There are words that do not open a debate but shut it down. In the abortion debate, each side has its own. One side says “a right,” and every moral doubt seems instantly absolved; the other says “murder,” and assumes there is nothing left to discuss. The first word turns abortion into a victory. The second turns the woman into a criminal. Between them, they manage to settle one of the most complex human conflicts in under ten seconds.
I maintain that abortion is not a right, but neither is it murder. It is a serious decision arising from circumstances that would have been better avoided; a way out that should be legal, safe and accessible, without therefore having to become something desirable, beautiful or worthy of celebration.
Before some lawyer collapses clutching the Constitution, one point should be made clear: I am not disputing the terminology that a law or court may choose to use. A legal system may recognise a woman’s right to access abortion under certain conditions. My argument is moral, human and political: not everything the state should refrain from banning thereby becomes a good, just as not every protected decision needs to be transformed into a collective achievement.
Adultery should not be punished with imprisonment, yet we do not print T-shirts celebrating the right to cheat on our partners. A person may end a friendship, squander an inheritance or refuse a reconciliation without the criminal law having to intervene. Freedom also protects decisions that are questionable, painful or mistaken.
A patient may consent to having a leg amputated to save their life. The operation may be essential, but nobody presents amputation as a marvellous social victory. We are grateful that chemotherapy exists without wishing to need it. Some medical interventions are good because they prevent something worse, not because they are inherently good.
Abortion may be the best available option for a woman. She may even make that decision without hesitation, feel relieved and never regret it. But the best available option is not always a happy one; sometimes it is simply the least harmful. The fact that abortion should be permitted does not require us to deny the conflict it contains.
Yet the fact that abortion is not a right in that moral sense does not make it murder. The word “murder” is not a neutral description: it smuggles in the very conclusion it is supposed to prove. It assumes that, from the instant of fertilisation, an embryo has exactly the same moral status as a child who has been born, and that interrupting its development is equivalent to killing that child. People may believe this, of course. What they cannot do is present that belief as scientific evidence rejected only by those who wish to live comfortably at ease with evil.
Science can explain how fertilisation occurs, how the zygote divides, when organs begin to form and how the nervous system develops. What science cannot decide on its own is when a person appears who possesses exactly the same rights as someone already born. That question is not merely biological; it is also philosophical, moral and political.
After fertilisation, there is a living human organism in development. It is not a stone, an infection or an accidental collection of cells. Denying that merely replaces one slogan with another. But acknowledging that life exists does not settle the debate either. An embryo only a few days old has no brain, consciousness, memories, desires or experiences. It has the potential to develop all of these if the pregnancy continues, and that potential deserves consideration, but a possibility is not yet the complete reality into which it may develop.
A seed may become a tree, yet a seed and a tree are not identical. There is continuity between them, but also development, transformation and time. Imagine a fire in a fertility clinic. In one room lies an unconscious child; in another, a container holding one hundred frozen embryos. We can save only one. Almost all of us would save the child, not because the embryos are entirely without value, but because we know that their moral status is not identical to that of someone who already feels, suffers, thinks and has relationships with other people. That intuition does not settle the whole debate, but it prevents us from settling it simply by shouting “murder.”
Development matters. Ending a pregnancy during its first few weeks does not present exactly the same moral conflict as doing so when the foetus is approaching the point at which it could survive outside the womb. A moderate legal framework may recognise broad freedom of choice at the beginning and provide progressively greater protection as the pregnancy advances, while retaining exceptions for serious medical circumstances. The precise boundary will always be open to debate because nature does not hand Parliament an exact week accompanied by moral instructions. But the fact that a boundary is imperfect does not mean that every stage is the same.
Something else that comparisons with murder often overlook also matters: pregnancy takes place inside another person’s body. An embryo does not develop in an empty room or a public incubator. For months, it depends entirely on a woman’s body. Pregnancy transforms her body, alters her metabolism, carries medical risks and ends, if all goes well, in childbirth.
Exceptions for rape reveal another interesting contradiction. Many people who call abortion murder accept that it should be permitted when the pregnancy results from rape. The compassion is understandable; the logic is considerably less so. If abortion were exactly the same as murdering a child, the circumstances of conception would not alter that child’s right to live. Nobody would advocate killing a child who had already been born because of a crime committed by the father. Accepting an exception for rape means recognising that the woman’s freedom, suffering and circumstances also matter. Once we admit that, the absolute equivalence with murder begins to collapse.
The fact that abortion is not murder does not mean that it lacks moral significance. It interrupts a developing human life and brings a possible future to an end. There may be a sense of loss, sadness or grief; there may also be relief, certainty and the conviction that the right decision was made. All of those emotions may even coexist without any one of them cancelling out the others.
A tragedy is not necessarily a trauma. When I call it a tragedy, I mean a situation in which every possible course may carry a cost, not a psychological sentence that every woman is required to perform. Some will suffer and others will not. Some will remember the decision throughout their lives, while others will rarely think about it. A woman may be convinced that she did the right thing and, at the same time, wish she had never had to do it. She need not become a tormented sinner to satisfy the right, nor a smiling heroine to satisfy the left. She may simply be a person who made a difficult decision.
That decision should not be prohibited. Banning abortion does not eliminate unintended pregnancies, poverty, sexual violence, abandonment by a partner, health problems or the certainty of not wanting to become a mother. It only changes the conditions under which abortions take place. A woman with money can travel; a woman without money buys risk. The criminal law has never been a particularly effective contraceptive.
A mature society does not legislate only for the world it wishes it had. It must also respond to the world that actually exists, and in that world some women will have abortions even when the law forbids them. Illegality does not make their decision more moral; it merely makes it more dangerous, more unequal and more cruel. That is why abortion should be legal, safe and accessible—not because it is a celebration, a victory or a form of contraception, but precisely because it is none of those things.
It is striking how some defenders of life lose much of their enthusiasm as soon as the child is born and begins to need a paediatrician, school meals and a home. It is equally strange that some supporters of abortion rights regard any desire to reduce the number of abortions as an attack on women. One side seems interested in having as many children born as possible, even if nobody looks after them afterwards; the other fears that acknowledging any painful dimension to abortion would mean conceding the argument to its opponents. Both extremes prefer the purity of a slogan to the complexity of human lives.
A reasonable society should aspire neither to perform more abortions nor to imprison more women for having them. It should aspire to fewer unintended pregnancies.
The father may have feelings, responsibilities and an opinion. Where the relationship is safe and respectful, it would be desirable for a decision of such importance to be discussed. Most people believe that this should not give him a right of veto because the pregnancy takes place in only one person’s body. Should the final decision belong exclusively to the person who will carry the pregnancy, give birth and assume its physical risks? I do not have a settled position. When the pregnancy results from a stable relationship, I have reasonable doubts about that question. Biology has not distributed the burdens of reproduction equally, and no law can fully correct that inequality. But automatically excluding the father simply because he cannot carry the pregnancy does not strike me as fair.
Abortion is not a right when understood as a moral good, an aspiration or an achievement to be celebrated. It is a reality, a decision and a way out; sometimes, a necessary evil.
Not everything that should be legal is desirable. Not every serious moral conflict should be settled through criminal law. Not every developing human life possesses, from its first instant, exactly the same status as a person who has been born. And not every woman who chooses abortion needs our absolution, our condemnation or a T-shirt telling her how she ought to feel. She needs information, safety, alternatives, support and the freedom to decide.
Civilised societies are not those that succeed in banning every tragedy, but those that try to prevent them, protect the people who must endure them and resist turning them into propaganda.