Is Pregnancy Like Forced Organ Donation?

The idea that forced organ donation and pregnancy are analogous has been around a long time. The pro-aborts even seem to think it's a "gotcha question." Their argument goes something like this:

Suppose you have a father who has a child who is dying and needs a kidney, and the father has a compatible kidney. Should the father be forced to give the child a kidney to save the child's life? Should the right to life of the child take precedence over the right to bodily autonomy of the father? If no father can be forced to give up an organ for his child, that means the right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life of the child. If that is true, then a mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life of her unborn child and she has a right to abort.

 

At first glance, this is a powerful argument. Most of us instinctively recoil at the idea of being forced to donate an organ and don't think government should be forcing us to do so. We know that volunteering to donate an organ is a noble and praiseworthy act, but don't think anyone should be forced to give an organ against their will. The pro-aborts want us to see pregnancy in this way as well. They want us to see continuing a pregnancy as a noble and selfless act, but one that should not be forced on anyone.

Unfortunately for the pro-aborts, pregnancy and organ donation are dissimilar in several key ways, and thus their argument fails.
 

Most importantly, pregnancy is not like forced organ donation because consent to sex is consent to pregnancy. When a woman engages in sex, she consents to caring for any child that is created through her actions.  See this post for more on this argument. Because consent to sex is consent to pregnancy, pregnancy, in the vast majority of cases, would be akin to voluntary organ donation, not forced organ donation.

Of course, there are several other reasons that pregnancy is not like organ donation (even voluntary organ donation) which also negate the analogy.

In the case of organ donation, the donated organ is permanently removed from the donor's body so that the donor then lacks the function of that organ for the rest of his life. In pregnancy, this is not the case. The growing unborn child does not consume any organ of the mother or otherwise remove it from her body. In fact, rather than removing a body part and preventing its function, pregnancy involves using an organ (the womb) as it was designed to be used.

So on the one hand, we have permanently diminished body functioning and loss of an organ and on the other we have a temporary condition in which an organ is simply used as it is meant to be used. They are not the same thing at all.

In addition to that profound difference, organ donation always, and by design, puts the donor at risk for serious future health problems. Apart from the risks of the surgery itself, lacking a kidney means that the filtering of the blood will be less efficient and that any future kidney failure will leave the donor in a position where they have no working kidney remaining. Pregnancy, by contrast, in its normal case, does not leave the woman at risk for serious health problems. While it is certainly true that some women have increased health risks during or because of pregnancy, this is not the norm and these cases should be dealt with separately. It is not the case that pregnancy inherently and unavoidably produces a decline in body functioning as donating a kidney does.

Yet another dissimilarity is that a father with a sick child did not cause his child to be in need of a kidney. If the father had beaten his child until his kidney failed, making him the one responsible for the child's need for a kidney, then the father would have the responsibility to make amends by giving his kidney to the child. However, this is almost never the case. The kidney failure of the child is not the fault of the father.  In pregnancy, on the other hand, the mother's actions in choosing to engage in sex caused the child to be created in such a situation that he needs the care of her womb. She is the reason for his need and should be expected to fulfill her responsibility to meet that need.

Not only are pro-aborts incorrectly claiming that pregnancy and organ donation are similar, but they are also, by implication, claiming that abortion is like refusing to donate a kidney. Their claim is that just as a person has every right to refuse to donate an organ from their body, they also have a right to "terminate a pregnancy" by abortion. But abortion is not analogous to refusing to donate a kidney. Abortion is not simply refusing to continue a pregnancy. The intent of an abortion is to purposely kill a pre-born child. A parent who does not donate a kidney to their dying child is not doing so out of a motive to kill. An abortion, on the other hand, is not simply allowing an unborn child to die of natural causes, but is an active act of killing. The death of the child is not a by-product but the entire point of an abortion.

Because of these many fatal flaws, the analogy of forced organ donation and pregnancy fails. It is not the same thing to force a parent to give up a kidney for their dying child as to "force" a woman to continue a pregnancy rather than kill her child through abortion. Abortion is not like refusing to donate a kidney. There is no logical or ethical requirement that a parent go to the extraordinary lengths of giving up a piece of their body for a sick child. Parents have a responsibility to provide normal care for their children, but not to take extreme measures or place themselves in danger. There is, however, a logical and ethical requirement that a woman who chooses to engage in an act that creates a child should be expected to provide normal care for that child - which includes a normal, healthy pregnancy.

900 Medical Professionals Claim that Abortion is Never Necessary to Save a Woman's Life

According to this article, there have been nearly 900 doctors and other medical professionals, so far, who have signed the Dublin Declaration, which states that abortion is never medically necessary to save a woman's life.

The full text of the Dublin Declaration reads as follows:

“As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn child – is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. 

We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child. 

We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.”

The fact that almost 900 medical professionals have signed this document is strong testimony that abortion is not health care and that abortion does not need to be legal in order to protect women's lives.

We have written about abortion for the life of the mother before. If abortion ever was necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman, that is the ONLY case where it would ever be acceptable. However, abortion to save a woman's life does not in any way justify any other form of abortion. But the "life of the mother" argument assumes that abortion might sometimes be necessary to save a woman's life. There is increasing evidence that this is not the case and that it is never necessary to purposely end the life of an unborn child in order to save his mother's.

Richard Dawkins on the Morality of Abortion

Recently, prominent atheist Richard Dawkins offered his opinion on whether or not one should abort a baby with Down Syndrome:

@InYourFaceNYer Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 20, 2014

There is no need to recount the entire thing since the story is widely available (here is one source). So I will only focus on the content of his tweet.

First of all, you cannot abort someone who has not already been brought into this world. Conception produces a new, genetically distinct human individual who has a body of his very own. When one commits abortion, it is this individual who is killed. This individual already exists. Birth is only one event in the life on an individual, and biologically speaking, that event is less significant to one's body than adolescence.

Second, as an atheist, Dawkins has no basis upon which to suggest that any action is "immoral." Sure, he can say that something is good or bad, but morality requires an objective moral law and a source for that moral law, and Dawkins believes that no such thing actually exists.

Dawkins has also stated long ago that killing babies after they are born is acceptable, too. At least that's consistent with his religious worldview. It's insane, but consistent. Here's a good response by scientist Jonathan Sarfati.

Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic to Stay Open due to Court Ruling

According to this news article, a US Court of Appeals ruled that a new law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital cannot be implemented because it would cause the last abortion clinic in the state to close and, thus, interfere with a woman's "constitutional right to end her pregnancy by abortion" within the state.

Of course, someone should explain to this court that there is no "Constitutional right" to end a pregnancy by abortion. Not once is there any mention of abortion in the Constitution. Not once is there ever a guarantee that a mother has a right to kill her child. In fact, the Constitution says precisely the opposite.

The 5th Amendment says that "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

The 14th Amendment similarly states that "No State shall...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Since a new human life begins at fertilization and all humans are persons, the Constitution says that these pre-born humans cannot be deprived of life without due process of law or denied equal protection of the law. Unfortunately, our court system does not recognize this straightforward reading of the Constitution and is denying the rights of the unborn.

The other issue is that the law in question did not seek to ban abortion, but merely changed the regulations for abortion clinics in order to protect the health of women. So not only did this court ruling fail to protect the unborn, it failed to protect women from sub-standard health practitioners who ought not to be practicing medicine on anyone. What this court decided, then, was that it is so important that women be able to get an abortion conveniently (without going out of state) that we ought not to let concerns about how safe it is for her get in the way.

So much for the liberals' claim that they want abortion to be safe. They don't care if it's safe, as long as it's readily available.

13-Year-Old Girl in UK Forced by Judge to Have an Abortion

According to this article in the Huffington Post, a 13-year-old girl in the UK was ordered by a judge to have an abortion, which has since been carried out. The girl is mentally disabled and said to have the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. In spite of her very clear indications that she did not want an abortion and the testimony of a professional psychiatrist that an abortion would be emotionally damaging for her and that she would see it as an assault, the judge ruled that an abortion was in her best interest. In his words: "Leaving to one side her own wishes and feelings, the preponderance of all the evidence is clear that it would be in her best interests to have a termination."

So now it's not even about a woman's choice, I guess. Now that we have defined the unborn to be non-persons and made it legally and socially acceptable to kill them at will, our society now sees killing an unborn child as health care for the mother and of no more significance than of pulling a tooth or having an appendix removed. Is it any wonder, then, that a judge would rule that forcing a young teen to have an abortion against her will is in her best interest? Is it any wonder that her conscience, in not wanting to kill her child, was ignored?

If the unborn are not persons, then not only should we ignore the rights of the unborn child, but we should also ignore any ideas people might have about the humanity of the unborn. A young woman's conscience (i.e. "wishes and feelings") being opposed to abortion must be just superstition and shouldn't be taken into account in deciding what is best for her. That is the logic we are seeing here.

This isn't the first such case either. For example, there have been similar cases of mentally disabled women forced or nearly forced to have abortions by judges in January of 2012 in Massachusetts, November of 2012 in Nevada, and January of 2013 in London.

In a culture where dehumanizing the unborn is so common, it is no surprise to see a shift toward forced abortion as people see less and less reason to value and protect life. All this talk of "choice" contributes to the idea that abortion is just an ordinary choice. So if the courts can decide what is best for a child or disabled person in other matters, why not decide for them whether they should have an abortion? Why not "choose" abortion for those deemed incapable of choice for themselves? If abortion is just a choice, that's what logically follows, and we can expect to see a lot more women forced to abort in the future.