Abortion is generally accounted by its advocates as a form of birth control and the legal exercise of a woman to engage her privacy rights. There’s no argument with this, especially the former, though it would appear that a prospective father or boy friend who has furnished half the wherewithal for the pregnancy and who is reluctant to see the fetus aborted should have something to say in the matter. Since most abortions flow from fornication rather than fatherhood, however, there actually is no argument with the latter, either, though it should be noted that the abortion represents a convenience for both the stud and the pregnant woman and therefore has little to do with a conscious effort at birth control, privacy, or anything else.
Since an abortion is the killing of something (person, embryo, fetus, mere tissue) that’s alive, it’s sort of the same as one’s having a healthy appendix removed, for instance, simply getting rid of something that’s alive and well but nevertheless could become an inconvenience. Regardless of what the social engineers say, however, this procedure can grow into something more than just a method for inducing convenience, and, more to the point, its acceptance in any civilized nation as a perfectly normal happenstance reflects a coarseness that bodes ill for the most important and strongest institution endemic to any civilized society – the family defined as one woman and one man with or without children, legally documented, and subject to the laws pertaining to marriage (by definition establishing the gender requirement).
Currently, abortion advocates are wringing their hands and wailing to the skies over the resignation from the Supreme Court of Associate Justice O’Connor, since she has been the swing voter in many Court decisions, not the least important of which have had to do with the abortion matter, its unlimited license codified in the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973. Their fear is that President Bush will nominate someone who looks with a jaundiced eye at abortion and will seek to, if not overturn it, at least weaken it. Anti-abortion advocates, of course, hope he will do just that.
Those who believe abortion is just a routine correcting of a physical problem such as gall-bladder surgery obviously believe a fetus is not a human being; otherwise, aborting it would amount to murder. Legally, they’re right. However, if they can agree that abortion is not a good thing in and of itself (and most would), they would do well to consider how constraints on abortion might curtail the use of a procedure that is not good. As it stands now, a girl/woman can engage freely in unprotected sex knowing that she can have the relatively simple and painless abortion if she “gets caught.” If the law were made more restrictive, she at least might consider protection, which might also guard against STDs…an actual plus all around even though it emanates from an abortion law. This is not even to consider the psychological ramifications of what amounts to killing an eventual human being.
In any case, Roe/Wade will not soon be overturned, if ever. Since the only thing worse than an abortion (the interdiction of a potential life) perhaps is the bearing of an unwanted child, the law may be useful, not for the convenience of the pregnant woman or her paramour, but for the welfare of a child brought into a world where he/she may well be unloved, abused, malnourished, poorly educated, and dealt a losing hand all around. People who are willing to destroy a fetus are not fit to be parents, and a child should not be subjected to their upbringing, or, more likely, their non-upbringing. The media is saturated daily with accounts of the miseries of children who would have been better off aborted.
Absent Roe/Wade, there would be about 44 million more Americans today plus a few million of the offspring of those who would have been born…say between 1973 and 1983…maybe 50 million or so altogether. What would that have meant to the country? This is an interesting question.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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