Recently, liberal commenter Dean Withers appeared on the popular YouTube channel Jubilee to face off against 20 MAGA Republicans. A clip from this debate went viral on X, where Withers argued abortion should be legal—even though he agrees the unborn are human beings and that life begins at conception.
In the episode, Withers takes aim at this common pro-life argument:
- It should be illegal to kill innocent human beings.
- Abortion kills innocent human beings.
- Therefore, abortion should be illegal.
Withers claims premise one is false because we can kill brain-dead human beings. And if we can kill brain-dead human beings, then perhaps we can kill other human beings, including unborn ones, if that seems like the most ethical decision to make.
So how should we respond?
We could deny that brain-dead human beings are human beings at all, since human beings are defined as living human organisms. If being “brain-dead” is the same as being “dead”, then removing life support from brain-dead humans is not an instance of killing a human being, since you cannot kill what is already dead.
A completely brain-dead human is only alive in the sense that their bodily tissue is being kept alive by machines. This is argued by secular and Catholic bioethicists alike. According to the National Catholic Bioethics Center:
Properly diagnosed, brain death means the complete cessation of all organized neurological activity throughout the entire brain, including the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem. When all brain activity has ceased, the body irrevocably ceases to function as a unified whole . . . Neurological criteria are compatible with Catholic teaching that a human being is a substantial union of body and soul. When all brain function is completely and irreversibly lost, this may be taken as a reasonable indicator that the immortal, immaterial, and rational soul is no longer present.
In the case of true, total brain death, removing life support only allows the process of decomposition to continue. In contrast, every human embryo and human fetus is a living organism on a path of self-directed development that will continue unless meeting a fatal end. So while it is justified to allow the brain-dead to be dead, it is not justified to kill unborn children who are very much alive. (If they weren’t alive, abortion would be unnecessary.)
Withers might try to save his argument by appealing to permanently unconscious human beings who are not brain dead but perhaps only in need of a ventilator and a feeding tube. In this case, removing a ventilator may result in the patient dying, but most people would not consider such an act to be murder. Catholic bioethicist Fr. Tad Pacholczyk agrees that in some cases death can be morally brought about by removing a ventilator.
The problem with this form of the argument is that it conflates the right to life with the right to be kept alive by various technological means. Human beings have a right to not be directly killed, such as by being dismembered. And we have the right to the basic necessities of life, like food and shelter. But we do not always have a right to medical care that could become disproportionate or unjustifiable because it imposes a great cost and will produce little to no benefit for the patient.
For example, a family may believe it is too burdensome to keep a permanently unconscious relative alive for decades through the assistance of a ventilator and decide to turn the machine off. However, if the patient continued to breathe after removing the ventilator, doctors would not be justified in smothering that patient to death. The goal was to remove the disproportionate medical care—not kill the patient.
But while removing disproportionate life support for permanently disabled, unconscious people allows them to finish a natural dying process, removing unborn children from the womb before they can survive on their own starts an unnatural killing process. Societies committed to protecting the weakest and most vulnerable among us should always oppose such a thing.
Finally, some people claim that if we stop existing as human beings with a right to life at brain death, then perhaps we only start existing at “brain life”—and not at conception. But this claim fails because it fallaciously assumes that if lack of brain activity is a sufficient standard for death, then brain activity must be a necessary standard for life.
To clarify, a living organism is a thing whose parts function together for the good of the whole. As human organisms, our brains are largely responsible for keeping all our body parts working together (also known as organic unity).
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have organic unity or life before we had brains. Instead, our unity and development are guided by our DNA, directing our bodies to develop a brain once such an organ becomes necessary to organize and sustain our existence.
Thus, our lives didn’t start when our brains began. They started when we first possessed organic unity—when our body parts and tissues worked together for the good of the whole. This organic unity begins at fertilization, when the zygote works to direct his development and sustain his existence.
Consequently, it is a grave error and injustice to treat human beings in the womb as if they were on par with brain-dead humans and to deprive them of the maternal life-sustaining care they have a right to—in virtue of being innocent children.