Personhood Begins at Conception: A Consistent Case Against Abortion
Abortion remains one of the most contentious issues in the United States. Frankly, I see that contention as a net positive. When a society has progressed to the point that it no longer debates scarcity of food or basic survival, and instead argues over whether a human being inside the womb should be treated differently from a human being outside of it, we occupy a revealing moment in our cultural history.
I begin with complete transparency: I hold the position that abortion is wrong in 100 percent of cases. This is a strong claim, and I intend to defend it carefully. If you disagree, I ask only that you grant the fullness of the argument rather than extracting isolated phrases. I am not an “expert.” I am someone who has researched the topic extensively out of genuine interest, and I remain open to serious criticism from every side.
“A society that values the lives of animals more than the lives of human beings has lost sight of the value of humanity.” That is my own formulation. I believe America lost important moral clarity in 1973. On January 22 of that year the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution protected a woman’s decision to obtain an abortion under a right to privacy, while permitting greater regulation as pregnancy progressed. That decision stood for nearly fifty years until Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022. Later the same year, on December 28, 1973, the Endangered Species Act was signed into law. It established strong federal protections for threatened and endangered species. Harming their young could result in fines of up to $20,000 and imprisonment of up to one year—roughly $150,000 in today’s purchasing power. It remains striking that we created formal legal protections for the offspring of certain animals while simultaneously weakening protections for human offspring. In my generation’s words: we have “officially lost the plot.”
Political discourse today often reduces opponents to caricatures: Republicans as fascists, racists, or Nazis; liberals as baby-murdering communists. Such labels make good-faith conversation nearly impossible. I ask readers to set aside the assumption that I am a racist, woman-hating bigot who wishes to reduce women to “breedmares.” Allow me simply to state the case.
In emergency medicine and fire service work, we rely heavily on flowcharts. They illustrate chains of reasoning with clarity. Abortion discussions benefit from the same discipline. I see two primary flowcharts.
First flowchart: When does human life or personhood begin? Conservatives generally hold a clear and consistent position: personhood and humanity begin at conception. Pro-choice advocates often hold varying thresholds—first trimester, detectable heartbeat, brain waves, viability, or even birth itself. Whatever threshold one adopts must be justified. Why 18 weeks rather than 17 or 19? If cohesive brain activity is the criterion, does a person in a temporary coma lose rights until that activity resumes? The conservative position remains constant: a new human organism begins at conception. I find this line of reasoning to hold incredibly strong and it puts the burden of proof on the aggressor which is a position that is more easily defendable.
In my usage, “human” and “personhood” travel together. If an entity is a living human organism, it possesses personhood and the corresponding baseline rights. You may reject this definition, but at least the terms are now clear even if agreement is not. Biologically, fertilization produces a new organism with its own unique DNA, distinct from both mother and father. That organism is a member of the human species from the start. Later developmental markers—cardiac activity detectable around 5½–6 weeks, early brain activity, and eventual viability—occur after this foundational point. I do not treat those markers as the beginning of humanity; I note them only to show that the developmental continuum is continuous rather than arbitrary. In the case of development, we are all clumps of cells developing every day. Three month olds are developing and rely on a more developed human to provide for them. We do not consider them parasites, even though that same line of reasoning (that I reject) could be used on a child as old as two years old.
Second flowchart: How should the hard cases be handled? Many pro-choice arguments begin with rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life. These are appeals to emotion that can shift the discussion away from the central question (move the goal post). No serious pro-life advocate defends rapists; we condemn them without qualification. Introducing the charge that we somehow endorse sexual violence is both an ad hominem and a distraction. Two truths can coexist: rape is an unspeakable evil, and abortion remains the intentional ending of a human life. I believe we MUST have agreement on this, otherwise the debate will end right here where this paragraph ends.
The most comprehensive survey of women’s reasons for abortion was conducted by the Guttmacher Institute and published in 2005 (Finer et al., “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 37, no. 3). Based on a 2004 survey of more than 1,200 abortion patients:
Rape was cited as a contributing reason by 1 percent.
Incest by less than 0.5 percent.
Physical health hovers around 2 percent and has some contentions to it.
Even granting a generous combination of the rarest categories, the hard cases represent a small minority of the total. Recent estimates place the annual number of abortions in the United States at roughly one million. The large majority are sought for reasons related to timing, finances, education, career, existing children, or relationship status—what many would describe as elective abortions.This leads to a clarifying question: If the hard cases of rape, incest, and genuine threat to the mother’s life were the only legally permitted exceptions, and all other abortions were prohibited, would you accept that framework? If we cannot first agree that the roughly 95% plus percent of abortions performed for socioeconomic or personal-preference reasons are unjustified, we will never reach consensus on the harder cases. The conversation should therefore begin with the majority.
Why do I regard even those majority cases as the intentional killing of a human being? From a secular standpoint, to avoid a religious debate that most people will ignore, a new human organism with unique DNA comes into existence at conception. That organism is a member of the human species and therefore possesses the baseline rights that attach to human beings. Ending its life without justification constitutes homicide.
The claim that the unborn child is a “parasite” is biologically inaccurate. The female body is specifically adapted for gestation; the relationship is not comparable to an invading organism. Dependency does not erase membership in the human species or the rights that follow from it. This ties back to my relation to young children. You are not a parasite at two years old, merely dependent on your mother to feed you just as the umbilical cord feeds a child in the womb.
Even in cases of rape, the principle remains that two wrongs do not make a right. We do not solve one injustice by committing another. We do not permit theft because someone is hungry, nor do we execute children outside the womb because they are inconvenient. The moral status of the child does not change based on the circumstances of conception.
As for the common charge that pro-life advocates care only about children in the womb and ignore those outside it, the comparison is flawed. We do not kill born children for being burdensome; the question at hand is precisely whether the unborn may be killed for that reason. Moreover, demand for infant adoption far exceeds supply. Estimates suggest one to two million couples are waiting to adopt infants in the United States, while the number of infants actually placed each year is far lower. The broader foster-care system (roughly 360,000–400,000 children) faces distinct challenges involving older children and complex needs—issues worthy of separate attention and reform.The most reliable way to avoid these tragic situations is straightforward: delay sexual activity until one is prepared for the natural consequences, or, at minimum, practice consistent contraception if one is unwilling to accept those consequences. Actions have consequences. One cannot engage in behavior A, skip the foreseeable result B, and demand that society erase C simply because C is inconvenient.
In conclusion, premarital sex can be avoided, safe sex is easily obtainable, and the product of sex, a child, should not come as a complete anomaly. No one has sex, finds out they're pregnant, and then cannot piece together how that happened. Now to keep this blog as a sensible read, this will be the end; however, as more comments come along, I may release an abortion part two, three, four, etc. Keep an eye out and give any criticism where it may be due.