Counterpoint: A friendly letter to pro-life believers

Star Tribune opinion editor's note: This article was submitted as a response to a commentary published Aug. 11, "It's time for the pro-choice people to come clean," by Matt Birk, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Minnesota in 2022. Birk was responding in part to "Abortion reconsidered — reading our collective moral compass," by his gubernatorial running mate, Scott Jensen, published June 24. A separate counterpoint, "In response to Matt Birk's request that pro-choice people 'come clean,' " by DFL state senator Erin Maye Quade, was published Aug. 15. All were written in connection with the changing atmosphere surrounding abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Further responses will be considered. Email them to opinion@startribune.com.

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Dear pro-life friend,

I am pro-choice. As much as you, I believe in the dignity of every human being. And I hold religious freedom inviolate.

I know you deeply believe that early unborn human life is already a human being right back to conception. That is the only difference between us. If I believed what you believe, that abortion murders a human being, I would be as outraged as you and marching right along beside you in protest.

But I do not believe what you believe. I believe on faith and conscience just as deeply as you that early unborn human life — mindless, insentient developing human cells for the entire first half of pregnancy — has neither soul (religious belief) nor right to life (ethical belief) until much later in pregnancy.

Importantly, both our diametrically opposite beliefs are purely beliefs of faith or conscience, not science or objective fact. Therefore both are protected under the Constitution by religious freedom and we are constitutionally forbidden to legislate them on each other. Contrary to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, I don't get to vote on yours and you do not get to vote on mine. Although I believe you to be terribly wrong, nevertheless if you believe God or conscience tell you an embryo has a right to life, I respect your right to your belief.

My point is not to persuade you to my belief. It is simply to explain why I and a majority of Americans as highly principled, moral and well-intended for our country as yourself, deeply believe so differently than you. I hope that may help you equally respect our right to our belief.

Mine has been the majority belief for 2,000 years, including even the Catholic Church until 1869. But for 2,000 years a large minority have believed as you do. There has never been any consensus then or now.

Early unborn human life is certainly human life. But I believe it's still simply human cells with no more right to life than any other human cells. I deeply believe it's weeks to months from anything that could credibly be called a human being. Kindly let me explain why.

First, nature (and therefore nature's Creator) gives these early failure-prone human lives no right to life. It profligately kills at least half of them by miscarriage. Some are defective but others are perfectly healthy and would make fine future babies, but nature does not spare them.

Just as the fact that a child will grow into an adult does not mean it is already an adult with the rights of an adult, that some of these mindless early human lives might eventually grow into a baby (do not overlook that half won't) does not thereby mean they are already a baby with the right to life of a baby. Is it not arrogant and unnatural to claim embryos have a right to life when nature and our Creator are quite indifferent?

Second and even more compelling, your and my conscience (our principal ear to the divine) do not give early human life any right to life. To see this, consider what you would do in the following thought experiment. There is a fertility clinic and in one end of the building a petri dish with a dozen 10-day-old embryos awaiting implantation, and in the other a 10-day-old baby of a staff member in a bassinet. A raging fire breaks out and you can reach only one end of the building or the other. Who do you try to save, the dozen embryos or the baby? The dozen alleged human beings or the real human being?

Virtually all of us would save the baby. Indeed wouldn't you consider anyone who saved the embryos and let the baby perish in the flames a moral monster? Thus your conscience tells you here that despite what you think you may believe, innately you do not really grant early unborn human life the right to life that you immediately grant a baby.

Last and most compelling, I judge any moral precept by how well it reduces needless suffering and injustice for human beings and raises flourishing and fairness. Thus our Declaration's moral precept, that "all men" (now understood as "all born mankind") have an inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, is justified by its great reduction in suffering and injustice for hundreds of millions of human beings.

Unfortunately, extending this moral assumption to the unborn (an idea that never occurred to the framers) does just the opposite. Research on denied abortion — which pro-lifers scarcely seem aware of — shows it wreaks havoc on human beings, ruining the lives of millions of women, babies and families, and cruelly killing thousands. A wanted pregnancy is a blessing, an unwanted pregnancy just the opposite. If you study this research — (look up "research on denied abortion" on the internet) — you may want to reconsider what a loving God or compassionate conscience would want.

I believe it egregiously violates their moral rights to force a seriously defective or unwanted mindless early fetus to term, or force a baby into the world seriously defective or unwanted by its mother, or force childbirth on any woman who for her own good reasons doesn't want it, ruining her life, when a simple medical procedure that in my faith and conscience murders no human being can end the pregnancy. That this may be murder in your faith or conscience gives you no right to legislate your belief on me and compel me to abide these great evils that your belief necessitates. My belief is just as protected by religious freedom as yours.

I respect your right to hold and evangelize your pro-life beliefs, but not to legislate them. I only request that as good Americans you hold America's precious religious freedom as inviolate as I do and respect the right of myself and the majority of Americans to believe differently.

Walter McClure, author of "Policy Design for Large Social Systems," is chair of the Center for Policy Design (centerforpolicy.org). These views are his own and not those of the center.