“Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, if a woman did not consent to pregnancy, she cannot be forced to stay pregnant.”
Abortion advocates sometimes frame their position around the consent of the mother.
They argue that if the mother did NOT consent to getting pregnant, it would be unfair and immoral to force her to carry a child she did not consent to having.
A common hypothetical used to make their point is that it would be wrong if the government randomly knocked on your door and handed you a child and said you were legally obligated to raise it.
But let’s think about pregnancy for a moment. Is it the case that the government is randomly knocking on doors and assigning children to unwilling people? No, that is not at all what happens in pregnancy.
In more than 99% of all pregnancies, two people freely chose to engage in the act of procreation. The primary biological function of sexual intercourse is pregnancy.
Abortion advocates may highlight that some people attempt to prevent pregnancy with contraceptives, showing it was not their intention to create a child.
But let’s apply that logic elsewhere. Suppose you take your life savings to a casino. Your intention is to have some fun and enjoy the dopamine. However, you do not want to lose your money, so you spend some time learning to count cards, understand poker strategies, or otherwise increase your odds of gambling “safely.” However, if despite your best efforts, at the end of the night if you have lost all your money, you cannot claim to the pit boss “sorry sir, I only consented to winning, you can’t take my money!”
Some abortion advocates have told us, “pregnancy is a biological function, you cannot consent to a biological function.” That line of argumentation does not hold up either. For example, gaining body fat is a biological function that happens when you eat a caloric surplus. Could I eat junk food all day then claim that I did not consent to becoming overweight?
Consent to sex is clearly consent to pregnancy.
*A quick note*
With that established, I still do not recommend pro-life advocates make this their core argument. I often hear people say, “they knew what they were doing, and they knew they could get pregnant.” In other words, because they consented to sex and pregnancy they cannot get an abortion. While that is true, it does not cover cases of rape. If having consented to the possibility of pregnancy is what makes having an abortion wrong, then in cases of rape abortion must be allowed.
Instead, I encourage you to always keep the humanity of the unborn child as the foundation. It is a biological fact that human life begins at fertilization. We have the right to life because of what we are, not because of what we can do or how we were conceived.
For more information on defending life in cases of rape, see this article.
In Defense of Life,
Victor Nieves
President, Life Issues Institute
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