My Position on Abortion: A Pro-Life Commitment to Human Dignity

I am pro-life.

I believe every human life has inherent worth and that human life begins at fertilization. Because of that, I believe unborn human life deserves legal protection.

But taking human dignity seriously also requires us to consider the dignity, life, health, bodily integrity, and circumstances of the woman carrying that life.

For me, this is not a slogan, and it is not an attempt to fit neatly within any political party’s preferred position. It is an effort to apply a consistent principle: human life has value, vulnerable people deserve protection, and government should exercise its power with both responsibility and compassion.

Why I am pro-life

My position begins with the belief that human worth is inherent.

It should not depend upon whether someone is wanted, independent, healthy, economically productive, convenient, or capable of speaking for themselves.

That principle applies to unborn human life.

I believe a new human organism begins at fertilization. That biological reality does not by itself answer every legal or moral question surrounding pregnancy, but it does mean that abortion involves more than one human interest.

Because unborn human life has moral significance, I do not believe it should be treated as though it has no independent value. Government has a legitimate responsibility to protect vulnerable human life, including life that cannot protect itself.

That is why I cannot support elective abortion on demand.

At the same time, recognizing the humanity of the unborn does not mean that every pregnancy presents identical circumstances or that pregnancy somehow eliminates the woman’s own rights and dignity.

Where I draw the legal line

I believe the law should ordinarily protect unborn human life from fertilization forward.

I therefore support a general prohibition on elective abortion with clearly written exceptions for:

• the life of the mother;

• serious threats of substantial and irreversible physical harm;

• rape;

• incest;

• genuine fetal non-viability;

• ectopic pregnancy;

• miscarriage care; and

• genuine medical emergencies.

Those exceptions should be real, understandable, and medically workable.

A physician acting in reasonable and good-faith medical judgment should not have to wait until a patient is actively dying before providing necessary care.

And when a pregnancy has progressed to the point that the child can reasonably be delivered alive without imposing substantially greater medical danger upon the mother, the law should favor preserving both lives through delivery whenever medically possible.

The purpose of an exception should be to respond to the extraordinary circumstance that justifies it—not to unnecessarily end a life that medicine is capable of preserving.

Protecting both human lives

A pregnant woman remains a human being with a life, health, bodily integrity, family, responsibilities, and rights of her own.

Bodily autonomy is an important human liberty, but it is not absolute. Like other rights and liberties, it exists alongside the rights, safety, and legitimate interests of others.

Pregnancy, however, presents an unusually difficult situation because the woman’s bodily integrity and the developing human life are physically intertwined in a way that has few parallels elsewhere in law.

That is why I reject both extremes.

I do not believe bodily autonomy means the unborn child has no moral or legal significance.

But neither do I believe recognizing unborn human life means that a woman forfeits her own rights or becomes merely an instrument through which government may pursue an objective without regard for what happens to her.

The law should therefore seek to protect both lives whenever reasonably possible while recognizing that rare and tragic circumstances can place those interests in genuine conflict.

That is why I support limited exceptions.

Life and serious physical health of the mother

No woman should be required by law to die so that government can say it enforced an abortion prohibition.

When pregnancy creates a substantial threat to a woman’s life, physicians should preserve both lives whenever medically possible. When that cannot be done, they must be able to save the life they can save.

Physicians also should not be forced to wait until a woman is actively dying before intervening.

A physical-health exception should be carefully defined to include a serious risk of substantial and irreversible harm, significant impairment of a major bodily function, catastrophic organ damage, or comparable grave medical consequences.

I do not support an undefined “health” exception so broad that it effectively becomes abortion on demand.

But neither do I believe a woman should have to suffer preventable catastrophic injury before the law recognizes that her physical health matters.

Rape and incest

Rape presents one of the most difficult questions in abortion policy precisely because the unborn child is innocent of the circumstances in which conception occurred.

I do not dismiss that reality.

But neither can I ignore that the pregnancy resulted from an extraordinary violation of the woman’s body that she did not voluntarily undertake.

The question for government is therefore not simply whether unborn life has value. It does.

The question is also how far the state may legitimately compel a victim of sexual violence to continue a pregnancy resulting from a crime committed against her.

I believe the law may recognize that extraordinary circumstance without denying the humanity of the unborn child. Something can be morally tragic without the criminal law being justified in compelling one particular outcome.

The same principle applies to incest, particularly where minors, coercion, grooming, abuse, or dependency relationships are involved.

These exceptions must also be workable. I would not require a criminal conviction before they apply because criminal proceedings frequently take far longer than pregnancy allows.

Reasonable medical documentation or reporting requirements may be appropriate, but they should protect victims—particularly minors—from unnecessary additional trauma.

Fetal non-viability

I also support an exception for genuine fetal non-viability.

That does not mean disability.

Down syndrome, physical disability, intellectual disability, anticipated dependency, or predictions that a child’s life may be difficult do not make that life less valuable.

By fetal non-viability, I mean circumstances in which competent medical judgment establishes that the child cannot survive outside the womb or has a condition incompatible with sustained life.

When medicine cannot preserve that child’s life, forcing a family to continue the pregnancy does not ultimately save the child. It may instead increase medical risk to the woman while requiring parents to endure circumstances in which death is unavoidable.

Human dignity still matters when medicine cannot cure.

Ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and medical emergencies

Women and physicians should never have to wonder whether treating an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or genuine medical emergency will expose them to prosecution.

An ectopic pregnancy cannot result in a viable birth and can become life-threatening.

Miscarriage care should not be confused with elective abortion.

Pro-life laws should be clear enough that physicians can provide medically necessary care without waiting for a patient’s condition to deteriorate while lawyers determine whether treatment is permissible.

The law should protect physicians exercising reasonable, good-faith medical judgment while preserving accountability for deliberate violations.

Contraception and IVF

I support access to contraception that prevents pregnancy before fertilization.

That includes ordinary birth control and emergency contraception such as Plan B when they operate by preventing or delaying ovulation or otherwise preventing fertilization.

Preventing a human life from beginning is morally and legally different from intentionally ending a human life after fertilization.

My pro-life position should not be interpreted as opposition to responsible family planning.

I also support access to fertility treatment, including IVF.

At the same time, if human life begins at fertilization, embryos created through IVF cannot simply be treated as biologically meaningless material.

That does not require banning IVF.

It does mean fertility medicine should be approached responsibly and in a way that respects embryonic human life while preserving reasonable access for families trying to have children.

What my position does not support

Because I believe unborn human life has value, I cannot support abortion on demand throughout pregnancy.

I cannot support abortion merely because a child may have a disability.

I cannot support defining fetal non-viability according to anticipated quality of life or creating a health exception so broad that meaningful protection for unborn life disappears.

I cannot support treating bodily autonomy as though no other human interest exists once pregnancy begins.

But the same principle also prevents me from supporting a total prohibition that disregards the woman’s life, grave physical harm, rape, incest, or genuine fetal non-viability.

I also cannot support laws requiring physicians to wait until a woman is near death before acting or treating miscarriage care and ectopic-pregnancy treatment as though they were elective abortions.

Being pro-life does not end at birth

If vulnerable human life deserves protection before birth, our concern cannot disappear when a child is born.

The principle of human dignity must apply throughout the human lifespan.

It applies to newborn children, mothers, fathers, children with disabilities, people living in poverty, victims of abuse, the elderly, and people who depend upon others for care.

Being pro-life should therefore also mean creating conditions in which choosing life is realistically possible.

That means supporting mothers and fathers, strengthening families, improving maternal and infant health, making adoption more accessible, supporting people with disabilities and their families, expanding economic opportunity, ensuring children receive a good education, and maintaining a responsible safety net for people who genuinely need help.

That does not mean every human problem requires a new government program.

Families, churches, charities, communities, employers, civic organizations, and government all have roles to play.

But a society cannot convincingly proclaim the value of unborn life while remaining indifferent to vulnerable children and families after birth.

My faith and my public responsibility

My faith informs the way I understand human dignity and my responsibility toward other people.

But I do not believe anyone must share my faith in order to understand or evaluate this position.

It can also be grounded in natural rights, human rights, constitutional liberty, limited government, and medical reality.

Natural rights begin from the proposition that certain rights belong to human beings by virtue of being human—not because government grants them, because they are productive or independent, or because someone else wants them.

Among the most fundamental of those rights is the right to life.

If unborn human life is human life, then government has a legitimate reason to recognize and protect that interest, particularly because the unborn cannot protect themselves.

But natural rights do not belong only to the unborn child.

The woman also retains her life, bodily integrity, liberty, and equal human dignity throughout pregnancy.

That is where constitutional government becomes especially important.

Government exists in part to protect life and individual rights, but its power is itself limited. It cannot invoke a legitimate objective and then exercise unlimited coercion in pursuit of it.

The protection of unborn life must therefore exist alongside individual liberty, due process, equal protection, limited government, and respect for legitimate medical judgment.

My responsibility in public office would not be to impose my theology upon anyone.

It would be to defend a policy that can be justified publicly through reason, natural rights, human dignity, constitutional principles, medical reality, and the legitimate responsibilities—and limits—of government.

The principle that holds it together

My position is neither that bodily autonomy is the only value that matters nor that pregnancy causes a woman to surrender her own rights.

Unborn human life matters.

The woman’s life and dignity matter.

The law should ordinarily protect unborn human life while recognizing that rare and tragic circumstances can involve competing lives, grave bodily harm, violent coercion, or medical situations in which the unborn child cannot be saved.

A humane legal system should be capable of recognizing those circumstances without abandoning the principle at the heart of my position:

Every human life has inherent worth.

That is why I am pro-life.

And that is why I believe defending life requires responsibility, compassion, careful judgment, and respect for human dignity at every stage of life.

With respect for all Arkansans,

Joshua Irby

Paid for by Joshua Irby