Dueling Abortion Ads: Both Wrong

The Tim Tebow bit most people have seen or heard about. The other one is a response from Planned Parenthood available only on the web.

Tebow first. It's great that his mom's decision turned out well and he's healthy and happy. But almost certainly some women have gotten similar advice, rejected it, and had a horrible outcome--assuming that you don't already believe that having had an abortion is in itself a horrible outcome. Also, the story gets much of its emotional punch from seeing Tim's embryo as actually being Tim, rather than, say, a self-actualizing recipe for Tim. What if the mom's story was, "I had a really bad headache that night, but..." So what's your favorite link in the chain of causation?

So now for the Planned Parenthood ad. It's just off the point. The ad has two guys saying that they have young daughters and that they hope that the girls grow up to be women who are able to choose what they want to do with their own bodies. But you can't get to where you are asking whether a woman should have choice in the matter or not until you establish that a embryo or fetus isn't essentially the same as a post-natal human. As a thought experiment, let's say we're in an alternate universe in which a neighbor of a woman having sex may occasionally end up magically miniaturized and in suspended animation inside that woman's womb. Do you think that you'd want your daughter to grow up to have the choice of aborting your drinking buddy, Fred, from next door? Nope, so first you have to establish that an unborn baby is a different sort of thing from Fred. But it's not all or nothing. If you can establish that the unborn baby is different, then you can argue whether a woman's control over her body should extend to aborting it.

By the way, I'm quite aware that a good deal of anti-abortion/pro-life talk has a considerable odor of misogyny about it. But that says more about the people who are talking than about the logic of what they are saying.