Nate Sherman’s article, Abortion Trumps Animal Cruelty (SN 8/29) compares the obvious cruelty of dog fighting with the supposed cruelty of abortion. Unfortunately, it is grossly inaccurate. Sherman repeatedly refers to an embryo as a child, which is just not the case. An embryo is not a person, and physically can not suffer considering it doesn’t have a nervous system. An early term embryo is little more than a ball of cells, nearly identical to that of a dog or chicken.
Moreover, the article appeals to couples who have fertility problems and who are not fortunate enough to have even the opportunity of aborting an unwanted embryo — except that the procedure of in vitro fertilization, inadvertently leads to the death of dozens of fertilized embryos, or “children” as the author prefers. It’s also worth noting that a woman’s body will naturally abort an embryo if something goes wrong, and though this can be traumatic, it would be unreasonable to argue that scientists should develop technologies to prevent miscarriage because of the embryo’s potential.
