Abortion Unwound

 

The young adult novel Unwind is being used to teach our children. Resolutely woke, it argues the case for abortion. This hinges, apparently, on when a human being gets a soul. It gives four positions, presumably spanning the field:

• At conception
• At quickening—"when the baby kicks”
• At birth
• When someone loves it.

And then the novel gives its own conclusion: that we really do not know. 

Therefore, no one has a right to impose their own views on the next person.

“If more people could admit they really don’t know, maybe there never would have been a Heartland War.”

Therefore, unrestricted abortion.

It is indeed true that we do not know whether a child at any given age has a soul. We also do not know whether Jews have souls. We do not know whether blacks have souls. Or women. We actually do not know whether anyone other than ourself has a soul, is conscious and self-conscious. We cannot see or hear the soul, or consciousness, or thoughts, other than our own. Everyone else might be imagined, or simulations, or alien lizard people.

Accordingly, this argument for unrestricted abortion is just as serviceable as an argument for unrestricted murder, or genocide. 

“Hey, nobody likes the Jews. That mean they don’t have souls. Let’s kill them and take their stuff.”

Why is it morally necessary to assume all other humans have souls? Because of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you are not prepared to accept that these lizard people or simulations have the right to kill you on a whim, you must not claim for yourself the same right over them. You cannot honourably take to yourself a right you would not want everyone else to have.

The question, therefore, is when the foetus is alive, and when it becomes human. 

It is identifiably human at conception, and it is identifiably alive.

Any other position ends in holocaust.