Abortion

Abortion is currently one of the hottest political issues. Personally, I'm not thrilled with the prevailing arguments on any side. Let's look at them, then I will offer a logical alternative perspective.

Pro life

Most of the pro-life arguments tend to revolve around emotions. Look at the ads, they're about heartbeats, hands, feet, cute little baby things. These resonate with people, and probably mostly appeal to people who have actually had babies and have tender associations with little baby hands and whatnot.

But there is a problem with this. Remember rule 4, truth trumps emotion. While it is a very compelling argument, it is a weak one. It can be toppled by a single truth (which is why the other side gets traction even though it is emotionally weak). However, the pro-life ads also try to argue that life and rights begin before birth which, while a step in a good direction, typically still relies on emotional appeal.

Pro choice

The classic pro-choice arguments are "it's my body, my choice". This seems logical... on the surface. As we dig into it, you will see that this is a case where rule 1 comes out, and this relies on false-truth. This side may try to argue that life starts later, dehumanizing the baby in an effort to combat the emotional appeal of the pro-life arguments, but there is still nontruth behind the arguments.

The "my body, my choice" argument fails in multiple ways. It is essentially a strawman argument. First, it directs the audience away from the fact that there is a second body with its own unique DNA in the picture (nobody seems to talk about this fact). Does this other body not have a choice too (more on this later)? Second, "my choice" mis-places the root cause of the issue. You see, the baby would merely be the "leaves" of the issue, as it were, while the actual "root" of the issue is the mother's/father's choice to have sex before being ready for a baby. No sex, no baby. This is very basic cause and effect. Choices have consequences, good and bad (I would argue that choices are consequences, in the same way truth is function, but I digress...). Some argue that the "choice" spoken of is that they can choose the consequences of sex... Again in this case the argument runs up against consequences being inseperably connected to the choice. In other words, nobody can just choose to have sex while choosing not to get pregnant (unless they can guarantee sterility). It's as futile as jumping off a cliff but choosing not to fall. Thinking you can is fantasy.

The three exceptions

The more moderate position takes a pro-life approach, but makes exceptions for the sakes of would-be mothers who could die due to pregnancy complications, or were victims of rape or incest. These seem common-sensical, but more research reveals an issue with rule 3, and we might just need more info. Let's break it down.

Making exceptions for health reasons seems to make sense, but only if you don't know some perks of modern medicine: 1. Cases of a mother's life being in danger from a pregnancy are extremely uncommon, 2. Abortions are a medical procedure that carries its own chance of life-threatening complications, and 3. Typically in a life-threatening pregnancy the baby does not have to be killed to save the mother, just delivered early. Applying this knowledge almost makes health of the mother a non-issue; it should just be the doctor's responsibility to save as many lives as he can while putting the mother first. I can definitely get behind allowing abortions in the incredibly rare case that these 3 things do not apply, but it should definitely be a last resort.

Cases of rape are tricky. First, it was decidedly not the mother's choice or fault that she got pregnant, but it's also not the baby's fault. This fails for the same reasons the "my body, my choice" arguments fail. However, there is a "mercy killing" argument that a baby is entitled to be raised in a loving home environment with both parents present (we have evolved for this to be our ideal environment), which conditions might be less common in a rape case. But the "mercy killing" argument fails because it seems a bit presumptuous to think the baby would prefer no life to a bad life, and adoption is also an option.

Cases of incest follow similar logic to that of rape, but the higher chance of congenital defect gives slightly more weight to the "mercy killing" argument. Having said that, these arguments ultimately fail for the same reasons the rape case arguments fail.

Where is the truth?

No wonder abortion is such a messy issue. None of the sides actually have a decent logical footing. But we still need a legal decision on it. Traditionally, where the line tends to be drawn on when an abortion is legal rides somewhere around where it is believed an unborn child is enough of a person to seem like they can have rights, which is often tied roughly to where it is thought a baby might be able to survive on their own outside the womb. However, this line is often influenced by political bias, and there really is no logical reason behind the final decision. The rationale typically boils down to what gets the votes instead of what is objective and true.

Fortunately, I think that an objective, unbiased, truth-based answer exists.

Physics and abortion

It is hard to get more objective and unbiased than the laws physics. The problem is, most people do not understand more advanced physics. Which makes debates featuring physics a bit... unwealdy. So please keep rule 3 in mind and take some time to process. But what do physics have to do with abortion?

Many of the logical issues surrounding abortion hinge on when life and rights start and when it ends. So we shall try to define the bookends of life and rights, according to physics. We'll loop in some molecular biology, too.

The end of life

The moral ideal would be if everybody only dies of natural causes. Death before a natural death (outside of cases such as accident, self-defense, and war) are typically labeled as murder. But when do we start caring about the end of life for a developing baby? This brings us to our first physical theory: Relativity. According to the theory of relativity, all time exists from any point in time, in the same way all space exists from any point in space, in a continuum called "spacetime". This seems weird, but the theory of relativity is one of the most robustly confirmed theories in all of physics, and things like GPS and cathode ray tubes would likely not function if the theory were inaccurate (and truth is function!).

When applied to a person's life, this means that the last bookend of everybody's life already exists within spacetime. This means that an unborn baby, from the moment life begins, is already a 1-year-old, a teenager, an adult, a parent, a great grandparent, etc. on the canvas of spacetime. This is weird to wrap our minds around, but I repeat, this is true according to the theory of relativity (is your GPS working? Then yes, that infant has grandchildren). Everybody's future exists, and every individual's potential is set. That is, unless there is an unnatural cause of death.

The start of life

But this means that if you stop life before it happens then it's fine, right? So when does life start? There are laws of physics to help us with this too. Enter quantum physics. According to quantum physics, the future (particularly at a microscopic scale) exists as something of a fuzzy state of probabilities until it comes to focus in the present, once it is made certain. How the future can be fuzzy while the theory of relativity says the future already exists is complicated, under discussion, and makes many people unhappy, so we will not go into that, but we know that quantum theory is true enough because all digital electronics depend on it to function (and truth is function!).

So if the future exists when it is made certain, when does that happen for a person's life? Certainty starts when randomness ends. So in the case of a human, your life is certain when your DNA is created, when sperm meets egg.

Some of you may now be wondering, if the future already exists then does it mean it's murder to not be making babies at every available opportunity? Wouldn't that mean we're stopping that from happening? Thankfully, no. The human reproductive cycle has randomness built into it, constantly shuffling and keeping the future fuzzy, keeping that DNA from being certain until egg and sperm meet. Each sperm and each egg has its own unique DNA when it's formed, through processes called "crossing over", and "independent assortment" then ensures they combine in unique ways. Additionally, there is the randomness of shuffling which sperm or egg is involved. Once the two meet, the DNA is certain, and a truly unique individual now exists in spacetime, complete with life and natural death.

Discussion

When I had this epiphany I was shocked. As I mentioned I am quite religious, and my denomination's policy on abortion was along the lines of the three exceptions, but the implications of this realization were far more conservative (it didn't shake my faith or anything, policy is not doctrine). This meant that not only was any abortion murder, but some forms of contraceptive were as well. But now the lines were clearly defined: before sperm meets egg, anything goes, and after sperm meets egg is off limits, that's a real human now, not merely potential, but there is real substance from beginning to end and everything inbetween.

Conclusion

So now what? We know the truth about abortion; it's bad. Really bad. It's murder. Maybe not what is legally defined as murder, but what logic, reason, and science say is murder.

But with the right votes we can make the law align with truth.

Share the truth.

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