Posted by
Scottie on Saturday, December 16, 2006 11:45:50 PM
I’ve spent a great deal of my adult life avoiding the abortion issue. “Choice” seemed like the moderate course; then I spent some time seriously reflecting on the matter. No matter how I approach this issue, I can no longer side with “Choice” with any intellectual honesty. The choice isn’t about a woman’s right to control her own body; it’s about her “right” to decide the fate of another’s, her baby’s. I cannot escape this conclusion, nor can anyone else once the situation is faced squarely and honestly.
As an analogy, let’s consider a shoplifter that is caught. At that point, I’m sure they are willing to return the stolen merchandise. But the act of shoplifting has already been committed; the bell cannot be un-rung. Similarly, once a woman has conceived, the bell has rung, however unintentionally. An abortion is comparable to requesting a return to the status quo ante, and just like the shoplifter, the relevant act has already been committed and cannot be undone.
While the shopkeeper may accept or decline this request as the injury is to him/her, in the case of the pregnant woman, the party to be spared or injured is the unborn baby. This baby is in no position to permit or forgive the consequence of the decision. In fact, this baby’s right to its destiny and its humanity must be denied for abortion to even be considered.
And it is a baby, make no mistake about that. It looks exactly like every other human baby at that stage of development; it develops just like any other human baby; and if unhindered in its development becomes a fully developed human baby. It is not “a clump of undifferentiated cells”, or a “potential” human being, or any other euphemism put forth to mask the gravity of the situation; it is in fact a human baby under development and nothing less.
The time for a woman to “control her own body” is forfeit once she has conceived. It is no longer her body that suffers the injury, but that of her developing child. While the exceptions for rape and incest are valid in the sense that the culpable party is not the woman but the man - who bears the responsibility for injury to both the woman and the child - this is not the case in more than a small portion of babies conceived. A pregnancy that genuinely threatens the life of the mother is also morally defensible, but again these make up a small portion of cases. Stretch marks, weight gain and all the other “injuries” a woman will rightly claim to suffer from carrying a child to term are more than outweighed by the injury of premature death suffered by an innocent child.
Finally, this developing human being is absolutely innocent. I cannot imagine an act committed before one’s first breath is drawn so grievous as to warrant the death penalty. Is the developing human a citizen? No. Does the law recognize the developing baby as a human being? No. But is it right to kill what we know to be an innocent human being? The only intellectually honest answer here is: No! At its essence, abortion is a question of right and wrong and the rights of the most vulnerable and innocent, not one of women’s rights to control their bodies.