The problem with the worldwide abortion debate/argument isn’t that it isn’t being solved. Rather, it’s that it can’t be. The reason for this is because the value of human life is something that can’t be and never will be objectively agreed upon by everyone, nor should it be. Therefore, instead of wasting time focusing on trying to objectively settle upon if abortion is right or wrong, and during what circumstances, we should instead focus on larger problems such as how many women don’t even get the choice at all.

The reason the value of human life is at the center of the abortion debate and why this makes the abortion argument pointless is because this is what is really being debated, though many might not realize it. Both sides of the argument debate essentially boil down to “The value of this person’s life is worth more than the other’s life.” Pro-life supporters argue that abortion is murder because it robs human beings of life and every conceived fetus should be born, even at the cost of a mother’s life, or as National Review writer Berny Belvedere argues, “If the reason that makes killing [adults and children] wrong is that it deprives them of a future of value, then the same reason provides an argument against abortion, because the fetus, like the child and the adult, has a future of value” (National Review) and as The Federalist writer James Silberman puts it, “The only thing abortion supporters can do now is claim that a human life only has value if they say so.” (The Federalist) Pro-choice supporters argue that since the mother is the one who created the life in the first place and one whose life will be hugely affected by the birth of the child, the decision of whether or not to keep said child should be for the mother to make, simply because as CNN writer Jill Filipovic explains, “a woman's ability to decide for herself when and if to have children shapes much of the rest of her life -- whether she completes her education, whether she marries for love, whether she parents when she feels adept and ready, whether she fulfills her professional potential, and whether she's able to follow her own personal path wherever it leads.” (CNN) However, I feel both sides are wrong because, secularly speaking, human life has no objective value and especially so that the lives of human beings can’t be weighed to be more or less by other human beings.

The reason human life has no objective worth or value is because there is no way to measure it in any meaningful way, as there are too many ways to do it that cancel each other out. If the value of a human’s life is measured biologically, the life of a newborn is technically worth more than that of the human giving birth to that newborn, in the best interest of the continuation and survival of the species. If the value of a human’s life is measured ecologically, the life of someone already living on the planet is worth more than the life of someone who could potentially be born and thus contribute further to the overpopulation and human-caused pollution of the planet. If the value of a human’s life is measured philanthropically, many would see it to be a good deed to give someone else life, the greatest gift of all, even at the potential detriment of the one who would give that human being life.

Since it can be said the value of life of human beings can’t be proven to be greater or less than other human beings, then the logical response would be that the decision should be personal and subjective for everyone. However, since that subjective decision is just that, that means not everyone will agree on it, especially those affected by others’ decisions. For instance, someone can be not aborted as a fetus and hate every second of their life, wishing that they had been aborted. Oppositely, someone can be aborted and would’ve hypothetically enjoyed their life heavily and been glad that they were born, if they had been. Therefore, as the affected person does not get to make the subjective decision of the value of their own life for themselves, it can be argued that it’s not subjectively right to allow someone else to make that decision for them, as if to play God? To conclude then, the value of human life and the morality of abortion can’t and shouldn’t be objectively or subjectively decided by people, individually or as a whole.

So if abortion is neither right nor wrong and the moral side of the debate is ultimately pointless, does that mean we should stop talking about abortion altogether? Absolutely not. A far larger-scoped issue of the abortion argument other than its ethics is the logistical, legal and technical side of it. To pose a different question - “How should abortions be done and handled?” as opposed to “Are abortions right or wrong and should they be legal?”

For instance, many are putting the argument into the broader context of human rights and women’s rights, as opposed to local laws. An increasing amount of people see abortion as a human right , while others see protecting the life of the child as a human right. For example, in December 2015, Northern Ireland judge Mark Horner overturned a previous law that made abortion in Northern Ireland “legal only to save the life and health (including the mental health) of the pregnant woman . . .”, bringing up human rights in his ruling. The part of his ruling in which he states that the law violated the European Convention of Human Rights reads “In the case of a [fatal fetal abnormality], there is no life to protect. When the fetus leaves the womb, it cannot survive independently. It is doomed. There is no life to protect.” In response to this, many groups and people, such as Amnesty International, have come out in agreement with the judge’s ruling, adding onto it by applying his human rights argument to the context of women’s rights as a whole. Tarah Demant, senior director of the Identity and Discrimination Unit for Amnesty International USA said, “It's a sad statement that human rights have not become extremely politicized . . . (instead) women's rights have been politicized. That's an indictment of our political climate here.” However, others prefer for the subject of abortion in the context of human rights to be referring to the fetus. Ann Scheidler, vice president of the Pro-Life Action League has voiced an opposing opinion, stating “It is a sad fact that courts in both the United States and in European countries do not consider the unborn child a human being worthy of protection under the Human Rights provisions of the various nations . . . The courts have chosen to take these children's dignity away by rulings that permit the killing of the child either because he does not reach a particular bar of health or development or because his father is a criminal. This is grossly unfair. The life of a child in the womb should be protected by laws aimed at preserving human rights.” (U.S. News) As can be seen from this example, many on both sides have already begun to give a new humanistic, rights-based focus to the abortion argument, as opposed to a legal or moral one, allowing for laws to be overturned and for there to be an application of a reason-based, logical view to the ethics of the topic as opposed to a “this life is worth more than this one” view, creating a middle ground in which everyone can discuss abortion.

Secondly, something to consider is that many women don’t even get the opportunity to have an abortion and the effect that being denied abortions has on them. Diana Greene Foster, a demographer and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted a study on the consequences of keeping a child after being turned away from an abortion clinic, for various reasons, including funds, excessive weight, or just finding out too late, and then carrying the child until birth. Two of the most interesting statistics Foster found was that “approximately 80 percent [of turnaways] reported not having enough money to meet basic living needs . . . [and] women denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later.” (NY Times) All of this now brings the abortion argument into the larger context of health, healthcare, education and economic stability.

And that’s only talking about the troubles of legal abortion. In many countries, abortion is totally illegal, even on all fronts. The extremely conservative El Salvador is one of the worst offenders of this, and is a nation where “abortion is illegal, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother” and so obviously, women once again have even less say or decisions to make in this life-altering event of theirs. In fact, El Salvador “has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Latin America” and “nearly two in every five pregnancies among girls in El Salvador aged 10 to 12 are the result of rape and incest but the rapists often go unpunished.” Morena Herrara, founder and president of the Citizen's Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in San Salvador, has been fighting for the rights of women in the country who have been prosecuted and imprisoned just for giving miscarriages for years. The problem is, as she describes, that “. . . abortion isn't understood as a human rights, public health or social justice issue.”(CNN) This now puts abortion into a legal and education context and gives light to the issue of abortion being something that, in many parts of the world, has no legal leeway whatsoever, which completely shuts down the opportunity for women to even make their own choice about it in the first place. I genuinely think this is the most important part of the entire argument issue, nationally and globally. Regardless of whether or not one thinks abortion is wrong or not, the fact that for many women, the option isn’t even available at all, even for extreme situations such as rape and incest, is just ludicrous and an extreme injustice that should concern the entire globe, as far as I’m concerned.

Thirdly, another context that gets often meddled in with the abortion argument is the heavy religious influence, and what this angle brings to it. Many form their opinions about abortion not from personal values or science, but through the doctrine of whatever religion they follow says. It’s no coincidence that many (most) of the most vocal pro-life/anti-abortion people are devout evangelical Christians, and much of the source of this stems from the social fallout of Roe v. Wade in 1973. “When Roe was argued before the Supreme Court, Catholics comprised almost all of the active opposition to abortion. Many evangelical Christian groups still believed abortion to be a deeply personal matter. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that many of them began to oppose abortion in all cases, except in the most extreme circumstances,” writes Atlantic writer Stephanie Russell-Kraft about the duality of the 1st Amendment and the 14th Amendment. “After the Roe decision, Catholic groups not only sought allies in other religious communities to bolster their claims against abortion but began to frame those arguments in secular rather than religious terms. Over the course of 30 years, those alliances formed into a veritable political and cultural movement.” (The Atlantic)

Lastly, another big side of the debate is the scientific side of it, specifically the study of how safe abortion is for the mother and if fetuses feel pain during abortion. It is widely contentious whether abortion/miscarriage or giving birth is safer for the mother. “In the early 1970s, the Population Council and CDC conducted large prospective studies of abortion safety; these concluded that abortion was considerably safer than continuing a pregnancy to delivery. By 1975, the Institute of Medicine had concluded that the public health benefits of abortion were well established,” says David Grimes, a gynecologist writer for Huffington Post. “In recent decades, the risk of death from abortion has been around 1 per 100,000 procedures”. Furthermore, according to Grimes, “in 170,000 first-trimester abortions, the complication rate was 1%.” (Huffington Post) This is all in response to the many claims from anti-abortion academia that abortions cause mental and/or physical pain for mothers, and that abortions are less safe overall than giving birth. The data is also one-sided when it comes to the experience of the fetuses during abortion. In October 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill, known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, “that would make abortions after 20 weeks illegal in the United States”. This started a hashtag on Twitter, #TheyFeelPain, as the bill is based on the claim that fetuses would feel pain during an abortion after 20 weeks, which they provided no research to back up and has been disregarded by scientists and experts aplenty. This drives into another huge problem with the issue of abortion, which is that when people aren’t debating values or doctrines that hold no real weight, they come up with pseudoscience which does nothing but spread misinformation, muddle the argument and set everyone back. Instead, regardless of whose side the facts prove “right”, everyone should work together and try their hardest to discover the truths of the matter, because without any objectivity, this seems like an argument that will continue until the end of time.

In conclusion, the issue of abortion is much trickier and has much more depth than many might make it out to be. It’s actually amazing how many different global contexts such a seemingly deep-rooted but on-the-surface simple argument has found itself into around the globe. It is not just another issue for political parties to bang heads over or an endless philosophical debate about ultimately weighing the competing values of human life, which as said before, is pointless anyways, but instead finds itself into much more broader aspects of secular world society and culture, such as human rights, women’s rights, physical and mental health, education, and class. And I honestly think this should all be the focus of the abortion argument, as opposed to what it is currently. Instead of binarily focusing on whether abortion should be legal or not, we should take a deeper look at what the effects of it being legal and illegal are, what is and isn’t a guaranteed human right for the mother and the child, the hard science and facts (everything that can actually be proven) behind abortion and more. In short, when it comes to something that matters as much as abortion does, we should focus on what matters and the abortion debate is absolutely pointless until we do that.
