Incinerated Human Fetuses and Pro-Choice Cognitive Dissonance

Here are my thoughts on the recent Telegraph article where it was recently discovered that some of the aborted fetuses had been used to heat some NHS hospitals.

Pro-choice Feminists gone wild

 Pro-choice Feminism

This morning however I stumbled upon an interesting video of a group of lovely pro-choice feminists who unhappy with the stance of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentina on abortion marched to a large Roman Catholic Church in San Juan to 'protest'.


Instead of rational dialogue these pro-choice feminists decided that it would be more fruitful to spray paint obscenities about the church and Jesus, spit at the men praying and protecting the church from their vandalism, draw swastikas on their heads and chests, perform sexual acts on each-other, push their breasts in the faces of the men, damage property and burn an effigy of Pope Francis.

What a fine demonstration of the fruits of 'enlightenment' thinking.

The response of the praying men is truly inspiring as they simply take what is being thrown at them physically and verbally in a display that truly represents Jesus' words to his own accusers “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The Minority

Clearly most Feminists are not violent or nasty people like this group which is ironic seeing as how often Pro-life Christians are described and characterized by the kooky minority. Can you hear the voices of feminists all over the world shouting 'they don't represent us'. Yeah we know, just like the Kooky minority don't represent us either. It sucks to be characterised by the kooky minority who very rarely represent the majority.

Watch the video of the friendly Argentinian Pro-choice Feminists yourself below.

Anne Furedi, Gender-Selective Abortions and Legal Permissibility

With all the controversy in the press over the failure of the CPS to seek prosecution for doctors who offer to provide abortions on the basis of gender, Anne Furedi the chief executive of BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service) wades in with her thoughts. You can read her article here.


Anne is never afraid to speak her mind and in fact she at-least has the intellectual honesty to follow the logic of her position to its conclusions which a vast number of pro-choice advocates fail to do. So even though I couldn't disagree with her more about her stance on the unborn and abortion, I do respect at-least that intellectual virtue. Unfortunately the reductio ad absurdum of her denial of the moral value of the developing human being are lost on her.

So lets begin. Anne points out that the 1967 Abortion Act doesn't explicitly state that rape, incest,
abandonment or being young are legitimate reasons for abortion, and that gender-selective abortions are no different. This is correct. All such reasons are based on the impact on the women's mental or physical health, therefore if a women happens to be in an environment where having another girl would bring shame on her and her family (possibly physical abuse) and the mental anguish may be such that the abortion could be legitimately and legally procured. In fact the law actually does take into account the impact the birth of the child could have on the existing family and children, perhaps the child would be hated by their father and extended family. The 1967 Abortion Act is simply so ambiguous that in reality I can see some legitimacy to her points, it is quite possible legally speaking for the law to be interpreted by doctors so that most reasons can be construed in a way that they would be legally permissible.

Law, Gendercide and Abortion

In a recent undercover operation two doctors were discovered to be offering such services and with more than enough evidence to prosecute them for breaking the law the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to prosecute them. The reason given was that their prosecution was not in the public interest. Surely prosecuting those who break our countries laws is in the public's interest? I'm sure the CPS would agree that doctors who offered to smother newborn girls for the parents would be in the public's interest. What this demonstrates is that the CPS have made what is in truth a logical connection between our societies disregard for the unborn, they know that in reality given some thought gender-selective abortions differ little morally from any other type of abortion. Both intend to kill and result in the death of the most vulnerable members of the human community.


I've written enough on why abortion is a barbaric and immoral act before, however the issue of gender selective abortion I was hoping would encourage us as a society to question the very nature of abortion and the unborn. If the unborn are not human beings with any or little moral value then I don't really see that there's much of a problem with gender-selective abortions. After-all if they aren't persons with any moral value and the parents don't want them the reason is really of little importance and I wish more people would be honest and consistent about this.

Mary Anne Warren famously argued that abortion could be justified if a women didn't want to cancel a planned vacation, if that is the case then doing so based purely on the basis of gender would appear justified. For instance if one is in a society where men are more able to work and earn more money for the family then it makes economical sense to get rid of the female human fetus for a small fee and hope that next time it is a boy. Or perhaps a family already has three girls and they desperately want a son to pass on the family name, this could also provide a reason for procuring a gender selective abortion. However all such reasons beg the question and assume something about unborn human beings, that they are either not morally valuable persons or that they are moral persons but a women's choice trumps the unborn right to life.

Six short Pro-life responses to Six popular Pro-choice slogans - Part 1

This blog was originally posted at my personal blog Mind the Evangelical here.

If one wants to be prepared to defend the pro-life position there exists a number of great resources from philosophers around like Francis Beckwith, Stephen D. Schwarz, Christopher Kaczor and Patrick Lee. Yet very few people who hold to the Pro-life view have ever perused their pages of their books, this leaves many of them unequipped to deal with some of the popular Pro-choice slogans and arguments that are often appear at first rhetorical powerful yet in reality are short on substance.

In light of this I thought I would very briefly in a few sentences respond to some of the most popular Pro-choice slogans and arguments. Some people might accuse me of attacking straw-man arguments, however in reality these arguments are both popular and frequently used. I'm more than happy to engage with the more sophisticated moral questions surrounding the Pro-life position but that is for another day.

1. 'It's a women's right to choose.'

Of course we all respect someone's right to choose, it would make you seem like a moral monster to deny something western civilisation values so highly. However, clearly there are many circumstances where the right to choose has its limitations. No-one is trying to tell women they can't choose what to eat or who to talk to but the idea that choice is absolute is nonsense. One must clarify what is being referred to when we speak about having a right to choose to do something. If I wanted to choose to shoot my dog or beat a child for fun you would likely be abhorred at the nature of my choice and tell me that I have no such right to do so.

Why mastabation isn't mass murder

This blogpost was taken from my new personal blog here.

As someone who defends the pro-life position I'm often accused of believing absurd things that are often ascribed to me even though I don't believe anything of the sort. One common assertion thrown at me is that I believe that human sperm is also a subject of moral rights or as Monty Python put it, every sperm is sacred.

This is allegedly because I think that human life is morally valuable from fertilization in virtue of the sort of thing they are (a substance of rational nature) and therefore have certain moral rights (such as that not to be intentionally and unjustly killed) I must also believe that sperm and ovum have moral rights to. The logical conclusion is that I must believe that every-time someone masturbates they are committing something akin to mass murder or genocide.

Now I feel I have a certain obligation to the number of pro-life critics who more often than you would think seem to get mixed up what the pro-life position is, particularly between the difference between a part and its whole. Now, from conception/fertilization a new human organism comes into being, they may differ in regards to size, level of development, environment and their degree of dependency but they are a whole human being (or if you prefer a member of the human species). The pro-life position is not that a part of a human of itself has moral value, for instance a kidney or liver is a part of a human being but they are certainly not whole human beings. Of course they are genetically human but they do not function as a whole human organism but as a part of a whole human one. Gametes (sperm and ovum) are parts of a human being, they are not in themselves a whole human organism.

I suppose some of the confusion may arise from a misunderstanding of an argument from potential, that is some people think that the same sort of potential resides within a gamete cell as it does in the early human embryo. However this misunderstands two types of potential, active and passive.

Gametes have the sort of potential that ingredients have for making a cake, that is left by themselves they will not develop into a cake. However this is not analogous to the embryo which is already a whole, alive, self-directed developing human organism with all the ingredients mixed and in the oven. That is to say left by itself in the maternal environment it will continue to develop into a mature human being, however that is not the case for a gamete which left alone for a few days will cease to exist like any other human cell.