Con

Legal abortion promotes a culture in which life is disposable.

Echoing a 2014 remark by Pope Francis that connected abortion to “throwaway culture,” Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, stated, “abortion represents a failure to recognize the sanctity of human life and promotes a culture in which human life in its most vulnerable moment is perceived as disposable. Such a proposal targets poor women as needing an expedient solution to a complex problem.” [260]

Tobin previously declared legal abortion a “brutalization of the American heart” on par with the “dehumanization of the undocumented” immigrants. [261]

Alveda King, former Georgia state representative and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., also connected abortion to other societal ills: “Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness. We create the deceptions that the other person is less important, less worthy, less human. We are all fully human. When we face this truth, there is no justification for treating those who look different than us as lesser beings. If we simply treat other people the way we’d like to be treated, racism, abortion, and other forms of inhumanity will be things of the past.” [262]

As King notes, some fetuses are treated as less than human. This ideology combined with legal abortion could create a slippery slope to designer babies, gender selection, termination of disabled but healthy fetuses, and other trait-selection-based abortions. The slippery slope can then extend to the mentally disabled and elderly in general.
[262]

“[A]bortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation,” according to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “Technological advances have only heightened the eugenic potential for abortion, as abortion can now be used to eliminate children with unwanted characteristics, such as a particular sex or disability.” [263]

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