Transcript
I recently discovered a post on X by a pro choicer and atheist, and I’m going to read it, and I’m going to address it in three points. It goes like this. If any of you pro lifers get tapeworms, you better suck it up and be a good host, because tapeworms have a heartbeat and feel pain. It deserves a choice, and it chose you to be its mother.
The word of the fools. God help us all. So, I want to respond to this. I’m going to break down in three points why this kind of reasoning is so stupid. This tapeworm being the same as an unborn baby. I’ve heard this kind of argument before. Tape, you know, using examples of tapeworm, or amoeba, or cancer cells.
Well, that’s a life too. It’s the same kind of argument. Here’s how I’m going to address it. Number one, a tapeworm isn’t a human being. Surprise! They’re not the same things. Neither is a cancer cell a human being. Neither is an amoeba a human being. The pro life claim is not that all life is equal. The pro life claim is that human life is sacred.
Human life has unique dignity. Now, obviously, all living creatures should get an appropriate level of respect as do their nature. You wouldn’t respect a roach the way you would respect your dog. You wouldn’t respect a lion the way you respect a tree. A lion, hopefully, you’ll run from. A tree, maybe you’ll take cover behind.
They’re both living things and you don’t respect them the same, do you? So all living things deserve some measure of respect as do their nature. Or natures, but we believe that human life has a unique and particular dignity, and that human life is sacred because only human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.
So the pro life position is not so simple and so stupid as the pro choice perspective tends to be. We don’t see all living things as being the same, and we don’t think an unborn human being is of similar nature or character as a tapeworm. Number 2 A human may be host to a tapeworm, but a mother is not the host of an unborn baby in her womb.
Why? Because a tapeworm is not part of the nature of the human body. It’s foreign. It’s alien. It doesn’t belong in your intestines. A womb, on the other hand, is part of the nature of a female body. Women have wombs so that they can make babies. That’s what a womb is for. Did you know? A baby isn’t out of place or out of sorts in the womb of its mother.
While a baby draws life from its mother, yes it does. A baby draws life from its mother in the womb, but that doesn’t make it a parasite. Any more than your hair is a parasite of your scalp because it’s drawing protein from your body through the scalp in order to sustain its own existence. That’s just a stupid argument.
Unborn babies aren’t parasites. The hair isn’t a parasite. And I’ll say it again. Human babies are not of similar kind, character, or nature to tapeworms. Number three. Tapeworms can’t make choices. The poster says that the tapeworm chose you to be its mother. It deserves a choice. Yada, yada, yada. Tapeworms can’t make choices.
And I’ve got news for you, Jack. Neither can unborn babies. That’s why they’re innocent. Because an unborn baby didn’t choose to come into being. Where there is choice, there is responsibility. You know who chose in this scenario? The parents. And so the parents are responsible for their choices. The parents, whether they chose or intended to have a baby or not, the parents chose to engage in behavior that results in babies.
This is not rocket science. The parents are the ones who chose. And for an unborn child, to be sentenced to death because of its parents decisions is cruel, and unjust, and barbaric. And there’s just no way around that. So this so called tapeworm argument, if you can call it an argument, It’s a ridiculous attempt by pro choice people to find moral equivalence where it doesn’t exist, to find logical equivalence where it doesn’t exist, and to call watermelons apples because they’re both fruit.
And then they stand there, dazed and bewildered, wondering, Boy, you know, I’ve never seen a watermelon tree. I wonder why. Why are there no watermelon trees? Give me a break. This is the Catholic Adventurer.
