Why Experience Can’t Define the Right to Life – Dean and Parker’s Flawed Pro-Choice Argument

One of the toughest pro-choice arguments to counter is the argument of experience. In April 2025, this position was argued by Dean and Parker, two leftist TikTok debaters, as a good case for abortion.

This article will explain the conservative rebuttal against this flawed argument as well as outline the pro-life argument against abortion.

In This Argument…

1. Why this “subjective experience” argument fails morally and logically
2. Why most pro-choice personhood claims do not make sense
3. Who should have the right to life and why – according to the pro-life conservative answer

The Experience Arguments

There were three debaters in the debate. You can watch it by clicking here. Hayden Rhodea on the pro-life side, and Dean and Parker on the pro-choice side. Here’s the pro-choice argument:

The right to life is granted to any being that satisfies a conjunction of:

1. Past, present, or future subjective experience
2. Humanity

A conjunction is a logical condition where two or more criteria must be true at the same time for something to qualify. In moral philosophy, a conjunction means a being only has moral value if it meets all parts of the combined standard, for example, being human and having subjective experience.

This conjunction allows abortion prior to around 20-24 weeks, since fetuses before that stage lack the capacity for sentience and thus fail the experience requirement. These fetuses do not have past, present, or the capacity to have future subjective experience.

And this argument falls right in place in the personhood argument for abortion, which only is valid if we concede that a potential human is not the second most special thing on earth, second to being human.

Read More – Personhood: The Crux of the Abortion Debate

While this may seem like a convincing argument at first, it falls apart very quickly when challenged. Let’s examine the conservative rebuttal against this failed pro-choice argument.

The Conservative Rebuttal to the Experience Argument

There are three clear rebuttals to this pro-choice experience argument, the last one being the most convincing that Hayden rebutted.

1. Trait-Based Personhood Is Arbitrary and Dangerous: Why do certain traits, like consciousness, determine whether a human life has dignity and the right to life? Why not a heartbeat? Why not the ability to grow? Pro-choice activists usually don’t have a universal principle, it’s often subjective, based on utility, independence, or emotional intuition. If dignity is based on traits, you can just keep shifting the line and this line of thinking has brought about atrocities. You don’t become a person by earning it through traits. You are a person because you are a member of the human family. That’s the only consistent, objective standard that protects everyone. But even if we let the pro-choice activist take this huge psychological leap that allows them to define when personhood begins by certain traits for some reason, this conjunctive argument still falls apart.
2. The “Future Experience” Clause Is Arbitrary: For many of the cases that this pro-choice claim covers, fetuses already possess the natural, internal capacity to develop consciousness if left undisturbed. To deny them protection on this basis is arbitrary, since future experience either matters for all human life or it doesn’t matter at all. If left alone, the fetus will develop the capacity for future experience.
3. It’s Ultimately “Humanness” Doing the Heavy Lifting: Even if both the above rebuttals are not convincing, then this one definitely should be. The personhood argument from Dean and Parker is that the fetus needs to have both the past, present, or future capacity for subjective experience and be human. The human part, while being necessary to their argument, also destroys it, which is exactly what Hayden points out during the debate. Animals like pigs and cows have past, present, and future subjective experience, yet we don’t grant them a right to life. This is because they are not human, which is the other part of the pro-choice argument. Animals like pigs show that experience alone isn’t treated as decisive, as they still lack protection because they aren’t human, which means the “experience” filter adds nothing except a way to subtract early humans from protection, an ad-hoc cutoff, not a principled one.

So Who Should Have a Right to Life?

The only consistent way to protect all human beings is to believe that the right to life starts at conception.

The Declaration of Independence is the best way to define personhood. It states that all men are CREATED equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR. This means, according to the Declaration of Independence, that being a person starts at the moment of their creation, conception, and their right to life is from God, not humans or government.

While not legally binding, the Declaration of Independence expresses America’s founding moral vision. The conservative pro-life opinion on when personhood begins is that it begins at conception. Since we know that a distinct human being is created at conception, then we can apply legal and moral standards to them as well.

Also Read – Does Life Begin at Conception?

Ultimately, a human being has an inherent right to life because they are human, which comes from one of the most consequential founding documents of the United States, the Declaration of Independence.

The Bottom Line

1. If dignity is based on traits, you can just keep shifting the line and this line of thinking has brought about atrocities. You are a person because you are a member of the human family.
2. The “future experience” conjunct is ultimately arbitrary, because if left alone, the fetus will develop the capacity for future experience.
3. Because humanity already excludes animals, the extra ‘experience’ gate simply removes the youngest humans from protection—making the clause redundant and selectively subtractive.