Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to
life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of
the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the
essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential
with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the
former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn,
i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living:
the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of
raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should
undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings
are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is
a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the
sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake
of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.