Abortion...Again.
The question not being asked is this: given all we have learned about the origins of human life since Roe, is abortion necessary?
Similar to when Anthony Kennedy left the SCOTUS, the Mississippi case assures that the abortion debate rages anew (actually, it never stops) but as we begin again to argue over when a human becomes a human, I have three questions that I believe need to be answered as a part of this debate:
Has abortion been a net positive or a net negative for women?
Is abortion really an issue of choice or when that choice is made?
Is abortion necessary in our contemporary times?
The “pro” arguments seem to revolve around these propositions that are incorporated into most “pro-choice” arguments:
Women have a moral right to decide what to do with their bodies
The right to abortion is vital for gender equality
The right to abortion is vital for individual women to achieve their full potential
Banning abortion puts women at risk by forcing them to use illegal abortionists
The right to abortion should be part of a portfolio of pregnancy rights that enables women to make a truly free choice whether to end a pregnancy
I’m going to add one that most pro-abortion people won’t:
It is used for elective birth control
I guess I think about my last question before I consider the first and second.
I should note that I understand there are cases of medical necessity, or as a response to incest or rape – but Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, 48 years ago. Attitudes toward sex, marriage and contraception have changed substantially in that near-half century, contraception has become more commonplace, and has come out from behind the counter at the local drug store and onto display racks at your local Wal-Mart. Many forms are available without prescription. OTC (over the counter) options include spermicides, condoms, and levonorgestrel emergency contraception (Plan B). You still must have a prescription from a doctor to purchase “the pill” but the cost is negligible – around $10 a month at a Wal-Mart pharmacy – or even free if you have private health insurance, qualify for Medicaid or other state programs.
So, for a moment, let’s set aside the argument whether a fetus is a human being or a clump of cells and focus on #2 thru #5 of the first set of “pros”.
If I substitute the word “contraception” for “abortion”, every single one of those “reasons” are rendered null and void and as to #1, doesn’t using a contraceptive qualify as a “woman’s right to decide”?
In my opinion, the easy availability of contraceptives renders all the arguments for abortion moot. If the pro-abortion crowd is honest, abortion has become an elective form of contraception if none of the others are chosen or fail (which the occurrence is an infinitesimally small number – far less than the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood alone).
As to the second question, there is the old stand-by that works every time it is tried – abstinence from sex.
I’m no prude and don’t really care what anyone does on their own dime, I just don’t think any orgasm is so great that should cost a child their life and the time when a woman was required by cultural mores to sexually submit to her husband (or potential baby daddy) are long gone.
Having intercourse for any reason than rape or incest, is a choice. A baby should not be sentenced to death because a woman wants to feel loved, hang on to their partner or a couple just wants to have a good time.
And this choice is not just on the female – pregnancy is always a potential consequence of intercourse, If a man has sex with a woman that results in pregnancy, he has a duty and responsibility to that child and the mother as if he were the one carrying it.
Human Life International quotes from the compilation of data of more than 2.4 million abortions in the states of Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Utah during the years 1996 to 2020, the data is from official reports legally required from abortion clinics in those states. It presents an accurate estimate of the reasons for abortions:
1.14% are done to save the life or physical health of the mother.
1.28% to preserve the mental health of the mother.
0.39% in cases of rape or incest.
0.69% for fetal birth defects, or eugenics.
The remaining 96.50% of all abortions are performed for social or economic reasons.
Ann Coulter once accurately said that abortion was the sacrament of the progressive religion, so let us look at three of the most motivating issues of the modern progressive Democrat:
A libertine rejection of any moral standard
Radical environmentalism, and their most unifying issue,
Abortion.
Think about this for a minute and ruminate over the schizophrenia of the melding of these three positions:
In rejection of moral standards, the “progressives” seek to elevate humans over the Divine, to claim that humans are the top of the food chain through evolution and should be celebrated and unrestrained, yet:
Humans are destroying the earth through wars, exploitation of resources and capitalism – and therefore population must be controlled, and economic activity must be limited – standards of living must be reduced through halting human progress because the health of the planet must be placed above the wellbeing of any human and,
There should be no war because war kills children, yet they fight for the legal approval to kill a fetus at the whim of the mother and approve of abortion as a necessary population control device. I think they believe that humans must have the right to kill other humans in the womb as that is seen as the final celebration of man’s victory over God – the ability to choose who lives and who dies.
Just a fact to put abortion in perspective – abortion procedures kill more children in the US than any war – there are estimated to be around a million abortion procedures performed in America every year. As a reference, that number is more Americans than were killed in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East wars altogether.
The startling facts are that almost 190 abortions are performed per every 1,000 live births and since Roe was decided, over 61.8 million lives have been extinguished.
All things considered; one must question if abortion is necessary in our contemporary times.
If the pro-choice (aka pro-abortion) folks truly believe in the “science”, they would see that all their points are rendered moot by the easy availability of methods to prevent an unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
Abortion in America has become less of a choice and more of a convenience.
I spent a large amount of time in China where human life is not valued. The endpoint of pro-abortion arguments always includes a devaluation of life. That perspective cannot be allowed to take root in America. Human life is not disposable.
I am against abortion because I do not believe a fetus is a “clump of cells”. I believe a “spark of Divinity” is transmitted at the moment of conception (Nancy Pelosi believes this about MS-13 members, why not babies?), so I believe abortion ends a human life – but I also believe that the arguments made in favor of abortion in 2021 are antiquated – through medical research and true scientific inquiry, we have learned a lot about fetal development over the past fifty or so years.