Bioethics

The Pro-Life View Is the Tolerant View

Author Alan Shlemon Published on 10/08/2019

Who wouldn’t want to get behind a view that’s inclusive, tolerant, and non-discriminatory? Guess what? The pro-life view is just that.

It’s inclusive. It includes all members of the human community, whether they are born, unborn, disabled, or near death.

It’s tolerant. It places value and respect on every person, even those who champion opposing views.

It’s non-discriminatory. It doesn’t disqualify some human beings from being valuable because of their race, gender, size, location, degree of dependency, level of development, or any other characteristic.

But I can hear the pushback already. “Wait a minute,” abortion-choice advocates will complain. “The pro-life view is hardly tolerant towards women. It wants to take away their right to an abortion!” That’s absolutely true! Yes, the goal is to take away that right. I fully acknowledge that. Think about what that means, though. Taking a woman’s right away entails the following non-controversial points:

These three points are not contested by those who understand the law, medical practice, and biology.

  1. What right are pro-lifers demanding to take away from a woman? The right to an abortion.
  2. What is an abortion? It’s the intentional killing of the unborn.
  3. What is the unborn? The unborn is an innocent human being.

So, do pro-lifers want to take away a woman’s right to do something? Yes, they want to take away a woman’s right to intentionally kill an innocent human being. That, however, is no different than taking away any person’s right to kill any innocent human being. What pro-lifers are demanding is consistency. It’s already illegal to kill innocent human beings (it’s even illegal to kill the unborn in 38 states that have fetal homicide laws). Let’s make that law apply equally to protect all human beings, whether wanted by their mothers or not. That’s the tolerant thing to do.