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According to a report published June 2025, 63% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all/most cases, while 36% believe abortion should be legal in all/most cases illegal. This is a bit wider divide than before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade returning abortion regulation to individual states: 61% supporting abortion on demand with 37 opposing it.

The divide breaks along religious, political and age groups. White protestants oppose abortion 73% while religiously unaffiliated support it by 80%. Republicans oppose it 57%, Democrats support it 84%. Support of abortion decreases with age with 76% of those 18-29 supporting abortion, while the support drops to 59% for those over 65.

Can we agree there is strong disagreement over the issues?

Here are some of the pro-abortion arguments:

It’s just a mass of tissue in the first trimester

Prochoice advocates argue, “‘Fetal tissue’ is no more a human being, than a bolt is a Buick.”

However, virtually every secular medical book and even a senate hearing declare human life begins the instant of conception.

A report from Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 1981 reads: “Physicians, biologists and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.”

A split second after conception, this one-celled forty-six-chromosomed human being possesses everything it needs to grow into an adult human except time.

It’s not a blueprint of a human being. It’s not a part of a human being. It is a unique, separate human being. Never has a bolt grown into a Buick!

Because words are so important in this debate, Dr. Jack Wilke, the former director of “National Right to Life,” warns pro-lifers to avoid emotion-laden words like “murder” and “baby.” He urges the use of “kill” and “human life.” Pro-choicers can engage in wordplay arguing that a “baby” is not “murdered,” but cannot refute—with any scientific credibility—abortions do indeed kill human life.

A close cousin to the “it’s not human life” argument is . . .

A woman has a right to choose what she will do with her own body?

The biological truth is the life growing within the mother is not her body.

It has a very different chromosome structure with a separate circulatory system and often a different blood type. There’s even a fifty-fifty chance it’s a different gender!

The life of the mother is why abortion should be legal at any stage of pregnancy

A good argument, but only 2% of the one and a half million abortions performed each year in the United State were for the express purpose of saving the mother’s life. The overwhelming number of abortions performed do not “save” anyone’s life.

Abortion is safer for very young girls?

The New York Times quotes The Journal of Youth and Adolescence’s fndings “that teenage mothers, given proper care, have the Ileast complications in childbirth. The younger the mother, the better the birth. [If there are more problems,] society makes it so.”

In my book The Why Files: When Can I Start Dating?, I list twelve studies from medical journals that list such complications from abortion as pelvic inflammatory disease, problems with next pregnancy, damage to cervix, and severe blood loss to name a few.

I also note that a University of Minnesota study, tracking the psychological effects five to ten years after an abortion, revealed that 81% of women having an abortion became preoccupied with the aborted child, 75% had flashbacks of the actual operation, 54% had nightmares, 33% reported visions of aborted child visiting them and 25% experienced hallucinations related to the abortion.

Contrary to the pro-choice/pro-abortion rhetoric, abortions are not always “simple and safe operations.”

Abortion should be legal for victims of rape and incest?

However, only a fraction of 1% of rape and incest victims become pregnant. That means that for every abortion for rape or incest, there are 25,000 for convenience. (Rather than pro-lifers demanding all abortion be illegal, I’d be willing compromise and allow abortion for the life of the mother and for those pregnant through rape or incest. (The would eliminate 99% of convenience abortions.)

And, we must consider what is best for the rape or incest victim. It’s the vicious attack and violation that causes emotional damage—not the pregnancy itself. Will additional physical and mental health threats noted earlier result by subjecting her to an abortion?

Abortion reduces child abuse by making each child a “wanted child”

If that is the case, we should see a reduction in reported cases after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. In 1960, before the Supreme Court decision, five thousand child abuse cases were reported in New York City. Fifteen years following Roe v. Wade, twenty-five thousand cases were reported in New York City—a 500% increase!

National statistics reveal that child abuse is sky-rocketing across the United States as well. Over 167 thousand cases were reported in 1973, 711 thousand in 1979, and 929 thousand in 1982, and in 1989 nearly two and a half million!

To be fair, there are many possible explanations for the incredible statistical increase: more people willing to report abuse, more accurate reporting of abuse, stress of economic conditions, increase in drug use in adults, the pressures of single parenting, etc.

But one possible cause could be that abortion creates the mentality of “disposable children.” If children are viewed as having no value in the womb, it follows they may be viewed with little value outside the womb.

However, complex the causes of child abuse, pro-abortionists cannot argue that abortion on demand has reduced child abuse when there has been a 1,400% statistical increase since 1973!

Don’t hide behind a “pro-choice” position

“I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I think everyone has a right to choose,” is a dangerous use of words. After all, who in a pluralistic democracy could possibly oppose “choice.”

But those who embrace this particular “pro-choice” position are guilty of ignoring their own conscience (“I’m personally opposed”) by allowing for the killing of human life (“but everyone has a right to choose”).

(View my “I’m pro-choice when it comes to bank robbery” rant. It’s satire, not my actual position.)

Don’t hide behind medical myths

It’s not a woman’s body: It’s a unique, separate human being.

The pro-life stance is based on medical and scientific studies

Catholics were first to enter the fray as pro-life advocates. They have been vocal advocates for unborn life, and have refused to allow abortions in their hospitals.

And while there are powerful arguments against taking unborn life in the Bible, the secular, nonpartisan, medical and scientific evidence are powerful arguments to non-believers.

It’s a major disagreement between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but I think Jesus would say to our modern world, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

If you have evidence to refute anything in this essay, please post it in comments. You will not be censored. (Please, no name-calling. Just the facts. Thanks!)

Copyright © 1992, 2026 James N. Watkins. All rights reserved.