Mommy, Can I Kill This?

Opening Scene Imagine you are doing the dishes in your kitchen sink, up to your elbows in soap suds and water. Up behind you comes your five year old son. He asks, "Mommy, can I kill this?" Immediately, before you even have a chance to turn around, the first thought that flashes through your head is, "What the heck is it?!" If it is an ugly, icky Black Window spider, you will quickly knock it out of your son's hands and kill it yourself. If it is the neighbor boy's puppy, the answer is an immediate, "No! And just what were you thinking, even wondering if you can kill a puppy?" We all know that, essentially, whether or not you are permitted to kill something depends upon just what it is you are killing. Or do we? On the issue of abortion, I used to be adamantly and passionately pro-choice. It was none of my business to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body. And it sure as heck wasn't the government's business to get into our private lives and tell us what to do either. That was my passionately held view, hence I was pro-choice. That was, until I began to consider just what it was that was being killed. You see, both those who are pro-choice and those who are pro-life essentially agree on morality. They both passionately agree that it is evil to kill children. However, where they differ is on matters of fact, i.e., whether or not the unborn is actually a child/human being (or at what point the unborn becomes a child/human being). I finally moved from being pro-choice to pro-life when I realized that the issue was not primarily women's rights, or government intervention, or opposition to fundamentalist, right-wing religious zealotry, or even a difficult moral issue. I realized the fundamental issue is, just what is it? Once you resolve what it (i.e., the unborn) is, all the rest of the moral and legal questions resolve themselves. If the unborn is not a human being, then no justification for abortion is needed. If the unborn is a human being, then no justification for abortion is possible. I have moved from being passionately pro-choice to now being adamantly pro-life and believe abortion should be outlawed in all instances, save when the life of the mother truly is in jeopardy. My reasoning boils down to the following syllogism: Major Premise: It is immoral to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Minor Premise: The unborn is an innocent human being. Conclusion: It is immoral to intentionally kill the unborn. Certainly both pro-choice and pro-life people agree with the major premise, i.e., it is immoral to intentionally kill and innocent human being. (And, certainly someone who believes it is not wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being can hardly complain about someone else forcing morality down their throat in making abortion illegal.) The primary issue comes down to the minor premise, i.e., whether or not the unborn is an innocent human being. I will address the minor premise in the next installment of Mommy Can I Kill This?