The Corporeal Aspect and Procreative Function

The crucial question in the abortion debate is not when human life begins. Even many pro-choice advocates, from early on in the history of their movement, have quietly acknowledged that human life begins at conception. This after all had been the consensus of the medical community until Roe vs. Wade in 1973. But in a strategy of deceit, well chronicled by Curt Young, the reality of human life beginning at conception was carefully concealed from the public mind in order, as one pro-choice physician put it, "to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing." This physician did recognize that human life begins at conception but he also realized that killing innocent human life is intolerable to most people. So he, among others, believed a strategy of deceit was necessary until the new ethic of abortion was accepted a new ethic that would recognize the relative value of post-conception procreative choice over immature human life.