The abortion question

Now that I have my baseball fix out of the way, let’s get back to the weightier issues at hand, shall we?

Recently the news has been full of abortion-related items, beginning with the annual (but barely noticed) March for Life that drew hundreds of thousands of people to our nation’s capital, including a high school group that traveled all the way from Covington, Kentucky to attend. They made the news by simply waiting on a bus. (Cue the classic ZZ Top song Waitin’ For The Bus. Not many had mercy on them during their wait or when that story first came out.) That MAGA saga all but buried the reason the kids were there in the first place.

(I will say that this story made some into hypocrites about the idea of yanking your kids out of school to protest, though, because they agreed with the topic as opposed to a teacher protest like I saw last week. One thing I haven’t noticed in the Covington Catholic coverage was whether the March for Life fell on a planned day off for the school or if it was a voluntary or school-required trip.)

Days later, that incident moved off the forefront of the abortion debate when the state of New York passed a law that essentially allows abortion until birth. In an end-zone dance, Governor Andrew Cuomo decreed that several public buildings be bathed in pink light to celebrate the milestone, while others fumed that the lights should be blood red.

Abortion opponents often couch their argument in religious terms, which leads to perhaps the best counter-argument out there: why would you bring a baby into the world that was either defective (such as being blind, deaf, having Downs Syndrome, and so forth) just to suffer, when it would be better for the child to just not be born? Why would your God allow such a travesty to happen?

It’s a very good emotional appeal, so to me the best counter to that is a logical one that has Divine inspiration.

In the Declaration of Independence, which I consider as part of the guiding philosophy of our nation – with the Constitution bringing it into actual law – the Founding Fathers wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Read that again: first and foremost among our self-evident and inalienable rights is the right to life.

I have no doubt that these words were considered carefully and were placed in that specific order for a reason. Too many in the world at that time (and, sadly, even today) have life without the liberty that is needed to pursue true happiness. You can’t have true happiness without liberty, but you most certainly can’t have liberty without life.

So that leaves us a choice: where does life begin? Well, there are only two logical points to use to answer the question – either life begins at birth (as the pro-abortion side seems to contest) or it begins at conception. But ask yourself: if life began at birth, why do we worry about prenatal care? Why do we make a big deal out of gender reveal parties and baby showers when it’s just a clump of cells?

Today I saw a thought-provoking meme that asked a very valid question: if it’s a woman’s body and choice, why isn’t she the one dying?

On the other hand, let’s assume (correctly) that life begins at conception. Once conceived, the unborn have that same right to life the mother enjoys and because life is a higher priority on the philosophical founding document of the nation (again, because liberty isn’t possible without the life to enjoy it) the life of the unborn trumps the mother’s liberty. Here are the choices the mother has: carry the child to term and keep it or carry the child to term and adopt it out to a family who will love and cherish the young baby. (The even earlier choice is to refrain from sexual activity until both partners can accept the responsibility of creating a child.)

But what about rape or incest? they cry. Well, would not aborting a child who is conceived under those circumstances be destroying evidence of the crime? If there’s an abortion under those circumstances, I better be seeing the father of the child hauled into court to stand trial.

I’m certain that in the world today mine is considered an extremist view – particularly since I’m not the one who has to carry the child around in the womb for nine months and give birth to it – but I consider abortion on demand as an extremist problem because it’s legalized murder in my eyes. In this case, extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice, not a virtue, because it’s at the expense of life.

I’ve also noticed a different epithet from the pro-abortion crowd: our side is pro-birth, not pro-life. It goes something like this:

Legislators who are against women terminating their pregnancies are also the ones who want to cut funds to programs helping families. They aim to slash the budgets for SNAP, food assistance, child care credits, education, and health care. Parents who couldn’t afford to have a child to begin with, but couldn’t abort the pregnancy, are now faced with the challenge of raising a child without the means to do so, and with little to no assistance. Not only is this difficult for the parents, but for the child. Yes, the child is alive, and that’s wonderful. But what is the quality of his or her life like? Is it really best for a child to be born when their quality of life is subpar?

I mention this argument and tie it to my religious upbringing because many of the legislators making it difficult for women to have abortions and nearly impossible for them to receive government assistance once they deliver claim to be Christian men and women of high moral standing — they’re just trying to stop people from killing babies, they say.

Alex Palombo, “Pro-Life vs. Pro-Birth,” Huffington Post, July 11, 2013.

Their argument always ties to how much nanny state support the child won’t get because many of us in the pro-life community also stand for limited, Constitutional government. Yet they presume that only government can provide the necessary support, perhaps falsely believing it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a caring family, but the family doesn’t have to be the one comprised only of blood relatives (i.e. a church family.)

Fortunately, teenage pregnancy rates have gone down over the last two decades, although there are still hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies. (Many unplanned pregnancies occur with teenagers, although thousands of older, single women find out they have an unexpected surprise as well.) I think the key here is compassion, but also a realization that there’s a responsibility on both sides to be a good parent, which is going to require sacrifices and changes to the lifestyle of both mom and dad.

I think where people get mad and upset about the pro-birth aspect is when they see reaction to those who refuse to take responsibility for their actions, either using abortion as a form of birth control or having multiple children by multiple fathers and not wanting to change the behavior that led to the situation in the first place. Admittedly, it’s harder to feel compassion and “love the sinner, hate the sin” when one feels the sinner is doing so to game the system.

So how about if we work on that aspect while you guys work on the taking responsibility for your actions end? If you want to create a life – preferably as a married couple in a Christian home – be my guest. If you just want to have fun because it’s the cool thing to do, puts another notch on your bedpost, or the conquest strokes your ego and you aren’t ready for the potential consequences, please refrain.