I am shocked. I am outraged. Life post-depression has been incredible, but pro-abortion news stories and articles never fail to shock, outrage, and simply bewilder me each day. I could opt out of having these appear on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but that would be to opt for denial. Today, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to longtime pro-abortion activist Gloria Steinem, not his first time bestowing the nation’s highest non-military honor to a prolific supporter of abortion. I can understand (this does not imply empathy) with why many people can associate abortion with romantic words like “freedom” and “choice,” but can we please look beyond rhetorics and the myopic snapshots that these rhetorics produce?
Please stop calling it “pro-choice” — abortion denies the defenseless child of any choice whatsoever. Please stop calling it “healthcare service” — what abortion does to the baby is the exact opposite of why healthcare is practiced, and why healthcare institutions and systems even exist. And you cannot begin to talk about “women’s rights” when you deny the first, most basic human right: the right to life.
In a promo for the recent Texas telethon that raised $50k for abortion, Sally Khon says women are “invited to laugh and feel powerful” — am I the only one who imagines this to sound like a sinister cackle?
Underneath all these labels are morally and logically inconsistent arguments. Pro-abortionists, there’s really just one thing to explain: why your life matters and theirs don’t.
“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” –Ronald Reagan
Under Reconstruction 
Thank you for the courage, fortitude and grace to stand for the unborn. I really like how you ended the article:
Why your life matters and theirs don’t.
We need more voices like you! Keep on going and lets pray for the end to abortion!
God Bless You!
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I didn’t know Ronald Regan said that. Truth.
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Hmm. I see two questions in here.
To the first: Yes.
To the second: No. That’s a horrible approach if they should laugh and feel powerful about the abortion. That’s megalomaniacal. I totally saw a villainous cackle.
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Exactly Jeremy. Everyone has limits on their freedom. That women have no freedom because they cannot be access to abortion is a garbage argument used to gain sympathy and a scare tactic. Abortion is murder- nothing more needs to be said. It is the killing of a person. In addition to this, abortion also puts a woman through physical pain, an act of violence.
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Very civilised and thought-provoking arguments on both sides of the abortion debate; a refreshing change from the usual sloganizing and insults. I am a secular feminist from the UK, pro-life because of the human rights and biological imperatives. I am pro-voluntary contraception and sterilization. I was adopted as a baby and later gave a child for adoption. The ‘dependency’ argument for abortion doesn’t stand up; dependency brings a duty of care, not a right to kill. As a death-penalty opponent, I am uncomfortable with the term ‘innocent’ often used to describe unborn children. Our right to life is inherent, not dependent on behaviour or any other such criterion. But let us keep up the dialogue and strive towards common ground initiatives which will help women and human rights in general.
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As someone who has been doing research on the abortion debate for close to a year for a paper, and has become pro-choice because of this research, I have found one reason the woman is considered more important than the fetus in the case of an abortion. It is called bodily autonomy. When a person dies, their organs may not be donated, even if it is their mother or child who desperately needs them, unless they have given explicit permission before their death. A fetus is living off of a woman, and doctors give babies born at twenty-four weeks gestation a very slim chance of fetus viability. If we allow a fetus to force its way into a woman’s womb we are giving a corpse more rights than a living woman.
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Hi, Elizabeth! Thank you for your comment. Would you be willing to share your paper?
“I have found one reason the woman is considered more important than the fetus in the case of an abortion. It is called bodily autonomy.” I’m assuming that you don’t consider the fetus a human life, and that because of that, the woman’s claim to bodily autonomy trumps any rights the fetus might have. I also assume this because you made a parallel to organ harvesting, and organs are most certainly not human lives. However, please correct me if I have assumed wrongly.
I firmly believe that human life begins at conception. But even if there were to be disputes about whether the zygote is a human being or not, the fact of the matter is that no one aborts zygotes — what abortionists have to reassemble on the operating tables includes little arms and legs. Its beating heart and active brain were made to stop.
Well, there are many other ways to justify the personhood of the unborn, but I might dedicate an entire post to it sometime. What I want to get at is that because pro-lifers recognize the unborn as a human life, they have, at the very least, the most basic of all human rights: the right to life.
All other human rights (including bodily autonomy) are founded upon the right to life, because none of those things would even matter if life didn’t matter. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that order. This is why rape is illegal. The act might make the rapist happy, but at the cost of the woman’s liberty. Likewise, any claim to liberty and/or happiness ought not be granted if it takes away another’s right to life. Unfortunately, this is what’s going on when women feel they have the right to terminate the innocent life in them on the grounds of bodily autonomy.
One last thing — I also want to point out that a baby does not force its way into the mother’s womb. A rapist forces his way into a woman’s body. Most women ought not be surprised having sex can lead to pregnancy.
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You might need to think deeper about this before you come to a settled position.
…”the difference between a legal right and a moral right and the principle that my individual rights, even if they are moral rights are limited and not absolute if they conflict with other individual human rights. And thirdly there is the strong evidence that the unborn child may not medically and biologically be considered actually a part of the woman’s body other than the fact that it is located for a time within the woman’s body” — Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7r9HvKd7Lc
Adding and as pointed out in that same video series, we all live under restrictions to our bodies. I’m not permitted to use my body to kill someone else or take away someone else’s freedom. I don’t have a problem with that.
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I used to work in a lab where we would handle (among lots of other specimens) both miscarriages and aborted fetuses. I learned two things from simple observation. 1) Fetuses are people; they are not at all like tumors or organs or trees or rocks; they are whole organisms and they are of the human species; and 2) it’s nonsense to say that women don’t get abortions out of convenience; the number of abortion specimens we would get in the lab would always spike in early January, proving that quite a few women chose to get abortions at their convenience. Just plain observations.
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Thank you for boldly sharing on these issues! It is encouraging to see others standing strong for the rights of unborn babies.
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It is very nice to see honest, clean emotion. But maybe throwing the baby out with the bathwater is irrational? A pro-abortion stance is unfortunate, but there are other things Steinem has done, good things for women (as I understand). Could not these pro-women’s rights activities be a basis for the award in question?
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I don’t mean to denounce her as a human being, and I also agree with you that a pro-abortion stance doesn’t invalidate all the great things she has done for women’s rights, like speaking out against gender discrimination and genital mutilation. I applaud her for those things. However, to be worthy of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom is a tall order. The medal is supposed to recognize individuals who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” I can’t help but feel that being an activist for the termination of innocent, defenseless lives in jarringly incongruent with the ideals of “security” and “peace.” In light of these demands, being pro-abortion is a huge stain on her records. And President Obama, being the most pro-choice POTUS thus far, probably has in mind to validate and even glorify the pro-choice movement. That is very sad to me.
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I understand what you are saying. “World peace,” “cultural endeavors,” and such seem to contraindicate the mad push to kill innocents.
By the way, something pointed out a while back by and to me, is that when a woman has an abortion, it is legal, but if someone kicks the woman, for example, and the baby dies, it is feticide. How can a legal right to exist stand side by side with no right to exist – for the same person? Abortion is insane.
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There is an important point that I have not seen in the comments thus far. The dirty little secret is that quite often, abortion in the United States is not the result of the woman’s choice. It is the choice of a man in her life. In other words, it is a man dictating to the woman what happens to and in her body.
I have had a number of friends who have volunteered their time, talents and money to Pro-Life counseling centers. In addition to counseling pregnant women, they also counsel women who have had abortions months and years prior to coming in. These women suffer from depression and in the worst cases, post traumatic stress disorder.
Whether it is woman with current or past pregnancies, they find a significant number of cases where the mother is being pressured by a husband or boyfriend to abort the baby. In situations where the mother lives at home (whether or not she is a minor), it might be her male parent who is applying the pressure. The reasons vary: too expensive, inconvenient, stigma in the eyes of the community, for example. And the tactics vary: the man will leave, or withhold love, or withhold financial support or will kick the mother out of the home, for example.
But the bottom line is that a man is the one making the choice, not the woman. Pro-life counseling centers know that these cases are real and the numbers are significant. The problem is that they don’t have access to hard statistical evidence, and they are often challenged and criticized for lack of same.
Yet, the very people challenging and criticizing are the only ones who would have access to the full statistics. It would be the providers of legal abortions who would (or should) know the history of every pregnant woman they counsel regarding pregnancy. Either they don’t keep the statistics or they don’t publish them. Why? It is a very inconvenient truth.
By the way, the Pro-Life counseling centers are desperate for male counselors. Often the fathers of babies who were aborted also come in suffering the symptoms of depression or PTSD months or years later. My understanding is that this is true for fathers who wanted the abortion and for fathers who did not.
There are many sound moral arguments against the taking of an innocent human life. (And what can be more innocent than the life of a baby in the womb?) What I have described is just one more.
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This is typical of the way man thinks….ever since the Garden of Eden man has had free will and will always try their best to put a Holy Gods name on evil.They can call it whatever title they want, Pro Life–Pro Choice Thou shalt not kill means any human life being taken from the earth at the hands of man and not God!!! Karenzai the owner of this website has made the greatest revelation for this question and that is: It may very well be highly difficult to carry a child to birth whatever the circumstance, But in the eyes of God it is correct to have the child and put them up for adoption….To those unable to have children this would be a wonderful blessing to have a baby they always wanted even though another does not want them. It is written no matter how difficult something is God always makes a way out! THIS IS THE WAY OUT, murder is never a choice!!!!!!! God Bless You Karen for having the right answer to a most difficult situation.
Julia
http://precioussheepofrenown.wordpress.com
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It’s always amusing in the worst kind of way to see those who claim to be for human rights acting in such malevolent hypocritical ways. And
It’s a frightening thing when, based on a whim, we create a mandate to exterminate people who were not only created by God but were made in his image. Even the great Solomon knew that a woman who had any morailty at all would not kill her child 1 Kings 3:8–15. But nowadays, there is no wisdom in these areas because there no fear of God. (Proverbs 9:10).
Worst part is that abortion also takes place among so called ‘Christians’ at as high or higher rates that non-believers – (http://www.xenos.org/essays/postmodernism-spirit-age)
And I’m not a fan of the Pope but his wisdom on human rights was spot on when he said: “…the language of “human rights” has now been downgraded in public discourse to the special pleading of every interest-group”. It’s frightening when we see figures that tell us that 43% of all abortions are from the same mother, they’re doing it not once, but twice, sometimes more. There’s also studies that correlate abortion with suicide and an increased risk of breast cancer. But abortion also spells the end of the family and perhaps the start of infanticide – (http://creation.com/abortion-after-birth) Anyway you look at it, its a slippery slope.
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I knew a woman with 3 beautiful boys, a good income, and a comfortable life. Yet she kept getting pregnant and aborting, again and again. I think she may have had four abortions by the time we met.
I always wanted to ask her the blunt but un-politically correct question: “How did you decide which of your children to kill?”
By the way, this woman was not un-phased by killing her children. She was often depressed, took valium, drank at times, was a bit disconnected from her (living) children, etc. Abortion did not “free” her to live an uncomplicated life; it just complicated her life even more.
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That’s a sad situation. Some people have a seared conscience 1 Timothy 4:2 and can therefore ignore the pangs that pique their innermost thoughts, but the woman you talk about here obviously hasn’t reached that stage yet, and that’s the good news.
This is sort of where reality meets ideology. You can have people who on an intellectual level will be pro-abortion but their God given conscience will dictate otherwise. They’re the ones that I think end up having all kinds of problems later on down the track. R.C Sproul wrote a book on this called Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue and it was the worst selling book he’s ever written because people just don’t want to confront what they’ve done. And there’s forgiveness 1 John 1:9 for these people but a lot of them just don’t realise it.
If you go to other parts of the world where there are estimates of 60 millions girls missing through sex-selective abortions you can only imagine the kind of misery that can result on a grand scale — http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/06/13/infanticide-abortion-responsible-for-60-million-girls-missing-in-asia/
It’s been said before that it’s a Romans 1 situation and I can say that particularly when you have a people coming out and saying things like “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” And Planned Parenthood stating that “Abortion as treatment for unwanted pregnancy, the second sexually transmitted disease” — http://carm.org/cain-and-abortion
I’m pretty sure Rebecca Kiessling (Google her) would have something to say to that, in fact wouldn’t all of us who are living.
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It’s sad to see the Liberals at large connecting abortion to “women’s health choices”. They say bills that limit abortion infringe on their right to terminate an “unwanted” pregnancy. Isn’t that what birth control and contraception are for? Terminating the life of an innocent child as a form of birth control is barbaric, taking responsible measures not to get pregnant in the first place sounds like a more sane way to approach the subject.
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Reblogged this on Home Grown News Media.
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We can both agree it would be inhumane to force a woman through abortion if she doesn’t want to have an abortion. So I don’t see why we can’t agree that it’s also inhumane to force a woman to go through pregnancy when she doesn’t want to be pregnant.
I also think it’s sad dead people have more autonomic rights then a pregnant woman?
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Indeed I agree with that first sentence. So many women in China have had to go through the physical, emotional, and psychological trauma of forced abortions. With regard to your second sentence, it’s inhumane to take away a woman’s life, to deliberately cause her pain, but a pregnancy is not just about the woman. There’s a human life in her. As I’ve mentioned in another comment, the 9 months will indeed be inconvenient and discomforting, but to carry the baby to full term in spite of that reflects the humane stance that convenience and discomfort are less important than life. And then, if the mother is unable or unwilling to raise this baby for whatever reason, the right thing to do is to give birth to the baby and put him/her up for adoption. However, this would be a different debate if you don’t believe the baby to be a human life with rights in the first place.
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I’m not sure why a woman would be so vehemently opposed to having a child once they have conceived. Poverty? Interruption of their “convenient” life? Intolerance of children? Fear of being a bad mother? No committed partner?
I’d like to know why any of these things justify murdering another human being.
I have, and I know several women who have, conceived children in all of the above conditions. None of us aborted and we are so glad we did not. Our children have changed our lives for the better in many, many ways. And maybe that’s why we all became pregnant exactly at the moment we thought to be most “inconvenient”. God, the author of life, often works that way — He knows what is best in all situations.
When we trust in God completely, even if we are still a bit fearful, we find that all our objections to so-called “unwanted” pregnancies disappear and we open ourselves to a new level of maturity and enlightenment in our lives. This openness applies also to pregnancy caused by rape and incest and pregnancy that supposedly will be life-threatening to the mother.
I have seen these issues resolved, first-hand. We only have to be open and allow ourselves to be led by the merciful and loving hand of God.
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“I have, and I know several women who have, conceived children in all of the above conditions. None of us aborted and we are so glad we did not.”
Thank you, I really appreciate this, and your honesty! I think our society could do so much more to applaud the courage and love displayed by women who decide to deliver their “unwanted” baby in spite of various internal conflicts, rather than applaud cowardice, selfishness, and irresponsibility as “courage.”
I was very encouraged by this article:
http://liveactionnews.org/52-girls-rejected-abortion-and-chose-life/
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That’s awesome. Why don’t all communities do this?
You might be interested to read about the life of a 20th c. Catholic saint named Gianna Molla. She was an Italian physician who died in 1962 after refusing to abort her child even though she knew that continuing the pregnancy could cause her own death.
Her story is beautiful. She trusted in God and made an unselfish choice. St. Gianna died 7 days after delivery. Her daughter, who survived, is now a doctor and tours the world speaking with loving devotion about her mother.
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I’m not sure what the question is–I am in favor of abortion remaining legal and would be willing to answer if I knew what your question was.
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My question can be found at the end of the post — basically, to rephrase: if your life matters, why does someone else’s life not matter? Or why do some lives matter and some don’t? I am also in favor of abortion remaining legal, but only if there’s a threat to the mother’s life.
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Might help if the question ended with a question mark.
As for the question, I think I would view my right to live very differently if I were physically, biologically, and parasitically dependent on someone who did not want me to be and had no choice in the matter. I fully advocate for the resources to support living persons ability to live–the difference between a dependent born person and a fetus is that the born person is not by definition dependent on a particular, singular person who cannot choose to turn care over to someone else–ever. I do not believe that we can force women to give birth against their will. I have a number of posts about abortion issues on my blog.
By the way, I also really like thift stores and Tetris.
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Hmmm, interesting points of consideration. However, I really believe it comes down to whether we view the “parasitically dependent” person as a human life or not. If it is a human life, then he/she is entitled to at least the most basic human right: the right to life. And the mother’s need to carry this “parasite” (assuming the baby is unwanted) is a small price to pay for the preservation of a valuable human life.
Haha, thank you for taking the time to read the ‘About Me’ page! I think it’s nice to know a little more about the person one is disagreeing with, so we don’t let the point of contention define our view of who they are. It’s awesome that you teach Sociology. I’m a Sociology major (undergrad) and I believe awareness of sociological perspectives is so valuable in making us a lot more thoughtfully critical about what we’re exposed to every day. 🙂
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Before you dismiss being pregnant as a small price to pay, remember that a woman is 14 times more likely to die in childbirth than if she has a legal abortion, and that the United States has some of the worst maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the developed world. I do think that humans have a right to life, even if others find them inconvenient. However, it is one thing to care for someone to preserve that person’s life, and another to have someone LIVE INSIDE YOUR BODY against your will. Forcing a woman to remain pregnant and give birth jeopardizes her health and well-being as well as her life–that is unconscionable. If there were a way to remove the fetus and transfer it to another person or a simulated womb, I could consider that as a reasonable alternative to abortion.
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First off, I apologize if my use of the phrase “small price to pay” suggested a belittling the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. I’ve seen the study that you are referring to (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271) that claims that women are 14X more likely to die from childbirth than abortion. This study has been widely criticized by scientists and OBGYNs alike. One of the main criticisms is that the study looks narrowly at immediate deaths following childbirth and abortion. When long-term effects are considered, you would conclude that induced abortion is more dangerous than childbirth. Countries that outlaw abortion consistently report the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, whereas places with liberal abortion laws (e.g. South Africa) top the maternal mortality charts. Besides, we could also argue this through the lens of evolutionary biology. The present natural biological childbirth mechanism is the product of natural selection. If it was so deadly, we’d have evolved out of it and into a much safer mode of reproduction by now. The point is that we shouldn’t hype up the dangers of childbirth in order to encourage/pressurize women into aborting unwanted babies. And I’m thinking about women for whom childbirth is not going to pose grave risks. I acknowledge that abortion is justified if the mother is too young (e.g. in cases of child rape) to carry the child to full term, let alone deliver it, without extensive damage to her internal organs, or other cases where pregnancy/childbirth would pose significant threats to the mother’s well-being.
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How do you decide what is a significant enough risk to threaten well being? One of my very first posts covered this: http://humanwithuterus.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/life-of-the-mother-who-is-also-a-woman-and-human/
Also, I am not sure where you are getting your information about abortion and maternal mortality. Illegal abortion is one of the primary causes of maternal mortality. There are some countries in which abortion is illegal where maternal mortality is low. A prime example is Ireland, where women who want abortions generally go to Britain and have the procedure done legally. Note that Britain is close enough to Ireland to make is a shorter trip than many women would have to travel for an abortion within a state such as Montana.
THe highest maternal mortality rates in the world are all in African countries in which abortion is either illegal or severely restricted. THe lowest mortality rates are primarily in countries that don’t have restrictions on why women can have abortions. (map of abortion restriction levels here: http://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/4541/abortion-laws-map-center-for-reproductive-rights; maternal mortality rankings here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html).
Even if it were true that there was a correlation between restricting abortion and better maternal mortality, it wouldn’t necessarily indicate the relationship was causal. And it would not make it ethical to co-opt someone’s body to serve your own ethical principles.
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Some articles/studies to consider:
-Maternal morality in abortion-averse Ireland half that in Britain (http://www.jpands.org/vol18no2/calhoun.pdf)
-Maternal morality remaining high even as abortions get “safer” (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-25/opinions/37289899_1_illegal-abortions-maternal-mortality-jeanne-monahan)
-Shift from illegal to legal abortions in Mexico had insignificant effect on maternal mortality rate (http://www.dovepress.com/fundamental-discrepancies-in-abortion-estimates-and-abortion-related-m-peer-reviewed-article-IJWH)
But you are right about correlation. And since correlation doesn’t imply causation (this applies to the studies/findings you have cited), perhaps it’s not productive/helpful to debate on abortion based on associated maternal mortality rates. It’s about morality. If we accept that ending another human being’s life is immoral (which lawmakers implicitly do, since they acknowledge that aborition is unfortunate and should therefore be “rare”), I don’t think it’s sound to argue that we should make provision for it so as to reduce its overall rate of occurrence. This logic reminds me of the movie “The Purge” which imagines a society with an annual “purge day” where anyone is free to commit any crime they wish without any legal consequence, because they’ve found that this keeps crime rates near 0 for the rest of the year and reduces overall annual crime rate. My vision of the ideal society is where abortion is outlawed (save for threats to the mother’s life — the conditions should be determined after careful studies by experts, so I will refrain from weighing in on this), and where unplanned pregnancy education is dedicated to encouraging and applauding women throughout the pregnancy period, access to care, and accessibility to adoption options. What Planned Parenthood presently does, which is to disproportionately encourage abortion over referring patients to adoption services, is appalling.
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I’d dare say she is pro-woman. I would also dare to say no one is really pro abortion…you have to call it pro choice because that is what the fight is really all about… choice. To call it pro abortion is to imply there are women out there running around trying to get pregnant so they can get their fix of killing babies. Sounds crazy right. That’s because it is.
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Yes, I concede that “pro-abortion” isn’t the fairest term to use. However, I refrain from acknowledging the stance as “pro-choice” for the reason I stated in my original post, and am still trying to figure out what would be an accurate representation. Pro-woman’s-choice, perhaps, but that just doesn’t pack a punch, does it?
And with regard to being pro-woman, I am pro-woman — I am against female oppression and gender discrimination and am for equal pay and the likes — but I think even more basic than being pro-woman is being pro-human.
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Makes sense. Being pro-human, automatically implies that you respect both men and women. When I call myself pro-life, I mean that I respect other forms of life, including those that are not considered human.
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“No one is really pro-abortion”? The NY Times begs to differ:
So does the AP, in its photos published here:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/02/watch-abortion-supporters-chant-hail-satan-while-pro-life-activists-sing-amazing-grace-outside-texas-capitol/
It’s an ugly world out there, and it doesn’t help things to deny that.
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Wow. I forget what a mess up world we live in sometimes. I don’t make a habit of denying it…just surprised by it although I suppose I shouldn’t be anymore. I will say that what is described in the NYT article seems to be extremist which we all know the hard core fundamentalist always tend to overshadow the everyday people. This kind of shows that:
“Authorities had projected 25,000 abortions in the first year of the law, but a spokesman for the Health Ministry said this week that only about 20 had been recorded by early October.”
I’m kind of at a loss of words for the hail satan chanters…their just nuts.
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You’re right, extremists can give a skewed view of the picture. However, we don’t need to look at these outliers to see that a true “pro-abortion” view is prevalent in our country. Planned Parenthood states in its own latest annual report that in the 2011-2012 fiscal year it performed 333,964 abortions, while providing only 2,300 referrals to adoption agencies. For an agency that claims to provide full-service pregnancy support, this 99:1 ratio is telling. Abortion is lucrative, and adoption referrals are not. There is an entire industry out there–thousands of abortionists, nurses, lobbyists, clinic administrators, suppliers, etc.–who have a vested financial interest in performing abortions, promoting them and increasing their absolute numbers, while ignoring or even seeking to outlaw viable alternatives. I think we can safely say that these people–though they wear ties, raise families, spurn tattoos, hold college degrees and in all other ways are upstanding members of society–are solidly “pro-abortion.”
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I think “pro-choice” is far to vague a term, and could apply to people who favor choice in many other matters (schools, etc.). People who favor abortion rights like the term “pro-choice” because most would rather not have abortion mentioned when trying to protect abortion. I think a fair name would be “abortion-rights-supporters,” or “pro abortion-rghts.” But I think “pro-abortion” is pretty reasonable. Look at “pro death-penalty” people. It could be said they aren’t running around trying to get people to commit crimes just so they can watch them fry in the electric chair. They are only in favor of the justice system having the option of killing certain criminals, just as pro-abortion people are in favor of women having the option of aborting their offspring.
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Why one life matters more than another: the mother deserves the right to say what happens to her own body. For a person to use another person’s body, the latter must be consenting at all times. That’s why sex becomes rape at any point one party says no, even if halfway through. As such, the fetus does not have the right to use the woman’s body if she is not continuously consenting. If at any point, she no longer wants to allow the fetus to use her body, it must be removed. It is sad that this removal results in the death of the fetus. But they can’t force you to donate blood or bone marrow or anything either, even if it will save somebody’s life. You can’t be forced to let someone else use your body. I hope this helps you understand the pro-choice standpoint.
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Very well said. I don’t think I have ever thought of it this way or even heard it said like this. I love new perspectives so thanks for that.
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Thanks for your comment, it’s reasonable and I also appreciate your respectfulness. However, I don’t think it’s fair to liken the baby’s occupation of your body to non-consensual sex. In the case of rape, the perpetrator is wilfully causing you harm for his own selfish pleasure. The baby, regardless of under what kind of circumstances he/she was conceived, is not in you to wreck you for pleasure. Imagine that a stranger has somehow accidentally fallen asleep in your home. It’s reasonable that you’d have many reasons to not want this stranger them, so you’d either wait for them to wake up, or wake them up, perhaps explain to them that they’ve wandered into the wrong home, etc. Whatever it is you do, you’re not going to murder this intruder (unless he’s trying kill you, which would be justified self-defense). This is why I believe that if the mother is unable or unwilling to raise this baby for whatever reason, the right thing to do is to give birth to the baby and put him/her up for adoption. The 9 months will indeed be inconvenient and discomforting, but this decision reflects the humane stance that convenience and discomfort are less important than life.
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Well, I think in this situation, if you politely asked the intruder to leave and he or she did not, you’d call the cops. The cops would force him or her to leave and probably kill the intruder if that was the only way to remove him or her from your property.
I do think abortion is sad, and I wish it weren’t a reality. But because it is, it’s probably best to let the woman keep her rights. Banning abortion won’t stop people from having them. It will just make it more dangerous. Sex education and available birth control is what actually lowers the number of abortions.
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/infographics/banning-abortion-endangers.html
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I’m not incredibly familiar with law enforcement specifics, but I don’t think the police would get away with killing a trespasser (again, unless he broke into your home to kill you or something). The crime simply doesn’t justify killing. And in this case, it isn’t even a crime the baby is committing. The baby is in your womb because of natural biological laws. I acknowledge that it requires sacrifices on the mother’s part to have to carry an “unwanted” child to full term and deliver it — it’s no walk in the park — but if those inconveniences and discomfort lead to the preservation, rather than the destruction of life, I believe that’s the humane thing to choose.
But I’m so glad we both agree that abortion is sad and should not be a reality. So we agree that it is immoral. With regard to our different opinions in policy/law, this is a different conversation and we should have one that’s specifically focused on that another time.
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“…what abortion does to the baby is the exact opposite of why healthcare is practiced…”
You can (and should) go even further by noting that what abortion does to the WOMAN (apart from the baby) is also the exact opposite of healthcare. Healthcare by definition is intended to maintain the normal functioning of biological systems, or to correct the malfunctioning of those systems. Abortion, however, does no such thing. It takes a woman’s reproductive system that is already functioning normally (pregnancy is a normal result of sexual relations, not an aberrant one), a system that is doing precisely what it has evolved to do, and it stops it. At best, abortion is an unnatural interruption or malfunction of a successful biological process, and at worst (e.g., see Gosnell), it causes so much damage that the system is unable to ever function normally again. That is not healthcare to the mother, and the pro-choice arrogation of that word is another outrage.
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If this was Facebook, I would like this comment. Never thought about it that way. Even cosmetic surgery, though people think of it as “fixing” or “enhancing,” doesn’t fit the definition of healthcare. Let alone abortion, which fixes nothing, only damages and destroys.
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The same also holds true for chemical birth control, whether abortifacient or contraceptive, the function of which is to shut down a naturally occurring process, rather than correct a malfunctioning one. The grounds for access to these substances are certainly debatable, but it is a huge stretch to reconcile them as “healthcare.” No doubt this will be one of the arguments the Supreme Court will be considering in its hearings on the Obamacare mandates next spring.
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I would agree that birth control doesn’t fit the definition of “healthcare.” The morality of birth control is another debate that I’m currently still exploring. I would no doubt classify abortifacient birth control (including the IUD) as murder, be it from a theological or secular point of view. However, the reasons for classifying it as murder doesn’t apply to contraceptives, so I was wondering if the use of contraceptives can only be considered immoral from a theological standpoint?
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That’s a good (and complex) question, that indeed has split the pro-life community (largely along Catholic-Protestant lines, although some evangelical communities themselves are sharply divided on the issue). The Catholic Church has very compelling theological and moral arguments against artificial contraception, many of them consolidated in Pope John Paul II’s teachings on the “Theology of the Body.” There are also some very strong secular arguments against contraception, although they may require accepting certain premises that materialists are loath to admit (e.g., the intrinsic value of human life; the notion that a “contraceptive mentality” leads to a loosening of moral standards to society’s detriment; the potential of a slippery slope from acceptance of contraception to acceptance of abortion, eugenics, etc.). One good summary of the non-religious arguments against contraception can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/contraception/against_1.shtml?vm=r&s=1
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