The Real Abortin Debate

This article is excerpted from my ebook "Liberal Is NOT A Four Letter Word.
"The Real Abortion Debate"
Cutting to the chase… liberals believe that government has no business in medical decisions between doctor and patient. When the 1973 Roe v Wade decision gave women the choice over their own bodies, abortion became a private decision.

Here is where the defendants dive in with their religious interference. Arguing that the fertilization of an egg is the creation of life, they say that abortion is the taking of that life; it is murder. Thus any abortion is wrong. They are “pro-life” – as if any sane person is “anti-life”. They do not hide their intention to reverse Roe v Wade.

The defendants employ the guerilla tactic of incremental legislation on abortion. They try to ban a medical procedure they fatefully call “partial birth abortion”, and want to pass laws that would force doctors of pregnant teens to inform the girl’s parents if she chooses to have an abortion. Each incremental step carves into the fundamental right to choose. The defendants’ endgame: make abortion completely illegal again. If they truly believe that is going to stop abortions, they’re living in some weird dreamland.

Making abortions illegal will place even more lives at risk. Women will be forced to adopt drastic solutions that not only abort the fetus, but jeopardize a woman’s health and life. Taking away a woman’s reproductive rights and subordinating them to the fetus is not only unconstitutional, but dangerous to women’s health.

Even after criminalizing abortions, the defendants will probably place some exceptions in any law. One will be: in the case of incest or rape, abortion should be allowed. Let’s see…it’s okay to kill a fetus under circumstances they define, but not under those the pro-choice people define. Is it me, or is there a disconnect here?

Another exception inevitably will be to allow abortion if the health of the mother is at risk. This, too, creates problems. It places doctors in a difficult position. Not all risk situations are black and white. What if the doctor decides to abort and is wrong? With the threat of liability for a judgment call hanging over his head, a doctor might hesitate, might make a choice that kills both mother and fetus. Or he could be arrested for performing an unnecessary abortion.

Making abortion illegal will create murkiness, indecision and more deaths, without lowering the number of, much less stopping, abortions.

The argument about when life begins is a huge distraction in the abortion debate. The defendants love to trap pro-choice people by getting them to either agree that life begins at conception, or get them squirming in their chairs trying to avoid the question. Too many pro-choice people fall for it and they can’t win. We’ve shown that in any abortion law anti-abortion groups will need to make concessions that compromise their overriding principle that all life is sacred. The real discussion cannot be about when any of us believes life starts. It must be about the circumstances that make abortion necessary.

Why not take a new, liberal view of the debate? Why won’t the defendants take their heads out of the Bible, and face the truth? Unmarried people will not stop having sex even with all the finger-wagging and righteousness of the defendants. Given that, why not teach proper sexuality education? Why not make available any and all contraceptive devices that would stop pregnancy from happening in the first place? Why not let women be in charge of how they handle their reproductive years? Why not do all this and create a situation where abortion is less necessary? Abortion will never be eliminated. The defendants themselves say they know that in certain circumstances an abortion is the only medical solution. Once again, they can practice this moral relativism, while at the same time inciting abortion foes and painting liberals as “baby killers”. Their tactics suck and we need to call them on it. Rational people are going to disagree in this debate. What we should strive for is an agreement to reduce the necessity for abortions. Reason versus irrationality has to prevail.