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A familiar red flag commonly raised against those who are seeking to preserve or reinstate strict abortion laws is that they have no right to impose their morality on other people – especially on people who question the personal status of the unborn child and who do not regard all persons as worthy of equal esteem.  In this regard two sections of a statement distributed recently by the Mountain States Women’s Abortion Coalition are illustrative:

The claim that the fetus is a person does not come from science; this idea can only be based on philosophical opinion.

While.the anti-abortion forces have the right to hold the belief that the fetus is a person, and to conduct their reproductive lives accordingly, they have no right to hold this philosophical belief on everyone else in the United States. (From a handbill distributed by the Mountain States Women’s Abortion Coalition.)

What have we here?  One group (pro-life) is told by another (pro-abortion) that they ought not (because they have no right to) impose their beliefs on other people if those beliefs are based in philosophy but have no basis in science.  Interesting!  What might be said in response?

Quite apart from the fact that the personal identity of the unborn child, as previously shown, does have some basis in science as well as in philosophy and theology, the claim that only moral beliefs based in scientific facts may receive the privilege status of moral oughts binding on all people is preposterous.  In what scientific fact is this belief about beliefs based?  Is not this belief itself based in a particular philosophical viewpoint?  And who says that I ought not impose my beliefs on others?  Precisely those who say this are imposing their own ought upon me.

Abortion and the Meaning of Personhood, Clifford E. Bajema, page, 55, 56