Secular Pro-Life
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet The Team
    • Mission and Vision
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Stances
      • Abortion
      • Religion
      • Contraception
      • The Rape Exception
    • Terms and Conditions
      • Opt-out preferences
  • Content
    • Index
    • Blog
    • Presentations
      • A Secular Case Against Abortion
      • Building Bridges
      • Deconstructing Three Pro-Choice Myths
      • Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study
    • Research
      • Abortion Law and Abortion Rates
      • Abortion Law and Pregnancy Rates
      • Later Abortion
      • Embryonic Hearts
    • Collections
      • Becoming Pro-Life
      • They can hear you
      • Parents can hear you
      • Our children’s heartbeats
      • Ask An Atheist
      • LGBTQ and Pro-Life
      • Fixed that meme for you
      • For the biology textbook tells me so
    • Print Materials
      • 100 Pro-Life Sign Ideas
      • Overview of SPL
      • 3 Reasons to tell people you’re pro-life
      • How to talk (not fight) about abortion
      • Bridges PRC Curriculum
      • Fetal Remains Disposition Protocol
      • FAQ handout
      • Presentations overview card
    • Store
  • Contact
  • Get Involved
    • Why support SPL?
    • Donor Opportunities
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Volunteer Survey
    • More Surveys
      • Why do you support SPL?
      • Best and Worst Abortion Arguments
      • “Ask An Atheist” Interview
      • Non-Traditional Pro-Life Survey
      • LGBT Pro-Life Survey
      • Parents experiences with prenatal screening
      • Your experiences with adoption
      • Your experiences with processing abortion
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

Are Unborn Children Just Like Born Children?

April 20, 2015/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Clinton Wilcox

I was reading a pro-choice blog in which the author had an experience with a pro-life woman. The author asked this woman if a child who dies in a car accident is just like a child who is aborted. Incredulous that the woman would believe this, the author says, “I them [sic] pointed to my boyfriend’s aunt who lost her child in a car accident last her [sic] and told her to tell that woman that people that make the decision to have an abortion is [sic] on the same level of her losing the child she raised and loved for sixteen years.”

The pro-life woman and the pro-choice author talked right past each other. Several things went wrong here.

The woman the author was talking to possibly could have benefited from training from an organization like Equal Rights Institute about holding productive conversations. At the very least, she might have suggested continuing the discussion at a later time instead of just walking away.

The pro-choice author is making some unwarranted assumptions as well. When a pro-life person says that the unborn are just like born children, although this may be a sloppy way of putting it (again: preparation helps!), what we really mean is that fundamentally, there is no difference between unborn and born children. They have the same human nature, they are full-fledged members of our species. Of course there are differences. Older children have many abilities that unborn children do not; they can talk, form relationships, think about themselves and their place in the world, and so on. But in the morally relevant sense, an unborn child is fundamentally and numerically the same entity as his/her older self.

Further confusion appears when the author points out that the child who died in the car accident had been raised and loved for sixteen years, and an unborn child who is killed by abortion hasn’t. That’s a factually correct statement, but somewhat beside the point in this conversation. Being raised and loved does not make you a member of our species.

No, it’s not exactly the same thing to kill a child in abortion and to lose a child you have invested in for 16 years. It’s also not exactly the same thing to lose a newborn to SIDS and to lose a spouse of 50 years, or to lose a child to miscarriage or to lose your own parents. Everyone grieves differently in different situations and that’s completely valid.

In all of these cases the same kind of entity has died: a human being. But it would be wildly insensitive to walk up to a grieving person and compare their tragedy to someone else’s in order to score points in a random political debate. The pro-life woman was obviously right not to do so.

Related Posts

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://i0.wp.com/secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/silhouettes-of-children.jpg?fit=226%2C150&ssl=1 150 226 Clinton Wilcox https://secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SecularProlife2.png Clinton Wilcox2015-04-20 11:27:002023-02-14 15:12:53Are Unborn Children Just Like Born Children?
0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Follow via Email

* indicates required

Categories

  • Ableism
  • Abortion pills
  • Administrative
  • Adoption & Foster Care
  • Biology
  • Bodily Rights
  • Dialogue strategy
  • en español
  • Later Abortion
  • Legislation, laws, & court cases
  • Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss
  • Personhood
  • Philosophy
  • Pro-Life Demographics
  • Rape Exception
  • Religion
  • Research
  • Speeches, Discussions, Presentations
  • SPL Emails
  • They Can Hear You
  • Top SPL Articles
  • Top SPL Graphics
  • Uncategorized
  • We Asked You Answered
  • Year In Review
  • Your Stories

Archive

It’s crucial that we demonstrate that anyone can–and everyone should–oppose abortion. Thanks to you, we are working to change minds, transform our culture, and protect our prenatal children. Every donation supports our ability to provide nonsectarian, nonpartisan arguments against abortion. Read more details here. Please donate today.

DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
© Copyright 2025 Secular Pro-Life. All rights reserved. Website Design by TandarichGroup

Related Posts

Seeking MDs for one-time volunteer assignment Update from Fargo, ND
Scroll to top
Manage Consent

To provide the best experience, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}
Want to receive our email newsletter?

We’d be happy to keep in touch. Subscribe for access to our newsletter and other updates.