Bringing Back the Sanity Part III

Critiquing the Pro-Choice Stance

I was riding BART a few weeks ago when I saw a poster by some pro-life group. It read something like "Because of Roe v. Wade a woman can be pregnant for nine months and still abort her baby. Abortion rights have gone too far." Okay, the message implies that Roe legalized abortion for the full term of pregnancy which is not the case. We already discussed the limits of Roe. But the basic idea of abortion rights having gone too far is legitimate.

Just as the pro-life group goes too far when they consider a single fertilized egg to be a human being, the pro-choice group goes too far when they consider an 8 month old "fetus" to not be one. Although, I feel it to be impossible to mark a specific point where a bunch of cells ceases to be a potential human being and becomes an actual human being, I have to say that any reasonable person knows that it does occur in the womb and not at birth.

Recently a couple I know had a baby born two and a half months premature. The doctors have worked heroically to save the life of this tiny infant. Yet, radical pro-choice advocates would say that child is only a child because it is outside the womb. That may make legal sense, but it is rational nonsense.

Pro-choicers have gone too far in several ways. First, they have gone too far in their rhetoric. The mantra of "A woman has a right to do what she wants with her body" is flawed logically. At some point, the fetus ceases to be a part of the woman's body and becomes a living human being. Since I could not determine exactly when that point occurs I would rather not take chances at all, but certainly after the first trimester, it is clear that there is someone inside the womb who while dependent on the mother's body is not part of the mother's body. Whether or not the woman has the right to make a life and death decision for that other person (which is another question entirely) she cannot claim that her decision only affects her.

Pro-choicers have also gone to far in defining the term "woman." Pro-choice groups point to a "woman's" right to choose even when the "woman" in question is a teenage girl. It is ironic to the point of lunacy, that a school nurse cannot give a teenager an aspirin without parental consent, but that same girl, in many states, can have an abortion. The teenage brain is different than the adult brain, and at time teenagers make impulsive decisions that the same person in later years would not. These decisions (and not just abortion) can leave scars that last for a lifetime. Certainly, there needs to be some limits on parental involvment such as when the life of the mother is at stake or some other serious physical or mental health issue is at stake. But the basic principle of parental notification is no infringement on the rights of an adult woman to make an informed decision to terminate her pregnancy.

Pro-choice advocates have gone too far in supporting late term abortions. This stance even goes beyond Roe v. Wade. In that decision, the justices agreed that there was a legitimate interest in protecting viable fetuses. Consider the so called "partial birth" abortion. The doctors induce labor, the baby is almost born, but before the head comes out of the mother, an instrument is inserted into the brain to kill the child. Three or four inches further and an abortion become infanticide. It would be laughably absurd, if it wasn't so tragic.

Finally Pro-choice advocates have gone too far in denying the humanity of the fetus. The difference between having a baby inside of you and having a fetus often turns solely on whether or not you want to keep the child. A mother desirous of having a child considers that child growing inside them as a person from the moment she hears the news. It is a legal fiction to deny a fetus, particularly after it is capable of independent movement, and has a well formed brain and nervous system, the status of a person. Any parent, who wanted a child knows it is a person. Any mother awaken in the middle of the night by a well place kick, knows it is a person, and any father placing his hand on the mothers abdomen to feel his child move beneath the skin, knows it is a person. It is only when the child is unwanted that it becomes a fetus and denied the humanity it is accorded when it is anticipated with joy.

So, yes, I feel the pro-lifers have gone too far in their rhetoric and have denied Christ by their hatefulness in pursuing what they consider a "holy mission." But the pro-choicers have gone too far. They have moved from a pragmatic approach to dealing with abortion laws which were inconsistent and outdated to actually promoting abortion as not only a viable alternative to birth control, but in some cases the preferred alternative. They have denied the humanity of the fetus far past the stages of pregnancy where such humanity is questionable. They have even taken the law on a ride where infanticide is called legalized abortion with the partial birth procedure.

So, no one has clean hands in this debate.