Supporters of abortion make one assertion for which they will be easily prosecuted and condemned: that human personhood begins at birth. Using natural reason, we refute this outlandish claim simply. Philosophy teaches us how to think logically and it proves that pro-abortionists do not.
The other nine are called accidents because they can only exist in a substance. For example, you may see something white, but you will never see whiteness of itself. Such an accident is not a mishap, but rather, something that is contingent or dependent on something else and is thus unnecessary.
The first two accidents are quantity and quality. Angels do not have quantity, but they have several qualities, namely, their virtues. We have a body, so of course, we have quantity, but some of our qualities can be bad, namely, our vices. The fourth category is the relation of one being to others. The fifth and sixth are action and passion, depending on whether a thing is the agent or the patient of an activity. The next one is time, describing whether something was, is or will be at some point in history. The eighth category is location, the ninth is situation and the tenth vestition. These describe where a thing is compared to where other things are, and lastly how things adhere to it extrinsically like clothes.
What is so amazing about pro-abortionists, or rather, anti-lifers, is that they do not consider human personhood to be substantial. For them, personhood only exists accidentally, depending on its location. So, they do not consider human beings who are inside their mother’s womb to be persons until they pass the threshold into the open air, as if a few inches of distance make us who we are.
Time, however, is also disproportionately important for them. They presume that the moment of delivery is when we become persons, so once again, they debase our personhood to a conditional category. Because their reasoning is clouded by passion, they raucously argue that the fetus that existed during the pregnancy did not attain personhood until after the period of confinement, as if the developing human body was the quantity of no substantial person, except perhaps as an accessory of the mother. Indeed, if the fetus was part of the mother, then she is quite a monster for having two heads, four legs, twenty fingers and so forth. Besides, since women do not have Y chromosomes, it is impossible for a boy she is carrying to be her own flesh. Plainly, in such a case, the person within her is male.
It almost seems as if they only acknowledge the personhood of the baby when the situation suits them. Do some people imagine that personhood is merely an honorary title that they give to a child for having successfully completed birth? If that were so, then personhood would be reduced to vestition, the least kind of existence, like a medal or ribbon that one wears!
Well, if that is how they speak and act, then they gravely risk the conviction of their souls. Unless they repent, the divine Judge may fit their punishment to their crime with perfect justice. As long as we live on Earth, we have time to be saved, but if they stubbornly refuse to listen to reason, then in the end, Christ may treat them exactly how they treated the millions of aborted babies, as if they were not even persons. The people guilty of supporting abortion will always exist as substantial persons, but in their damnation, they will feel insubstantial, like useless rubbish that has been thrown away and forgotten.
Crassly ignorant abortionists will always bear the image of God in their souls, but to the slightest degree, for lack of godly qualities. They will suffer eternally and necessarily, yet feel ephemeral and contingent. After the resurrection of the dead, they too will receive their bodies back to complete their suffering. Then, that quantitative mass will be as frail as dust and ash because of all the human persons that they sent to their graves or the dumpster.
Supporters of abortion have failed to acknowledge the obvious fact that human personhood is really substantial, regardless of place and time, situation and vestition, because we are created with a spiritual soul destined by grace to share in the divine nature and His everlasting dignity as Children of God.
