Do Humans Have Intrinsic Value?

If people have intrinsic value and worth than abortion is wrong and is a vile sin, but if humans don’t have any intrinsic worth than there is no moral justification to say that it is wrong to murder those who are a detriment to society. God assigns value, not man, and every human, born or unborn, has great value.

So far, in the two years or so that I have been hosting the Recovering Faith podcast and blog, I have given any and all controversial topics a pretty wide birth, but today I am going to break that streak and dive headfirst into a topic that should not be controversial but is and has been since long before I was even a twinkle in my father’s eye, as the saying goes. My controversial stance is that babies are people, actual and whole, and that they should not be killed. It is sad but true that simply saying that babies are people and should not be killed will cause some people to develop an unbridled hatred for me and say all sorts of unpleasant and untrue things about me, and I suppose that it is their right to do so, despite the fact that it is not warranted or justified. I would rather stand with God and be judged by the world than stand with the world and be judged by God.

When it comes to the topic of abortion it typically comes down to the question of whether or not a woman has the right to to terminate a pregnancy or whether or not a baby at a specific phase of development can feel pain, but those should not be the real questions; the question we should be asking is whether or not people have intrinsic value that cannot be granted or taken away by anyone. If people do not have any intrinsic value and only have the value assigned to them by their government or society than anyone would be hard pressed to make the case that murder is wrong, especially if it is against a person or group of people the government or society has deemed to have little or no value, and this horrific belief ultimately leads to discrimination, bigotry, racism, slavery, ethnic cleansing, and many other tragedies and injustices. On the other hand, if people do indeed have intrinsic value and worth that can not be granted or taken away by any society, government or person, and I firmly believe they do, than all life is sacred and there is no real justification for abortion unless it is the ONLY way to save the life of the mother, and as former Surgeon General of the United States Dr. C. Everett Koop said, “The fact of the matter is that abortion as a necessity to save the life of the mother is so rare as to be nonexistent”(1). The data shows though that such cases are extremely rare and even if the baby can not be delivered naturally or carried to term without jeopardizing the life of the mother a c section is relatively safe procedure and with modern medical technology, extremely premature babies can be saved with a great deal of success. There is no reason to kill the baby in exchange for the mother when both could live.

A lot of people in their arguments for abortion and against the sanctity of life falsely conflate abortion with capital punishment, but as I will explain, the two could not be farther apart. I am not making a case for capital punishment, and in the most part, I am against it, but that is a topic for another day. Today my only aim is to show that support for capital punishment does not exclude a person from caring about the sanctity of life. Many governments around the world have enacted laws where specific crimes such as treason, arson, murder, rape and other serious offenses, if committed, will forfeit a persons life. When a person performs any of those crimes which carry the death penalty they do so of their own volition, knowing full well the possible consequences of their crimes should they get caught. A baby, however, is truly innocent and has done nothing to forfeit his or her life, not could they have. I think it is a fair statement to say that people are allowed to kill their own babies, at least before birth, because it makes their lives more convenient, but the same case that is made for abortion could just as easily be made for mercy killings to get rid of people with certain illnesses, deformities or conditions, and the same argument that is made for protecting those people can and should be made for the unborn babies. Saying that a vile criminal who willingly hurt other people should be protected while at the same time arguing that an innocent child should be murdered as a matter of convenience is wicked.

With the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about the sanctity of life, and I have to believe that a lot of the people that are talking about it as of late have no idea what it means, nor do they care; they are only talking about it now because in the context they are using it, it is politically expedient. During this crisis there have been numerous governors of states, and other elected officials, who have said that if even one life was saved by the forced shut downs, shelter in place orders, and the exponential growth of government power that took away many constitutional freedoms was justified, and yet they deemed abortion clinics “essential services” and allowed them to remain in operation. If those politicians truly believed that all life was sacred and that it was all worth it to save on life than they would have closed the abortion clinics. If there was any other industry on earth that killed as many people as the abortion industry does than the majority of the world would be in an uproar about it, but since babies can be inconvenient, and since they can’t speak for themselves, it is allowed for some unfathomable reason.

If you believe in the God of the Bible than you must believe that people, all people, have intrinsic value and that value was given to them to by the God who created them, but if you don’t believe in God than there is no particular reason to believe that humans have any value above what is assigned to them by society and the government. There’s a famous passage from “The Grand Inquisitor” section of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in which Ivan Karamazov claims that if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.  If there is no God, then there are no rules to live by, no moral law we must follow; we can do whatever we want. Without a belief that humans have intrinsic value that there is no legitimate moral argument against racism, prejudice, bigotry or slavery. If humans do not have any intrinsic value than to say that murder is wrong has no more moral weight than to say that the color yellow is bad. If humans decide the worth of other humans than there will always be a group or groups of people who are marginalized, mistreated or murdered because they are not useful to or wanted by those who are in power.

Romans 2:15 says that the law of God is written in our hearts, so even those who don’t believe in God know on some level that it is wrong to hurt people, and that is why there is such a large scale effort to dehumanize those who society does not like, in this case unwanted babies, because if they can convince themselves that they are not human than they won’t feel so bad about murdering them. A common argument is that an unborn baby isn’t human, it is only a fetus or an embryo, and while it is true that an unborn baby can accurately and scientifically be described as a fetus or an embryo, any doctor or scientist would have to admit that the embryo or fetus inside a pregnant woman is a human embryo or fetus and that it is very much alive. Embryo and fetus are just ways of describing specific stages in the development and saying they are not human makes no more sense than saying someone is not human because they are a an infant, a toddler, a teenager, or even an octogenarian.

It has always seemed odd to me that when a pregnancy is wanted it is referred to as a baby but when it is not wanted it is refereed to as an embryo or a fetus. No one ever says that the princess is carrying a fetus, they say she is pregnant and carrying a child. Whether or not the child is wanted does not change the fact that it is a human child and has great value.

The argument that it is OK to murder a baby before they can feel pain is also insane. I doubt very much those who make that claim would use the same argument for someone who is in a coma, even if the person had little or no chance of recovery, and yet that argument is made to kill millions of innocent people whose only crime was to not be wanted, people who could have had bright futures if they had been given the chance.

Those who support abortion say that if we prevent abortion than we are also responsible for providing for the baby for its entire childhood, and potentially its entire life, but saving a person from death does not make you responsible for taking care of them. However, Christians are the largest group who adopt and provide for children and are more than twice as likely to adopt than non Christians are (1). The argument that if a person does not want to or is not willing to provide for a child its entire childhood or its entire life they only want to punish women and don’t care about life is insane. Let’s apply the same logic to a person who saves a teenager form being murdered by their abusive step-father. No one in their right mind would say that if you saved a teenager than you would have to adopt them or pay their way up through college. If you save a homeless man from getting hit by a truck would that mean you had to invite him to live with you or buy him a house? Of course not, and saving a baby does not obligate you to provide for it either, though as I already mentioned, many, many Christians do a lot for the unfortunate, run adoption centers, soup kitchens and many other charities to help the disadvantaged and do not just care about the baby until it is born.

It is the Christian duty to protect the most innocent among us, and it is the morally right thing to do. Whether or not a person is wanted does not make them more or less valuable. God is the one who assigns value and He has decreed that we have great value, so much so that he sent Jesus to die on the cross on our behalf so that we could be granted salvation.

https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOftenAbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf

https://ethicsdaily.com/christians-more-than-twice-as-likely-to-adopt-a-child-cms-21267/