerous historical examples from American and British laws in which abortion was a criminal act. He mentions that early American laws that drew a distinction for legal abortion before “quickening” (i.e. the mother feeling the baby move inside her) were written at a time when there were no scientific methods available to detect pregnancy in its early stages, and thus no evidence of life. Regardless, those laws referring to quickening were abandoned during the 19th century. It is obvious that the “right” to abortion is not deeply-rooted in our history and traditions. The contrary is true.

“Our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right [to abortion] does not undermine them in any way,” Alito wrote, noting that the states may still make their own decisions about the morality and legality of abortion. The Constitution has no say in the matter.

Stare decisis, Alito notes, does not mean that an abuse of judicial authority must be followed forever. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” wrote Alito. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

The Court has overruled many previous rulings in its history. If they had not done so, Alito wrote, our country as we know it would be unrecognizable.

Roe was on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided, and Casey perpetuated its errors…the Court usurped the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people.

Ominously enough, Justice Alito recognized that this decision would not be handled well by certain people. He addressed this issue toward the end of his draft.

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision. We can only do our job, which is to interpret the law, apply longstanding principles of stare decisis, and decide this case accordingly.

The draft ends on this note:

We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

The judgment of the Fifth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.