Abortion

Abortion is an issue that confounds resolution.  In fact, when it's discussed, it's one of the most hotly debated topics imaginable.  For too many people, it's a very incendiary topic, one that inflames the rhetoric and leads to some very odd bedfellows.

For the record, I am unapologetically pro-life.  I come to this conclusion not from any dogmatic compulsion but because logically, I can see no other way to believe.  To put it simply, the fetus is a human life in being from the moment of conception.  To rationalize it in any other way is wrong and potentially criminal.  People have contorted themselves morally to justify abortion probably, in my opinion, so they can live with themselves and their decisions.

The argument in favor of life is very simple:  Fertilization occurs when the sperm of a man joins with the egg of a woman.  Both the man and the woman are human.  Not trees, rocks, books, tables, fish, jelly, Coke, straw, but humans.  It is incomprehensible to me how anyone can deny that the fertilized egg is anything less than human.  Of course, the pro-death argument turns on the point of viability. Specifically, unless the fetus or fertilized egg can live on its own outside the womb, it cannot be considered human life.

Well.

The counterarguments to this are myriad.  Is a person in a coma who is hooked up to life support any less of a human because he needs to have his life continued by a machine?  Are brain dead people no longer human?  What of those people whose hearts have stopped only to be restarted by defibrillators?
Former SCOTUS justice Sandra Day O'Connor hit the nail right on the head in a concurring opinion in an abortion case.  She said, in essence, that pro-death advocates were, with their viability argument, on a collision course with technology, because with advancements in neo-natal technology, the day is coming when a fertilized egg may very well be viable at conception.  If and when that occurs, what argument will the pro-death crowd use to sanction what is essentially murder?

The law is equally confused about the unborn.  Whereas a pregnant woman can decide whether the life growing inside her is human or not, the law gives that unborn life property rights.  If the father of the unborn child dies pre-birth, the child under the law is in line to inherit money or property from the decedent's estate.  If the mother and unborn child are killed by a drunk driver, the drunk faces two counts of aggravated murder (or whatever the charge is under state law), not just one.  Here's a conundrum to consider:  What if the drunk driver hits the car while the mother is on the way to the abortion clinic to kill her unborn child?  Is the drunk guilty of one death or two?  Who determines, in the absence of the deceased mother, whether the child's death counts as a charge?

Lest anyone think that I'm speaking without any personal experience because I will never be a father, consider this:  One of my sisters was raped on a date and had the child, and the other sister gave birth to a child with a serious defect, osteogenesis imperfecta.  Because of our sisters' selflessness and hard work, our nephew and niece have reached adulthood and are productive members of society.  It wasn't easy by any means.  The sisters sacrificed and guided their children who, had they been killed, would not have had a chance at life.  Sure, one of them has challenges, but she's overcome many of them and lives a productive, largely happy life.

There will be those who say that many women with low incomes and a lack of the kind of support our sisters have enjoyed would be faced with insuperable challenges.  There are some, to be sure.  But there are families throughout the country who would gladly adopt babies no matter what socio-economic background into which they were born.  But pro-death advocates would rather take the choice away from the child and leave it with the woman, denying the child's humanity and the most elementary of rights -- life.

The pro-death segment of this country has become so confident of itself that it has even turned a blind eye to the recent trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell.  Who is Dr. Kermit Gosnell, you ask?  Here's a snippet of the trial that went largely uncovered by the MSM:

"Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant – seven and a half months – when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal."

That was just one of the incidents for which Dr. Gosnell was convicted of murder.   


The question that must be asked is:  Does the manner in which the death occurred really matter?

Not surprisingly, the MSM avoided this trial like the plague, passing over the outcome with barely a mention.  Had it been a pro-life activist who killed an abortionist, the news would have been on every network show throughout the trial.  As one online report said it:

“If you’re pro-[death], do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

Yet the outcome was the irony of ironies:  Dr. Gosnell, in a plea bargain, exchanged his right to appeal his sentence for life in prison.

Would that the children have had the opportunity to make a choice.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles