Is it okay to terminate a pregnancy
because the fetus is not viable on its own?
That's an argument we often hear in
support of abortion, so we need to talk
about it. Remember, in the last video we
started looking at a syllogism.
Number one: Abortion terminates an innocent human life. Two: It's wrong to terminate an
innocent human life.  If those are correct,
then number three would also be correct,
which is: abortion is wrong.
We considered premise number one and
determined that abortion does in fact
terminate an innocent human life.
But before we move on to premise number two, 
we need to answer the argument of viability.
I accept that an unborn baby
probably could not survive on its own in
the first several months of pregnancy,
but does that mean it's okay to end its life?
If you think about it, that
argument doesn't make any sense.
No, the baby couldn't survive on its own, but
what is it that makes a person able to
survive on their own? There are three
things that make it possible for any
person to survive on their own, and I
think we'll find that unborn babies are
not the only ones that are nonviable.
Here are the three things that are
needed for viability: The ability to
determine need, the ability to meet the
need, and the availability of the means
to meet the need. First, the ability to
determine our needs. If you're going to
survive, you have to understand that you
have needs. Even after birth a baby can't
do this. Put a naked five-year-old alone
on the street, and it probably won't
survive either. Of course, this also leads
to the subject of the mentally
handicapped and people with dementia.
If you are ever around someone who is about to
die, they usually stop eating. An elderly
dementia patient might even walk out in
the blizzard without a coat on and
freeze to death. They can't survive on
their own.
Does that mean we're supposed to kill
them, too? So, there are many people that
can't survive on their own, because they
just don't have the ability to
understand their needs.
Just because an unborn baby is in the
same situation doesn't mean we're
justified in killing them. So, first we
need the ability to determine our needs.
Second, we need the ability to meet our
needs. If I were to wake up one morning
paralyzed and all alone, I could mentally
understand my needs but I wouldn't be
able to go to the kitchen to get
something to eat, and if I lay there long
enough in that condition, I would
eventually die. My mind would know what I
needed but physically I wouldn't
be able to do anything about it. No one
in their right mind would claim that I
wasn't a person, but I wasn't able to
survive on my own. The third thing that
we need to be viable is the availability
of the means to meet the need.
If a person was lost out in the desert with
no food or water, they would eventually die.
They would know their needs, they
would have the ability to meet them,
but what they need is not available. We
wouldn't say they're not a person. When we
find their scorched bones lying out in
the heat of the desert, it would make the
headlines, because a person died. So, a
baby in the womb isn't viable, but
neither are people at many other stages
of life. When we call the baby a fetus,
somehow we think that distinguishes it
from being a human. But we don't think
that when we call a person a toddler or
a teenager or a senior citizen. It's just
a stage of life, but it's still a person.
So, let's recap. We need three things
to be viable: Number one: the ability to
determine our needs, number two:
the ability to meet our needs, and number
three: the availability of the means to
meet our needs. An unborn baby, of course,
is not viable, but neither are many other
people at all different stages of life.
If we're gonna be so fixated on
discrimination, let's talk about
discriminating against a person simply
because of their location, which in this
case is in what should be the protective
custody of the mother's body. So, we've
looked at our first premise: abortion
terminates an innocent human life, and we
know that even a nonviable fetus is an
innocent human life. In the next video,
we'll look at the second premise: that
it's wrong to terminate an innocent
human life.
