In a conversation with a student at MiraCosta College in October.
Where do you draw the line on human rights? It’s a common question I ask people on campus while we look at images of human beings, born and unborn, in all stages of their development. I’ll ask them at what point they think humans begin to have the basic right to be protected from violence. I was at MiraCosta College in Oceanside on October 8-9, and I spent time talking about this question with a student I’ll call “Jake.”
We were looking at pictures of embryology together and I pointed at a picture of an 18-week-old fetus and asked him if he thought the abortion of that unborn child is wrong and should be illegal. He said yes. I then pointed to the 12-week-fetus,and he agreed it was wrong and should be illegal to kill a human at that point as well. I pointed to a seven-week-fetus, and his answer was the same. Then I pointed to a four-week human embryo, and that’s where it got murky for him. He said abortion should be legal at that point. I asked him if it had anything to do with how the human looks at that stage of development. He said yes.
Like Jake, many people struggle to see the early human embryo as having the same right to not be killed as you and me. I presented the equal rights argument* to Jake and made the case that if we believe every human being should be protected from violence and harm, we all have to share something equally. I made the case that human nature makes the most sense of our equality. That answer doesn’t lead to counterintuitive implications that would end up including animals or excluding newborn infants. Our equality is not rooted in how we look or in what we can currently do. If I’m right about this, then it’s wrong to kill the unborn even if they don’t look like you and me yet— it’s wrong because they are human just like us.
After I shared this, I asked him if he thought the criterion he was using to determine which humans get equal rights was a good one since it was largely based on how the human embryo looks. Jake told me, “I’m doubting it now.”
Many people have views about human value that are misinformed and based on criteria that actually result in great inequality and injustice. That is why it is so important for us to have conversations about these important issues with those around us.
*Go to www.jfaweb.org/equal-rights or www.jfaweb.org/notes#4 for more stories and equipping.