I have long held that I am not anti-abortion; I am pro-life. What's the difference? I believe in the sanctity of human life. As such, I believe that murdering babies, whether outside or inside the womb, is a violation of that sanctity. I am not opposed to abortion, but opposed to murder. Look, if they came up with a medical procedure that would allow a woman to terminate her pregnancy without terminating the life of the baby, I'd have little room to complain. If the baby continued to live while the mother went on her merry way, my "anti-abortion" position would be gone. The issue is life, not terminating pregnancies.
When I expressed that to a friend, however, the response was ... disturbing. "What makes you think," he asked me, "that women who had the option to terminate their pregnancy while allowing the baby to live would take that option?" Indeed, what would make me think that?
In a recent article at The Witherspoon Institute, they cited the fact that "Mothers who have terminated following a prenatal diagnosis overwhelmingly (97 percent) report that these are wanted pregnancies. Furthermore, they say that they consider themselves to be, in fact, mothers, and that their fetus is not simply a fetus, but their child. Yet they still go through with aborting their child." These are not unwanted children. These are not foolish women who don't recognize their pregnancies as babies. These are women fully aware that they are carrying a child and even want the child, and still opt to kill that child. Why? Well, in this article it was due to a Down syndrome diagnosis.
I believe the same is true in the question I asked. Most of us think that women who have abortions do so to terminate a pregnancy. It's not a wanted baby. It will be too expensive. There's something wrong with the child. It's an inconvenient time. Of course, none of this explains why they don't simply deliver and give the child up for adoption, does it? No, the standard list of reasons is not about life, but about convenience. And it would be inconvenient if a woman with a pregancy she didn't want for whatever reason would have to live her life knowing that the baby she didn't want was alive and well somewhere, wouldn't it?
We still try to get out the pro-life message. Human life is sacred. We still meet opposition. Sometimes it is inane opposition. "Yes, human life is sacred, but I wouldn't want to stop a woman from having the choice." "Ummm, okay, in what sense is that reasonable?" In some cases it is hardcore. "Human life is not sacred. It's only as meaningful as you make it." "Well, then, you won't mind if someone concludes yours isn't so meaningful and terminates it, right?" Most of the time it's just a matter of ignoring the facts. "No, it's not human life. It's ... tissue. Yeah, that's the ticket." I suppose if we're going to ignore science and logic, that will do fine. But I have to wonder how much of all of that is a smokescreen for "I want to do what I want to do and I don't want anyone to suggest otherwise." If that's the case, it will turn out that "pro-life" is not the answer because the question is not, "Should we protect life?" but "What is most convenient for me?", and life is not the question.
3 comments:
Its interesting that the definition of life is determined based on desire. If a woman chooses to terminated her pregnancy, she is well within her legal rights to do so, because that is what she wants done. If, on the other hand, she doesn't want the child, but a mugger murders her and her unborn child on her way to get said abortion, that mugger is now charged with double murder. From a strictly legal sense, you'd think that that second murder was void, since the woman didn't want the child anyway, but the prosecutor wants to really get that guy punished because he just murdered a pregnant woman, and in societies eyes, pregnant women are still..."sacred"?
The only way to prevent the "I want what I want" syndrome about abortion, would be to legally define life, not as a desire, but as life.
And then you'd have to give "life" a value.
Someone I know recently told me, "I cried during Lion King. I didn't during Titanic." Someone else told me, "The other day I was walking to work and saw a lost puppy and a homeless guy. I felt bad for the puppy." Humans these days have a skewed sense of "life" and the value of it.
Oh yeah. I've often gotten into it with animal rights people. My position is that I won't give to save unwanted pets until people stop killing children. So many are aborted, murdered, abused, given up, etc., that I just can't get worked up about an animal about to be euthanized.
But to the post, your concluding statements hit the nail on the head. It's about convenience and selfishness. Abortion has always been about that.
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