Abortion: A Slave to Mom and the S.L.E.D. Test

Published on January 28, 2011

What’s going on family? I hope all is well and copasetic. It’s your boy Script with the third article on the massive topic of abortion. To start off, I must apologize for the delay with getting this article out and I want to thank Trig, Anonymous, and all the Holy Culture Fam for being patient and allowing me this opportunity and forum to deal with this topic. I was originally going to name this article “Slave to Mom, Rape, and Other Controversial topics” but I’ve been getting so much feedback about the rape issue that I think it demands its own article. So stay tuned for that.

For a short recap, the first article in the series was called “The most dangerous place for black people in America”. In this article we dealt with the staggering number of abortions that occur each year (3,315 per day & 1,209,975 per year) and the impact it’s having on the African American Community. 37% of those abortions are black children, which is a 2.9 higher rate than white children and a 1.0 higher rate than that of Hispanic children. The US Census bureau says that a family has to produce 2.1 children (love the .1) to reproduce itself. In the black community, our average number is .08 which means that Blacks are killing themselves faster than they are reproducing their families.

The second article in the series was titled “It Ain’t Really a Baby… IS IT?!!” This article dealt with one of (if not the primary) the main questions surrounding the abortion issue. Is a fetus really a child? In this article we looked at what people who answer “No” to this question use as a rationale. We then looked at how we can answer their main two objections:

  1. The fetus has not had time to develop into a human being.
  2. The fetus is part of the mother and not a separate or distinct human being.

Trig brought up a great idea of being able to see the development of a child all the way through to really bring home how it is a child. I thought that was an awesome idea, and found a website that does an awesome job of it, check out the link to see the first trimester and you can bridge from there.

In this article I hope to reference back to the second article a little bit and look at the view of those pro-choice advocates who would answer that the fetus is a child, but that abortion is still ok. There are a certain (few and far between) set of pro-choice advocates who maintain that an unborn fetus is a child, but that abortion is still ok. These advocates usually respond along these two main lines of thought:

  1. The fetus is a human being but it doesn’t have its full human value yet.
  2. The fetus is a human being and has value, but not as much value as the mother.

I like to call their arguments the “slave to the mother” arguments. In both cases the pro-choice advocate is in essence saying the rights, desires, etc. of the mother outweigh those of the unborn child. It reminds me of the Dred Scott decision where he was determined not to be a human being but to be property of the owner. Similarly the mother is thought to have control over the unborn child, like it was her property. Their argument is based on the idea that the differences between the unborn child and the full grown mother cause a difference in the worth of the individual. This difference is so large it causes the unborn child to not be endowed with the same rights afforded the mother. Now there is a lot of info here so to deal with this issue, let’s take a look at this line of logic.

Philosophically and morally, Paul Schwartz and several other researchers and philosophers argue there are only four significant differences between that of a full grown adult and that of an unborn fetus. To explain those differences we use the acronym “S.L.E.D” – Size, Level of development, Environment, and Dependency. Most arguments about the differences between an unborn fetus and a mother use one of these four differences to determine that the worth of the child is less than that of the mother. BUT!! Do any of these differences really cause enough difference between a full grown adult, a child outside the womb, or any other human being outside the womb that would warrant us being able to kill the child? HMMMMMMMMMMMM?? LET’S SEE!!!

SIZE:
The size argument for the lack of intrinsic value of the fetus usually goes like this (In my overly sarcastic and satiric voice).“It’s just a little bitty old thing; it’s too small to really make a difference.” My reply to that is, when does someone’s size determine their worth, and who makes that subjectively based decision? Women for the most part are smaller than men does that mean they are less valuable and we can get rid of them? My wife is 5 feet 4in (on a good day with heels on, Love you though baby) and her mother is about 5’9 or 5’10. Does that mean that her mother could kill her because she is a little bitty thing? I think we all know that this doesn’t hold any weight. Especially since sometimes things that are smaller have so much more value. Rings, watches, cash, (my wife would much rather have a 14 karat diamond ring than a huge box of new dishesJ) or babies.

Level of Development:
The next argument that usually comes up goes something like this… “The fetus hasn’t fully developed yet” or “It hasn’t even developed the mind to know it exists yet” or something else along those lines. Let’s examine this argument. So you are saying that if a human being is less developed than it has less worth. (When I say it like that usually people backtrack but let’s follow where it would or could lead). In that case a whole new can of worms has been unleashed. For instance a female child two years old can now be killed because she isn’t fully developed. She doesn’t have a functioning reproduction system. Or my personal favorite, we can rid the world of all teenagers because they haven’t reached their full mental development (in fact most people don’t until their mid 40’s). We could go on and on with the examples but I think we can agree this one doesn’t hold weight either.

Environment:
Now of all the arguments I think this one has the most validity (didn’t say it worked or was true, just more valid than the others). This argument relies on the fact that the child is in the mother’s body and is not outside of the womb. At first this seems like it is a valid argument only because there are no real parallels that can be drawn to illustrate why this is a flawed thought. But the answer to this objection lies within another question (WOW that sounded deep lol). The question is when does where you are, change what you are? In other words regardless of where you are, if you are a human being you still maintain your worth. We see this when we look at women’s rights issues in the world. For instance, in some countries in the Middle East a man is allowed to whip a woman without cause. In the environment of that country that should be ok, but all over the world we have protests and are outraged by this human rights violation. That is because we recognize that wherever women are they are equally valuable. This means their environment does not determine their worth. In the same way if a child is born and put into an incubator, they need the incubator to survive just like the unborn needs the womb to survive can we kill the child in the incubator? No of course not. If an unborn child is in fact that, an unborn CHILD, then it doesn’t matter where the child is, it still has rights. The length from the womb to the external world is an 8 inch birth canal. If you move eight inches anywhere in the world you don’t lose your worth. This is also why most pro-life advocates disagree with embryonic stem cell research (not to mention is has yet to produce one bit of results- adult stem cells yes- embryonic stem cells no) because the child whether in a dish, the womb, or the bed is still a human being and shouldn’t be destroyed.

Dependency:
The dependency argument is the argument that states because the child is dependent on the mother to survive it has less rights or worth than the mother so it can be destroyed. For the life of me I could not even understand why this would be a legitimate argument. Anyone who has had a child knows that when the child is out of the womb, it is still completely dependent on someone else to take care of it. For the child to eat, sleep, burp, etc. it needs someone else. So why could we not kill a child outside of the womb. If that’s the case why can’t we kill the elderly who become dependent on others for food, etc. Or what about someone who is paralyzed while sky diving and needs someone for waste disposal, food, writing, etc. Dependency has no bearing on a person’s rights or value, and so it also fails as a justification for the murder of the unborn.

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, I know this article has gone a little long but just to do a recap. Over these last two articles we’ve looked at why, whether you believe the unborn fetus is or is not a human being, it is not ok to kill them. The DNA signature and separate blood supply etc. answer the objections that it is not a child. And the S.L.E.D. test answers the objections of it being a human being of less value. So what does that mean? It means we have to get busy with fighting this epidemic and lack of information in our current society.

Here are some steps you can do in the immediate future to start fighting this fight.

1. PRAY, PRAY, PRAY
2. Contact your Right to Life chapter. National Right to Life is an organization geared toward fighting abortions all throughout the country. They have local chapters that specialize in the fight in your community
3. Volunteer at a Crisis pregnancy center in your area. These centers are everywhere and offer an alternative to abortion.
4. Forward these articles or others like them on to people you know might be thinking about abortion, want to join in the battle or just need the information. The biggest problem with the abortion war is most people don’t know they are in it, thus they aren’t equipped with the information to fight.
5. Find out about adoption options in your area. If you are equipped with this info you have something you can tell people when they need help
6. And last but not least, bring this info to community and spiritual leaders that you have access to. One local group at a time is how this struggle can change. One local group at a time.

SCRIPT is a youth minister, discipleship leader, and member of Black Americans for Life in Kansas City, MO. Find out more about SCRIPT here.

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