Michelle Dewar from Ottawa writes that the abortion debate ignores the impact on child poverty. She’s guilty of a greater ignorance — assuming what needs to be proven. Really, it seems as if every even seemingly coherent pro-choice argument falls into one of Klusendorf’s five bad ways to argue about abortion.
Those who advocate against abortion are proposing that every year another 100,000 babies be brought into this world…
Dewar assumes that aborted babies have yet to be “brought into this world,” despite the fact that the procedure on behalf of which she advocates is required to remove them from this world. At the very least, one must understand that the debate hinges on the question of “what is the unborn?” If the unborn is not human, no justification for abortion is necessary, but if the unborn is human, no justification for abortion is adequate.
Is the unborn human? How can Dewar claim that the aborted have never existed? As terrible as child poverty is, we wouldn’t “solve” it by killing children. If the unborn are human, how is abortion a solution? How can the question be ignored?