“The fetus isn’t really a person until they have sentience.”
As we continue in our series of pro-life apologetics, let’s address the argument from sentience.
This is perhaps the most common argument in favor of abortion on college campuses, and an introduction to a more philosophical series of justifications. Often you will hear sentience and consciousness used interchangeably; the following refutations apply to both.
Before we begin, it is worth mentioning that the pro-abortion advocate will often attempt to hide in the fog of confusion surrounding terms like personhood or sentience. This is because modern science has made it clear that the child in the womb is a distinct human organism, a living human. Only by way of convoluted philosophical sophistry can they hope to defend abortion.
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It is helpful if we have a basic definition for our terms. For the sake of this conversation, the following definitions provide a clearer understanding.
Sentience: the ability to feel, perceive, and experience.
Personhood: the moral status of being a person, possessing human rights.
At its core, this argument attempts to make an important distinction between that which is human, and that which is a person. To most of us, those terms are interchangeable, however, to understand this pro-abortion argument we must recognize why they say this. The example they will often give is that an individual human skin cell has human DNA, and therefore is a form of human life, yet we would not consider it murder to scratch your arm and kill millions of skin cells.
Further fleshed out, the pro-abortion case goes something like this:
A fetus isn’t really a person and has no moral worth and no rights until it becomes sentient. What we value is not human DNA, but human experience. Being human doesn’t mean someone has personhood. Only once the fetus gets sentience, the ability to experience, feel, etc, should it be legally protected and morally valuable.
Now let’s address the first among several glaring issues with this position. Sentience is not unique to human beings.
If sentience alone is the sole determining factor of who/what gets human rights, then a wide array of animals must be deserving the same rights as humans. For example, even pigs and squirrels have been shown to be sentient creatures. To be consistent the abortion advocate would have to believe that it is equally wrong to kill a pig or a squirrel as it is to kill a human being. Put into practice that would require manslaughter charges for anyone who runs over a squirrel on the road, an obvious absurdity.
If the abortion advocate claims that it is not sentience alone, but a combination of being human plus sentient, their argument doesn’t fare much better.
This can be proven with a simple question. What is the value of $1,000,000 plus a chewed piece of gum?
The answer is that it is worth $1,000,000 as the chewed piece of gum adds no value to the equation. Much like the cash in the analogy, humanness is where all the value comes from when we ask, “what is the value of humanness plus sentience?”
If this were not true, then five adult pigs would be of greater moral significance than one human newborn as adult pigs are far more sentient than a newborn.
Additionally, the argument from sentience defends killing innocent people outside the womb as well as inside the womb.
For example, each year millions of people go under general anesthesia, during that time they are not sentient. They are not thinking, feeling, or experiencing the world around them. Would it be morally justifiable to have them dismembered and killed while they are under anesthesia? Of course not!
When confronted with this, the well-studied pro-abortion advocate will often make an arbitrary claim. This time they will say that it is not permissible to kill the person under general anesthesia because they have past sentience.
Even though they may not currently be experiencing anything, they already have in the past. From this view, the first time you gain sentience you gain personhood, and losing sentience in the future does not negate your personhood. However, it stands to reason that if sentience is the required ingredient to have human rights, losing it should result in the loss of human rights. Additionally, they cannot explain why past sentience would be more relevant than future sentience, after all the unborn baby will soon be sentient.
Simply put, the pro-abortion position from sentience fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be a person.
You are not a person based on what you can do or what you have done. You are a person based on what you are. If you are a distinct human organism, you are a person with human rights.
Attempting to deny the personhood of certain humans has only ever led to evil. Moral monsters throughout history used very similar arguments to the abortion advocate to defend chattel slavery, genocide, and eugenics. Claiming that someone may be a living human BUT not deserving of human rights is a path well-traveled by those who wish to kill innocent humans. Personhood begins at conception when the new person is created. Any line outside of that is arbitrary and defends killing innocent people both inside and outside the womb.
As we continue to expand our growing catalog of pro-life answers to pro-abortion arguments, please submit suggestions at [email protected]. We will happily refute any arguments that you need help with.
LifeNews Note: Victor Nieves is the president of Life Issues Institute.
