The Soul of the Abortion Debate

 We all know the two main contours of the debate on abortion: economic and sexual. 

The economic solution takes the incentive out of using birth control or resorting to abortion when it does not work. Over 7 of 10 abortions are performed for people  who are either poor or cannot afford to have another child. The solution to this problem is to increase the child tax credit from a $2000 non-refundable bonus to $1000 a month distributed with pay.

Another factor is fatal fetal defect or maternal life or health.  If a child will be stillborn, it is better to take it earlier than later as the child has no claim on its mother if it won’t survive anyway. Non-fatal defects, predominantly Downs or being female in a patriarchal society, are solvable by economics so that the child is not a burden. 

The other main reason is sexual autonomy, as in the person does not want a child and will use abortion as another form of birth control. Conservatives believe that this is the case with all abortions, but they also reject the economic solution as socialism because they don’t want to subsidize the sexuality of poor people, especially those of color or who are unmarried. In other words, it really is about controlling female sexuality from their POV, not protecting the life of a child in utero.

These are complicated issues, or not if you are willing to spend the money or mind your own business. The fire in the pro-life belly, however, is that the debate gets to the notion of what it means to be a person, particularly in relation to whether there is such a thing as an immortal soul - with all that implies as to whether God exists at all.

Pro-lifers believe that every soul, rather than every sperm, is sacred. This is because they want to think of themselves as sacred. For them, to kill a fetus is an attack on the existence of God. It is why the Catholic Church has such a vested interest in the debate. The asexuality of the Catholic hierarchy is less a driver as the belief in an afterlife. They see those who abort as non-believers in their Imaginary Friend. I am not saying that in a bad way. God is a conception, not a reality in the physical universe. It is certainly easier to get an abortion if you think this is all there is 

The reality is that many believers do get abortions as well, mostly for compassionate reason because they do not want to bring a child into the world who would be poor or spend life suffering. I am talking perceptions from the right, not lived experience of families. My wife had two miscarriages. The first was hardest on us. The second, not so much. Part of coping is carrying a bit less, although I do still mourn the loss.

That there is a materialistic soul is obvious. Indeed, settling on what that is ends the debate on birth control being a murderous act. In the material world, the soul is the electro-chemical process by which the brain and body organize to prevent entropy.  Once the soul is gone, decay sets in. This is a sign that maybe, if the body is going into organ failure while in a coma, Elvis has left the building. At gastrulation, the tissues that grow into the brain and nervous system coordinate development. Aristotle would call that lower powers obeying the higher.

Apologists for abortion draw the line at when the child could be born (as the law), or when the child is capable of cognitive function. Given what we now know about the ghost in the machine theory being false (meaning that consciousness is a result of brain activity, not its cause), cognitive ability has no meaning. 

People dislike cruelty, whether it is a 20 week fetus responding to the negative stimuli of a later term abortion, a newborn boy who is facing circumcision or an infant who gets surgery but is not given pain relief (which could also be hazardous).  A child that suffers, even if it cannot appreciate the suffering consciously, disturbs us. If it continues suffering, that can also set up bad neural pathways in a way that will warp its personality.

Children are not conscious until they have language. Blind and deaf Helen Keller described her life as animalistic until her teacher spelled water in her hands. Language is what makes us free. The more you command language, the more options are available to you. Creating language is creating the world. 

That realization is dangerous indeed. We know that children and the demented respond to stimuli, even if they do not understand it. So do great apes, who have limited (but existing) vocabulary (especially regarding cookies). My daughter responded to stimulus as an infant. She would even say “ticwa” rather than mama or dada. She said this until I realized that she was trying to say tickle. Once she learned tickle, there was no more ticwa. She only knows that because we told her.

Being in the womb, a child or demented is actual life, but without language or reflection. It is the same lack of reflection experienced in twilight sedation during a visit by aliens (colonoscopy), an alcoholic blackout or the experience of taking Ketamine to reduce consciousness to nothing. 

Hypnosis, including self-hypnosis, or meditation, has the goal of stopping the mind’s commentary to either respond to suggestion or experience reality without noise. On occasion, I have found that trance-like state, where you are not sleeping and cannot dream. I was one with my body, the bus, the road for two hours - from Cleveland to the Elyria rest stop. They call this mindfulness meditation. I am not so sure. I spent almost three years becoming conscious. I am not sure that mindless being is not a way to simply lose time.

Back to abortion, what if the experience of soul is all about language. If so, what kind of soul does an aborted fetus have; or a child. On the other side, has someone who died with dementia lost their soul with their ability to express themselves. Are near death experiences simply a neurological phenomenon rather than something out of the body? It would seem so. Memories are in the mind, not the soul. If the mind is shut off, it cannot remember what it was not present to.

It takes real faith to grapple with this question. This is because proof is impossible. An afterlife is entirely a matter of faith (including, for Christians, believing that the stories told by the original 500 witnesses to the Resurrection are true and not a first century fiction). That Christians, and others, have a shared belief in an afterlife which they share evidence of explains why they resist abortion - but that is mainly because they want more proof and less faith. It is a natural human response. 

There is also the question of retribution. Real faith would regard some abortions, as well as most suicides and euthanasia as compassionate, rather than treading on matters to be left to the authority of God. Such a God is simply an Ogre in a white garment. A God that does not depend on the obedience of Her creatures is not to be feared.

Does this excuse abortion? I never said that. I am not a fan, but am compassionate for those who see no alternative. My job as a believer is to find alternatives and not shrink from those cases where there is no value in preserving a life which could never survive being born. As for the rest, it is not my place to judge (so as not to be judged - which is also an article of faith).

Compassion works both ways. Regardless of the natural desire to see pro-birth Catholics and their Evangelical enablers as sexist fiends, we must try to give them the benefit of the doubt in facing whether one of their core beliefs is challenged by an act which is none of their business. It takes great faith indeed to believe in a God who does not have an agenda.