I have been a pro-life activist for a few years now. My main focus of activity has been disseminating pro-life information and debating with people on-line on message boards. Some arguments are more difficult to refute because they are values-oriented and rest on a web of premises each of which must be challenged in order to defeat the whole argument.
And then there are arguments that are simply misstatements of fact, a product of pure ignorance on the part of those who make them. They are easily refutable according to the laws of science. Here are six of the most common poor-choice mistakes I have encountered on the Internet.
1. A newly conceived zygote is a "potential life", not life itself.
Many poor-choicers do not want to admit that abortion is the taking of a human life. So they make the claim that the new life is not life at all but a "potential life", according to a non-scientific understanding of what life is.
To make their point, they often invoke the acorn analogy. An acorn isn't really alive; it just has the potential of an oak tree.
The analogy fails on many points. First, an acorn does not grow. Second it does not take in nutrition. Third, it does not have any cellular activity. The zygote does all three. The acorn may be a potential life, but the zygote actually is life.
2. The zygote may be alive, but so is a skin cell. So what?
Once the poor-choicer understands that a zygote is alive, he still cannot assimilate the notion that this little new being is truly human. So he equates the new baby with a skin cell or some other cell. That way, abortion becomes no more morally offensive that scratching oneself.
While the skin cell may be alive, it is part of a human being. The proof is that it performs some smaller function in the functioning of a larger organism. The human body is made up of a number of systems: the cardio-vascular system, the digestive system, and so forth.
A skin cell may have human DNA, but only the DNA involved in performing the cell's function is activated. A skin cell can't do anything else but be a skin cell.
A zygote however has all its DNA active. The DNA is working towards creating all the systems the baby will need to function as a mature human being. This makes him an independent organism, whereas a cell only exists to perform one function of an organism.
Another major difference between a zygote and a skin cell is that when a skin cell divides, the two divisions split to become new cells. When a zygote divides, the cells do not split, but become part of a greater whole. The only possible exception to this is the creation of twins. But even then, after a certain number of cell divisions, it becomes impossible to create twins. The divisions normally lead to a greater complexity of the zygote organism, not to a carbon-copy clone of a single cell.
3. The zygote is alive, but it is not human life.
Confronted with the fact that the zygote is an independent organism, he still cannot admit that a little one-celled human being could be valuable. It is mind-boggling and ridiculous to honour a bunch of cells (as he sees it) as a human equal. The new baby does not look like him or act like him, therefore he mustn't be like him. (How's that for inclusivity?).
He must therefore conclude that the zygote is not a human life.
His understanding of the meaning of the word human is completely subjective and not based on any scientific standards. He chooses a bunch of criteria that seem best to suit him, and then makes sure the newly conceived baby does not reach those criteria. For some pro-aborts, the litmus test is consciousness; for others it's self-awareness; for others it's the presence of brainwaves.
This argument can be rebutted on a number of points.
Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms according to their characteristics. Cats, tigers, lions and cougars are felines; Wolves and dogs are canines; Pandas are members of the raccoon family, and so on. Each species is referred to by its Latin genus and species name.
So the question becomes: if the newly conceived baby is not a human, what is its genus and species?
The answer is of course Homo sapiens, the Latin name for modern human beings. Just because an organism evolves and changes form doesn't mean that it becomes something completely different.
Another law of science that refutes the zygote-is-not-a-human is the first law of genetics: when two members of the same species reproduce, the progeny will always be a member of the same species. Two cats will not produce birds. If two human beings reproduce, their progeny will be human.
The third and most powerful rebuttal against the poor-choice assertion is that the new zygote has 46 chromosomes, like any other human being. Variations occur, but the variations of the zygote will be those that are seen in mature adult humans.
4. A sperm must be human; therefore masturbation must be equivalent to murder.
In invoking the masturbation argument, the pro-abort is attempting to make the pro-life position look ridiculous. If a newly conceived life is made up of a sperm and an egg, then obviously they must be human, and therefore spilling the seed would kill millions of people. He doesn't really believe this, but he is trying a reductio ad absurdam, thinking if we follow pro-life life logic, it will lead to absurdities.
The error in his argument is, of course, the sperm is not human. Human beings have 46 chromosomes; sperm only have 23. Sperm are the product of one man's reproductive system. The new life is the product of two people's reproductive systems. But that fine point of biology often escapes him.
5. If killing a one-cell life is murder, then eating chicken eggs is like having an abortion.
Why should it matter, in the whole abortion debate, whether we humans kill and eat dead chicken embryos?
It's another reductio ad absurdam argument that falls flat. The pro-abort wants to make the pro-life position look ridiculous, so he presents abortion as something as banal as eating scrambled eggs. If eating eggs is benign, abortion can be benign.
Besides the fact that this assertion ignores all the preceding information, it makes the mistake of assuming that chicken eggs are 1) fertilized (they're not) and even if they are 2) they're alive. The refrigeration required to preserve the eggs in a supermarket would kill the chicks. That's why they're called EGGS and not CHICKS.
6. A fetus is part of a woman's body.
Of course a zygote lives inside the woman's body. But he is not a body part. The baby and the mother have different DNA. Even if the baby would have been a mother's clone, the fact that his own DNA does not interact with her mother's DNA means that she is not the same being. Babies and mothers can differ on every point two individuals can, but two body parts in the same individual do not.