It’s fine for you to believe that, but how can you impose your belief upon me?

Well, how can you impose your belief that stealing is wrong on a thief? You ask me how I impose my belief that a fetus is a person on you; I might just as easily ask you how you impose your belief that a fetus is not a person on the baby. The question isn’t about imposing beliefs; it’s about whether a fetus is a person or not. If he is a person, then we are right to impose our beliefs on you, just as we are right to impose our belief that an assault victim is a person on her attacker. I am pro-choice with respect to a lot of things, even some of which I am personally opposed to, but I am decidedly not pro-choice when it comes to theft, murder, or rape because they involve harm to someone who was not part of the choice. In order legitimately to accuse pro-lifers of unjustly imposing beliefs, you must at least demonstrate that abortion does not harm a third, non-consenting party. Otherwise, you are begging the question.

To say that pro-lifers can’t lobby on behalf of the rights of unborn children because not everyone in society agrees that they are persons worthy of rights is like saying that an 1850s-era abolitionist couldn’t lobby on behalf of the rights of slaves because not everyone in society agreed that they were persons worthy of rights.¹ From the pro-life perspective, a pro-choicer saying, “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one; keep your laws off my body,” is like a slave-owner saying, “Don’t like slavery, don’t own a slave; keep your laws off my property.” Can we agree that a citizen in the 1850s who honestly believed that African Americans were persons had a moral duty to work for the immediate end of slavery, even though he knew that the abolishment of the institution would destroy the South’s economy and completely ruin the comfortable lifestyle of countless slave owners? If so, then you have to concede that those of us who honestly believe that fetuses are persons have a moral duty to work for the immediate end of abortion, even though we know that this will entail difficulties and lifestyle changes for women facing unplanned pregnancies. You can heartily disagree with us on the question of whether or not the fetus has a right to life (Premise 2), but you can’t accuse us of being unjust in our attempt to impose our beliefs on the rest of society. To do otherwise would be to be morally inconsistent.