Our Fetal Flaw: The Appalling Mischaracterization Of Abortion As Healthcare

In the first 3 months of 2024 296,970 babies were aborted [1], if calculated properly the lifeless bodies of infants are stacked up by the millions in biohazard bins across america. The abortion debate appears to be less about life value and more about a war of rights. It has become a battleground of branding, pitting people against each other under slogans of “pro-life v.s pro-choice” neither wanting to be the antagonist. While the war wages, the core of the controversy is entirely missed. What categorizes the entire pro-abortion movement, however, is the framing of abortion as a vital form of reproductive healthcare. When viewed through the criteria for proper  healthcare, abortion abysmally fails. Therefore, abortion needs to be categorized as medical malpractice rather than a reproductive health service, for it fails to uphold the physician's duty to actively enhance or mitigate a threat to one's health while not causing harm to the patient.

In this post, I will explain why the modern view of abortion as reproductive health care is philosophically incorrect when properly applied to the criteria of healthcare that maintains that it must do no harm while also mitigating a threat to health or actively enhancing the health of the patient. Abortion should instead be categorized as malpractice because it violates both mother and baby, and the proper application of healthcare should be healing, not metaphorically scarring.  

History of Abortion 

Abortion is the deliberate termination of a fetus. The early Greco-Roman World knew it, the pagans knew it, the Christian enlightenment knew it, and modern society today knows it. In the Greco Roman World nearly everyone aborted, the rich, the poor, prostitutes, and married women. Then Hippocrates came along, and he founded an oath for the medical community, we know this today as the Hippocratic oath, and he said to “give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child”[2] ergo- abortion. Up until the Christian enlightenment the abortion debate was defined by ensoulment: the process where the body is joined with the soul. Pythagoras believed in the soul at conception. Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Soranus believed in ensoulment in-utero. Plato and the Stoics thought the soul entered at birth. [3] Then the enlightenment happened. With conversion rates going up, abortion rates were going down. The scripture states, “ behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” [4] children became less of a burden and more of a blessing. Christian thinkers built upon the idea that life itself is sacred and humanity was created in the image of God in their arguments against abortion.They argued that the personhood of a fetus is the state of being a person with original human DNA and human characteristics, all while also retaining feelings and emotions. As the modern movement shifted the focus away from religion the tenets of human value are consistently maintained and affirmed through science and logic even if their roots were planted in religion first. 

Abortion as Healthcare vs. Abortion as Malpractice 

If abortion is categorized as Healthcare, then absolute bodily autonomy is the aim of healthcare or, at the very least, the precondition for health, therefore causing no harm to the patient and fully abiding by the definition of Healthcare. If abortion is categorized as malpractice, the life of the fetus is considered as a part of the whole life of a patient. Yet if abortion is malpractice, then it is not mitigating a threat or enhancing the health of the patient because, instead of preserving life and health, it is ending the life of the fetus. To end a life would make mitigating a threat or enhancing health literally impossible. The entirety of the abortion debate hinges on whether or not both individuals (if there are minimally two included) should have bodily autonomy. The woman needs to be in control of her own body and exercise her free will in any way she sees fit, and yet, the fetus itself is argued to have the right to life, trumping any right that the mother has. Abortion appears to be a tug of war between bodily autonomy and the right to life, neither side willing to fall in the mud of logical failure. 

Why Abortion is Malpractice, Not Healthcare

Those who advocate for abortion rights generally refer to those rights as a reproductive health service because it implies a direct benefit to the health of the primary patient (the mother), or minimally that it mitigates a threat to her health. They argue that it is the protection of the mother for which abortion is carried out, the assumed relief of responsibility for providing above her means, minimally physically and maximally practically. However, if a woman has the capability to conceive, her body will have the capability to carry the baby to term. Furthermore, there are several resources for mothers who necessitate help; women's shelters offer stability and aid when sought out. A child's dependence on a mother biologically, economically, and emotionally is not a direct threat to the mother. Although 1 in 8 mothers who give birth to their babies vaginally or through cesarean section develop postpartum depression, the majority of women experience a spike in oxytocin and dopamine due to the affection attachment response after birth which helps to resolve the issue.

Abortion does not actively enhance the health of the mother and baby, but it negatively impacts both of them. It ends the life of the baby and makes the quality of life of the mother significantly worse. [5] Hormone levels spike, therefore causing higher levels of anxiety and depression, which can lead to suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and many more devastating side effects. When considering the baby itself as a patient, there is no way abortion can be considered as an enhancement because it ends the life of the fetus. With the two primary types of abortion, DE and VA, the fetus is euthanized, dismembered, then disposed of. Childbirth, while not without risks, is a basic, natural, human function and a generally safe process. Therefore, the most logical and ethical solution is to induce labor and deliver the baby prematurely in pregnancies that would be deemed a serious threat to the mother and would popularly “require” abortions to terminate. Delivering early leaves the mother and baby separated, where doctors can treat the patients individually and provide life-sustaining care at any point in the pregnancy. Furthermore a fetus’s reliance or dependence on another doesn't make them any less valuable, and to maintain that it doesn't would require the assertion that those who are mature human organisms are less valuable than others, which is not only illogical but rude. 

Restoring Proper Healthcare

The screams of future generations are silenced by an era in which the outright destruction of life is acclaimed as healthcare. We as a society must enact a necessary reorientation towards life through the rehabilitation of the healthcare system. The fight for life is not one of semantics and fruitless labor, but a proclamation of rejuvenation is required inorder to maintain the recategorization. If abortion is categorized as malpractice, society will be forced to find substantial solutions that help mothers and babies to be supported. We need to be part of the solution and meet mothers where they are at, for better or for worse. Our insufficiency to advocate for the support of life in any stage of development is what leads us as a society away.  Change can start with a single person, for the individual is part of society. For a mother to choose life is to not only choose an entire generation, but to choose a future in which that future generation can thrive. For it is you who can uphold your duty to actively enhance or mitigate a threat for our future. 

References:

[1] Society of Family Planning, “Charted: Abortion Numbers in the US, Post-Roe.”    https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/08/12/abortion-increase 

[2] Hippocrates, The Oath, trans. W.H.S. Jones, The Complete Works of Hippocrates, 1595

[3] Alyssa Horrocks, “The Soul and Abortion in Ancient Greek Culture and Jewish Law,” Journal of Undergraduate Research (May 2014),  https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/unca/f/A_Horrocks_Soul_JrnlUngRes_2014.pdf. 502. 

[4] Good News Publishers, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway 2001).

[5] Julia Steinberg, Charles McCulloch, and Nancy Adler, Abortion and Mental Health: Findings From the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, 2014)