Arguments are nowadays often presented as soundbites: as slogans, tweets, memes and even gifs. Arguments developed in detail often meet the response TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read). This is unfortunate—especially when tackling the topic of abortion. Soundbites make many pro-life arguments seem stronger than they really are, while the complexities of pro-choice arguments can’t be readily reduced to soundbites.
Pro-Life Soundbites
Abortion is wrong because:
- fetuses are human or human beings.
- human beings have rights.
- human rights protect all humans.
- we should advocate for equality, including equality for unborn human beings.
- abortion ends a life.
- abortion is killing.
These soundbites can sound good because human beings are generally wrong to kill; human rights do protect human beings; human rights apply to all humans; equality is a good thing; and ending lives and killing are often wrong. Denying these things often results in silly assertions: that fetuses in human women aren’t human or aren’t alive, or that abortion doesn’t involve killing, etc.
That these soundbites are based on what seems to be common sense can make these simple cases against abortion seem strong.
Pro-Choice Presentations
Presentations of pro-choice perspectives often begin with abstractions:
- What does human mean? Does everything human have rights?
- Why do human beings have rights? What makes humans have rights?
- Do human rights really protect everything and everyone that is human, or all human beings?
- Do basic human rights include a right to someone else’s body? How could someone gain that right? What kind of rights to assistance do human rights entail?
- Denying equality among human beings is very bad, but is equality sometimes inappropriate or even wrong? What does equality mean?
- When is killing not wrong? Does killing ever raise few, if any, moral issues whatsoever?
Since pro-choice positions depend on more precise and complex theoretical thinking, they are harder to effectively communicate—especially when audiences and discussion partners will not—or cannot—seek to understand more deeply and carefully.
Pro-Choice Soundbites
Consider some common pro-choice soundbites:
- My body, my choice.
- A woman can do whatever she wants with her own body.
- People who oppose abortion just want to control women.
- If you’re against abortion, don’t have one.
- Abortion is just a medical procedure.
- Abortion is a personal choice.
- Every child a wanted child.
- Abortion is not up for debate.
The problems with these soundbites are obvious to anyone who doesn’t already accept them.
- No. You cannot choose to use your body to murder someone.
- No. You cannot do everything you want with your own body: you cannot murder someone.
- No. If women are doing something that should be illegal, they should be controlled, just as anyone else should.
- No. You wouldn’t say Against child abuse? Then don’t abuse children! so this response is foolish.
- No. If abortion is wrong, it’s not a mere medical procedure.
- No. We can’t or shouldn’t make certain personal choices, if those choices are profoundly wrong.
- No. That a child is unwanted wouldn’t entitle anyone to kill that child.
- No, abortion is up for debate. What do you think we are doing in talking about it?
Not every pro-choice soundbite generates these reactions, but many do. Pro-choice soundbites just don’t have the same initial plausibility as pro-life soundbites.
Critiques of Pro-Life Soundbites
Pro-choice critics don’t argue that pro-life soundbites are completely wrong. Pro-choicers argue that, if we look at the details, their initial plausibility fades: thinking them through reveals that the ideas don’t have the implications their advocates think they do.
- If human means biologically human, that means that random human cells and tissues have rights, which they don’t. So just because fetuses are biologically human doesn’t mean they have rights.
- We can ask why human beings have rights: why do rocks and vegetables not have rights? A long-influential family of theories of rights proposes that we have rights because we are conscious and feeling beings. This theory suggests that pre-conscious embryos and early fetuses don’t have rights.
- While people say that all human beings have rights, they don’t. Human corpses don’t have rights. Brain-dead human beings do not have the rights we have: letting their bodies die would be wrong if they had, say, the right to life. Babies born missing most of their brains seem to not have the rights that regular babies have: it’s hard to see why letting them die, even when they could be kept alive, would be wrong, since being alive does them no good. Not all human beings have features that rights are supposed to protect, so it seems that not all human beings have rights. So just because fetuses are human beings doesn’t, in itself, mean they have rights.
- The right to life is not a right to everything someone needs to live—especially someone else’s body. Explaining if, how and why a fetus would have a right to a pregnant woman’s body is a challenge.
- Denying equality among humans is very bad. But advocating for equality between human beings and, say, isolated human cells or organs (or plants or bacteria) would be wrong. And what does equal mean? Not everything is equal: there is such a thing as justified, reasonable discrimination: there might be good reasons to deny that human embryos and early fetuses are equal to us.
- Killing random cells, bacteria, plants, etc. is often not wrong at all. There is killing that’s wrong and killing that isn’t wrong: just because abortion is killing doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Identifying these problems requires showing that things are more complicated than they seem. It requires seeing that some common ways of understanding aren’t quite correct and might even be harmful.
There are, of course, more sophisticated arguments against abortion. These often appeal to claims about human embryos and fetuses’ essence or essential properties, their rational natures and their being the same kind of beings that we are. These abstract claims and arguments are harder to evaluate. However, close critical examination reveals that these abstract arguments do not succeed: they raise more questions than they answer.
Critical Thinking and Abortion
Developing strong critical thinking skills requires training and practice.
In our recent short, introductory, open-access book on abortion, Thinking Critically About Abortion: Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should be Legal, we review a lot of bad arguments and ways of understanding abortion, from all sides. Our main positive arguments for pro-choice perspectives, briefly stated, are these.
- It is wrong to kill adults, children and babies because they are conscious, aware and have feelings. Since early fetuses entirely lack these characteristics, it is not inherently wrong to kill them, so most abortions are not morally wrong, since most abortions are done early in pregnancy, before consciousness and feeling develop in the fetus.
- Furthermore, since the right to life does not include the right to someone else’s body, a fetus might not have the right to the pregnant woman’s body—therefore she has the right to not allow the fetus use of her body. This further justifies abortion, at least until technology allows for the removal of fetuses to other wombs. Since morally permissible actions should be legal, abortions should be legal: it is an injustice to criminalize actions that are not wrong.
These arguments are not new, but they are new to most people, since most people are not familiar with the philosophical literature on abortion. Versions of these are likely to be the best arguments for pro-choice perspectives out there.
Soundbite-Free Advocacy
So, what can a pro-choice advocate do? Here are some ideas:
- Don’t provide soundbites. You’re better off saying nothing than giving what sounds like a bad argument—perhaps because it is a bad argument.
- Very clever and creative people could develop good pro-choice soundbites. These are likely to be based on abstract and theoretical considerations. But developing any such soundbites in an echo-chamber, with little reflection on how they would be received by the outside world, is a strategy for failure.
- Denying that the issues can be reduced to soundbites might do some good: acknowledging complexity can help.
- We’d all like to engage and persuade everyone, but it might be best to focus on people who are able and willing to engage complexity: judges and legal officials are generally able and willing to do that; elected politicians are less likely to. Focusing on audiences willing to listen and productively discuss would reduce discouragement and frustration. Many people are well-meaning and willing to engage the issues in serious, respectful and responsible ways. But these discussions aren’t likely to be fruitful if they appeal to soundbites.
This isn’t about persuasion in the sense of manipulation, public relations or anything that could be called sophistry. We want to move people towards reasonable, justified messages.
While pro-life soundbites often move people, they do not seem to move people towards views that are ultimately justified by strong evidence and arguments: we believe this can be demonstrated by reasoning rigorously, patiently and critically about those arguments. Our book’s subtitle is Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should be Legal because we believe that critical thinking reveals that this view is supported by better arguments than its opposite. Soundbites don’t help show that, to most people. We need to find out what will.
[…] first glance, this reasoning – when applied to abortion – may seem plausible, at least to some: after all, fetuses are alive, and human (at least in a biological sense), and […]
[…] first glance, this reasoning – when applied to abortion – may seem plausible, at least to some: after all, fetuses are alive, and human (at least in a biological sense), and […]
I don`t normally get political on the internet but I just could not keep my mouth shut about these arguments. Firstly, although I am pro-life I am not callously indifferent to the suffering that can be caused by unwanted pregnancies. I am an advocate for finding alternative methods for ending pregnancies that do not result in the death of the child, what I am NOT in favor of is necessarily forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies. But what I am even less in favor of is abortion. I am willing to admit that there are grey areas such as children conceived in rape but I don`t even claim to be able to answer that problem. I just wanted to respond to each point as it was presented so here goes: 1. If human means biologically human, that means that random human cells and tissues have rights, which they don’t. So… Read more »
[…] had a follow-up article inspired by reactions to the book, “Abortion and Soundbites,” and have some other writings in the […]
[…] right to life. However, as Nathan Nobis and Kristina Grob point out in their article “Abortion and Soundbites: Why Pro-Choice Arguments Are Harder to Make,” “since the right to life does not include the right to someone else’s body, a fetus might […]
The pro-life position is much more easily defensible, and more technically/scientifically correct. However, I think the pro-choice position is more practically correct, at least for early pregnancy stages, so I am pro-choice.
The argument that people should be able to have abortions because the baby doesn’t have a right to the mother’s body strikes me as stupid. Parents have a legal obligation to keep their children alive and healthy, and their bodies are required for them to do this. They legally must use their bodies to feed their children, bathe their children, etc. and/or put their bodies to work to earn money to pay someone else to do these things. It is not legal to kill one’s children or to allow them to die via neglect.
You could not be more wrong. Complex argument is only valuable after the overarching issue has been framed. That the conflict is framed as “life” versus “choice” was always going to be a problem for those that think abortion should be a safe and legal option. Those that want to keep abortion legal should emphasize life again. A world without legal abortion means more women’s lives will be in danger. It will force the practice underground. It really is that simple. Life for many woman can be hard. We should not make it harder.
[…] “Since pro-choice positions depend on more precise and complex theoretical thinking, they are … — Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) and Kristina Grob (South Carolina, Sumter) on the communication of arguments about abortion […]
“If human means biologically human, that means that random human cells and tissues have rights, which they don’t. ”
Surely the ordinary meaning of “human” in this argument is “living human being” or “living member of the human species.” Your view is that only the (dispositionally) conscious, feeling human beings have rights, while the (dispositionally) unconscious, unfeeling members don’t. The other side grants rights to all human beings, conscious and feeling or not. The dispute hinges on the moral importance of consciousness and feeling, and the right answer doesn’t strike me as obvious.
Having said that, most of this piece is a model of honesty and fair thinking, a very nice contribution in a public forum on a difficult question.
The book, while worth reading, made the mistake of not starting at the level of how we justify moral beliefs in the first place. You need a story that can withstand laypeople’s objections. The main reason why people I know are hesitant to get into disputes with pro-life people is because the conversation basically always ends up at an impasse when the pro-lifer asks, “How do we have objective ethics without God?” If the answer appeals to Aristotle, Kant, or Mill, even assuming that they had arguments that could furnish that, anyone not intimidated by an appeal to a Great Philosopher can just ask, “Okay, now in your own words, can you explain why someone should believe that?” The project of finding good pro-choice arguments should start with an anti-skeptical beginning, and the best results are probably going to be secured by the fastest growing view in moral epistemology: ethical… Read more »
“It is wrong to kill adults, children and babies because they are conscious, aware and have feelings.” That would imply that killing nonhuman animals is also wrong, at least those that are conscious, aware and have feelings. A better norm from my perspective is that killing adults and children against their will should be illegal and socially punished, because it violates their strong personal preferences and we should have norms and laws against violating people’s strong personal preferences. Killing babies should be illegal and socially punished if there are people who have a legitimate claim and a strong personal preference that the baby not be killed, e.g. if the baby’s parents don’t want it to be killed. (Babies themselves don’t have strong personal preferences yet, at least not in a way they can’t articulate; they also don’t understand death yet, which means they don’t have a personal preference against death.)… Read more »
For a pair of philosophy profs arguing for a more philosophical perspective, you could use some basic philosophical rigour. At the very least, a principled defence of abortion requires an argument from principles that your audience accepts. Instead, you’ve conflated legal, moral, and practical principles together, and then mixed these with empirical claims and rhetorical moves, creating a confusing casuistic stew. Take this point: (1a) If human means biologically human, (1b) that means that random human cells and tissues have rights, which they don’t. (1c) So just because fetuses are biologically human doesn’t mean they have rights. The first inference (in 1b) is a reductio ad absurdum of 1a that begs the question. The moral (and legal status) of the fetus as a person is precisely the point at issue. You’ve merely asserted (implicitly and without argument) that the fetus is “random cells and tissues” to get the absurdity. But… Read more »
I’d be interested in reading the authors’ explanation of how a partial birth abortion is not morally problematical.
That is a well written article. I like the level of honour and commitment to truth as opposed to enmity and manipulating a win. I have 2 questions from someone perhaps on the other side of the fence. I was raised in your average liberal atheist home and have become critical of abortions from a lot of reflecting and thinking. This process has been unsettling to my previous outlook but that’s life sometimes. Consciousness, when temporary, is not a bar used to measure moral worth. I’m sure you’ve thought about a knocked out person before and our imperative to help them, as opposed to doing what we feel like. I’ll try to hit closer to the mark. If you were in a Coma for a year, and would wake up with severe mental and physical disabilities, but you could over 2 decades work back to full health with out disability,… Read more »
While it may be getting into the area of “sophistry”, PR and manipulative persuasion you reject, I have often been frustrated when my attempts to convince pro-choice (or pro Planned Parenthood more specifically) to modify their arguments are rebuffed (often with liberal use of ad-hominens and vitriol). I am firmly pro-choice, and wish to help further this cause. However I am dismayed by the rhetoric of some on this side, I feel it is often, at best, unpersuasive to what ought to be the target audience, or at worst actually counterproductive to the cause. One issue that has come up a few times is anti-abortion activist’s opposition to government funding of PP clinics *at all* (as we know, in USA federal government money cannot be used to pay direct costs for abortion procedures, doctors fees, surgical trays, anesthesia etc,. But it can pay for other women’s health care, and the… Read more »
The claim that making a point becomes too hard to understand when the argument is limited to a short amount of time or written with a minimal amount of verbiage is bullcrap. How long did it take for you to understand the meaning of bullcrap? One word, eight letters and a point made that anyone can understand. The claim presented in the very first paragraph of this piece is bullcrap. Pro choice arguments are NOT harder to make than pro life arguments. As soon as I read that, I stopped reading. IF the pro choice argument is harder to make than the pro life argument it’s not due to the length of the time allotted or amount of space allowed to make the argument, but instead it’s a matter that most sound minded people understand that misrepresenting or erroneously identifying something, anything, usually results in a non starter when it… Read more »