Abortion – Let’s be Honest

Abortion is a complex topic and not something that can be covered in sound bites or bumper stickers.  But, if we are going to deal with this divisive issue, the first thing we must do is be honest in what we say, beginning with what it is.

Abortion is a killing.  People may disagree about what is being killed or whether that killing is justified, but I think we must all admit that abortion kills something that is alive.  The question is what is that living entity that is being killed?  The term of the day for pro-abortionists is that it is a “clump of cells.”  But a clump of cells of what?  The answer is “a living being.”  And, if one further asks “what being?” the answer is “a human being.”

So, if we can agree that is what is being killed, then the question becomes whether or not that killing is justified.  We know that many religions have an absolute prohibition against killing.  We also know that most legal systems have a tiered approach to whether killing is or is not justified.  That is, most statutory systems will range from first degree intentional and premeditated murder to lesser degrees of murder to negligent homicide to justifiable homicide.  These systems take into account the varying circumstances under which a killing of another person may take place.

In abortion we also see varying circumstances that result in termination of that life within the womb.  At one end of the spectrum is perhaps the young woman who “sleeps around” with the full and “premeditated intention” of terminating any pregnancy that might result.  That is, she sees abortion as simply another means of birth control.

Nearing the other end of the spectrum is perhaps the woman who began with a wanted pregnancy that she intended to carry full term, but has been informed by doctors that the child has significant medical issues or defects that may result in miscarriage, still-birth, or a life that will be far from normal for the child.  Perhaps the doctors advise abortion to the mother. 

I can relate two such circumstances of which I  am aware.  In the first, the woman took the doctor’s advice for abortion, believing that she was saving her child from suffering.  The child’s life ended late in the second trimester when she was yanked from her mother’s womb in a sterile operating room and was disposed of as medical waste.  As far as I know she never was named or given any form of end of life ceremony. 

In the second instance of which I am aware, the woman was also advised to abort but chose to remain hopeful and let the pregnancy progress.  The child was born in the 7^th month and remained alive for just under an hour.  She died in loving arms at the time that she and her Creator chose.  She was named, loved, and given a burial in accordance with her family’s religious beliefs.

While I find the second approach to the situation more in line with my beliefs, I can understand that some might find the first woman’s decision to abort to be in some way reasonable under the circumstances. 

Additionally, not all pregnancies involve a willing mother:  rape and incest present circumstances quite different from those in which the mother willingly participated in the act that resulted in the pregnancy.

Abortion is not so cut and dried as many would like to make it.  It can put individuals into an agonizing position.  Like other killing, there are abortions that are pre-meditated, there are those that are done for convenience, there are those that result from negligence and there are those that may be justifiable.

In all cases of abortion we must continue to focus on the fact that a human life is being terminated.  We lose track of that when we try to couch abortion in terms of women’s reproductive rights.  Perhaps if we see abortion as nothing more than another form of birth control we can say that it is some form of reproductive right. 

But, once the pregnancy occurs, there is someone other than the woman involved.  She is now the guardian of another life.   It is no longer simply about the mother’s “reproductive rights.”   The “woman’s right to choose,” except in the cases of rape and incest, occurred before the pregnancy; it should not include the absolute right to terminate the living result of that prior choice.    

I think that sex education now begins in elementary school most everywhere and includes facts about contraception, including that no contraception method is 100% effective.  Hence, when a woman makes the choice to have sex, she is doing so with that knowledge of the possible consequences.  That is when she had the right to choose – to say no.  Having chosen yes, she then must live with the consequences, including the fact that a new life may be growing in her womb.

Rights include responsibilities.  The woman’s right to choose to have or not have sex includes the responsibility to that “clump of cells” that is a living and independent being that may result from her choice.  We need to teach women (and men) to choose wisely (but that is a topic for another blog).

I really think that most abortion questions could be handled by laws already on the books:  the homicide statutes.  For example, my state’s statutes, like most, have a section covering homicide.  They range from most to least serious, beginning with first degree murder (the killing of one human being by another without lawful justification or excuse) and include second degree murder, manslaughter, as well as  excusable and justifiable homicide, both of which require that the defendant be found not guilty and be discharged.  While as currently written these statutes do not directly cover the sorts of situations that might make an abortion excusable or justifiable, it would not take much to amend them to do so.

While some would believe that all killing should be prohibited, as a society we have agreed that there are different types of killing and that while we do not allow blanket murder, or killing for such things a personal convenience or gain, we do see some killing as justifiable.  Whether or not a specific killing is justifiable often becomes a very fact specific question for a jury.  I would argue that the above case of abortion due to serious medical defects of the child might be such a difficult and fact specific case.  Similarly, we might agree to find all abortions that result from rape or incest to be justifiable. 

You will note that the above murder statute, like most statutes, refers to “the killing of one human being by another.”  In regard to abortion, yes, the living being growing within the woman’s womb is a “clump of cells” and yes, it is medically referred to as a “fetus” which is the medical term for the unborn offspring of a mammal, but we all know that clump of cells and that fetus are of a human mammal and that it is indeed a living human being. 

It is a disingenuous and cruel twist of words to try to say this is not living, not human, not an entity alive and with an identity separate from the woman who carries it.   The termination of this individual is not simply a woman’s reproductive right.

Abortion, the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, of a living being, of a human fetus, is the deliberate killing of one human being by another.  Such death cannot be justified as a reproductive right.  It perhaps can be justified in certain circumstances but not as some right of a woman to decide that she made a wrong choice and now does not wish to live with its consequences. 

This is America and abortion is a complex topic.  The question of abortion, like homicide, has religious overtones.  We as a society have a variety of religious beliefs, but we have decided to prevent a blanket approval of all homicide, even while allowing room for circumstances that might make a homicide justifiable.  There will still be those who, based on their religious beliefs would condemn all homicide and there are those who would allow as justifiable many homicides that we as a society and our statutes do not. 

The bigger government gets, the more we are left with a one size fits all society.  Abortion cannot be regulated in that manner.  It really should be left to the states under our 10^th Amendment.  I think that states could deal with the issue using their homicide statutes as a model.  There will be variations among the states, just as there are variations in homicide statutes and their punishments. 

I think murder is wrong.  I don’t think I could kill an intruder into my home; others might have no problem doing so.   Yet I am willing, indeed support, our homicide statutes that might allow such a killing as excusable or justifiable.  I don’t have a blanket Homeowner’s Right to kill any more than a woman should have a blanket Reproductive Right to abort.  In both instances there are two lives involved and we must consider the circumstances and rights of both.

It is time to be honest about abortion.  It is indeed a killing of a living being that is human.  There is a wide range of facts and circumstances that lead to any given abortion.  With the exception of rape and incest, a woman has the right to choose not to put herself in a situation that might result in a pregnancy.  That was when she had a right to choose.  Once she is pregnant, there is a second individual involved.  To allow abortion on demand as some sort of reproductive right gives women a blanket right to kill another individual living being. 

If we would be honest about these things, we might have some sort of reasonable discussion about abortion and its limitations instead of using it as just another talking point with which to attack political opponents.   Until we do so, the living beings in the womb, our children, exist without any rights at all.

About the Abortion Debate

Even though the abortion argument is misplaced in the nomination process for a Supreme Court Justice (and thus reflects ignorance of the Constitution and the role of a judge), since we will nonetheless be having the abortion discussion, here are my thoughts.

First, I think that it is necessary to make the discussion honest.  Here is the medical definition of abortion: “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: a : spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation — compare miscarriage. b : induced expulsion of a human fetus.

One will note that this definition does not include the words “reproductive rights”  or "women's rights" or “choice.”  Abortion itself is simply ending a pregnancy – killing a living entity growing in a woman’s uterus, regardless of how you may define that life that is terminated.

Reproductive rights would be rights that address reproduction.  That reproduction, while it may occur over a period of time, begins when the egg is fertilized and the reproduction begins.  So those rights would seemingly be involved with the act of creation, not of termination.

This leads me to the word “choice” and the phrase "woman's right to choose."   Excluding acts of forced creation such as rape or similar criminal occurrences, a woman has the opportunity to choose whether to engage in a sexual act long before she faces the decision about abortion and a child growing in her womb.  To assume that women are incapable of understanding the possible consequences of intercourse or the possible failures of birth control, is to assume that their intelligence is fairly low.  Are we to assume that women are incapable of knowing what they are doing, that they are likely to be so overcome with passion or sexual drive that they do not understand the consequences of their act?  Really?

Yes, a woman has a right to choose what to do with her body, but that right does not only exist after she has become pregnant.  When a woman freely enters into intercourse, she has made a choice that includes the possible consequence of becoming pregnant.  If she does not want to be pregnant, does not want to carry another life inside her, then she needs to make a different choice when faced with a situation that could result in pregnancy.

Once a woman has made the choice that results in the union of a sperm and egg to begin the reproductive process, she now holds a separate life within her.  Yes, it is her body within which that being will grow, but she has made a choice to place that being there.  And, now, in my opinion, it is not only her life that matters.

There is a selfishness in the idea that the child within the woman’s womb is meaningless; that it is only the woman who matters.  This, to me, is a part of our more generally selfish culture:  if it is inconvenient, just get rid of it.  It is also a childish response to one’s own activity and an inability to take responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions.  And, the encouragement of this response, the failure to hold women accountable for their actions and to instead give them an out,  like the failure to recognize their ability to make a choice about having intercourse, is simply degrading to women.  Real respect for women would not treat them like children.  It would acknowledge their ability to be responsible for their own actions.

Beyond the disingenuousness of abortion being an expression of women’s rights, those who engage in the abortion discussion often fail to even consider the broader effect that abortion has on our attitude towards born children, the family, and on humanity and life itself.

If we can abort lives that are simply inconvenient or not to our liking (e.g. the movement to abort Downs babies), then we are turning children into a commodity.  It becomes about the life of the adults, and not of the children – we will select a child when it is convenient for us, in the way that one selects a dog or even a piece of furniture.  It becomes about enhancing our own lives and not nurturing the lives of the children.  Thinking in the long term, this cannot be healthy for future generations of children or for the future of humanity.

Speaking of humanity, when life becomes a commodity it tends to lose its special value.  If it is OK to kill an unborn child, then why not one being born?  If it is OK to have live birth abortions, then why not well into an infant’s life if that life is just too troublesome?  If we lose our respect for human life, then it becomes much easier to kill in the same way that soldiers are often indoctrinated with the idea that their enemy is somehow less than human.  Easy abortion, abortion on demand, has a way of cheapening life, making it valueless and hence one can more easily take or destroy any human life without remorse.  Is this really the direction we would like to see for the human race?

I believe that the above  points suggest a strong argument against abortion generally.  There will, of course be difficult individual cases such as rape, incest, or simply those rare situations in which an abortion would seem to be the best choice for all concerned, including the child to be aborted.  How to handle these types of situations invokes the beliefs and religious values of those concerned.  But, because these difficult situations will always exist does not mean that abortion should be an accepted alternative in every pregnancy.

Abortion follows the act of reproduction. It is not reproduction.  It is a termination of a reproduction that has already occurred.  It kills a living being, regardless of what one chooses to call that being.  To assume that women have no voice or choice until they find themselves pregnant is incredibly demeaning of women.  To readily accept abortion for reasons of personal convenience turns children into little more than commodities and makes life itself if not valueless, at least less meaningful.  The long term consequences on our civilization seem far worse to me than allowing an unwanted pregnancy to come to term.