Life and Choice

I don’t really know why I’m writing this post, I’m probably preaching to the choir as far as my known reader base is concerned. But the topic of abortion and the recent debates and votes about “personhood” are really bothering me right now, and keeps burning in my mind and I feel I need to vent it a bit.

People can choose whether to have children or not. People can choose whether to use birth control or not to prevent getting pregnant. Even if faced with an unplanned, inconvenient pregnancy people can choose whether to keep the child or let someone else adopt and raise him or her. But I have no idea why it is even legal to choose to kill the child.  

If I’m annoyed with someone, if they inconvenience my life, that does not give me the right to kill them. If someone at your workplace really gets on your nerves, that does not give you the legal right to poison their coffee. If a student in your class is always disruptive and disrespectful, that does not give you the right to take them outside and shoot them. If your baby cries all night and you can’t stand another minute of it, that does not give you the right to smother them with a pillow. I don’t see anyone picketing for the legal right to murder people who make your life harder, whether they are children or adult. The public gets outraged at people like Casey Anthony, and more recently Shelby Dasher, mothers who allegedly killed their already-born children, at least one on accident when she was drunk. But somehow no one would even bat an eye if those two women had instead soberly chosen to end those children’s lives before they were born.

There is the constant cry of “What about rape and incest? That woman didn’t have a choice to prevent that pregnancy!” and “What if the health of the mother is in danger?” Seriously, people? Let’s start with rape. Yes, a terrible crime has been committed. Yes, that woman’s life was probably shattered. I’m not trying to be insensitive, it truly is a tragedy. But did the baby commit the crime? No. So why is the baby the one getting the death sentence? Punish the rapist, not the innocent. Again, if she can’t or doesn’t want to keep the child, adoption is always an option. Even so, statistically only 1% of abortions are women who choose to end their baby’s life because they got pregnant through rape or incest. One. Percent. Another 6% are from serious health risks to the mother should she continue the pregnancy or because the baby was diagnosed with health problems in the womb. Many times even in the cases of the mother's health being in the balance, she could try to carry the child to viability as opposed to full-term, and give the baby a fighting chance to live. At 24 weeks, just past halfway through a 40-week pregnancy, the baby has a 50% chance of survival thanks to modern-day medical technology. If the baby doesn’t make it, at least the mother tried. So for every 7 babies who die these “justified” deaths, 93 are killed for convenience.

Why is it that millions of people think that’s okay to end someone else’s life just because they are inconvenient and disrupt your life? How selfish can you be?

Another common line: “It’s my body, so it’s my choice.” Wrong. It’s someone else’s body we’re talking about affecting. You are not your mother, you are a separate entity that came about inside your mother. Your baby is not you. He or she is another new being that has come about inside your body due to choices that you made. Whether to use or not to use birth control was your choice. If you chose not to, don’t be surprised if another person suddenly enters your life. The child forming inside the mother is not “her body”. It’s a whole new somebody else. 

When tallying up members of a household to receive benefits like Medicaid, the government counts unborn children. They’re people in the household. If a pregnant woman is attacked and injured in such a way that she loses the child but she lives, it is still counted as murder. They’re people in the womb. But if that same woman were to walk into an abortion clinic and choose to end that baby’s life, that’s okay. Then it’s not murder, it’s “freedom of choice”. It’s only a person if she wants it.

How is that okay? Does anyone else see something inconsistent here?

By the time a woman even finds out she’s pregnant, there’s already a beating heart. That is life. That heart is made to stop beating when an abortion is performed. That is death. Usually the purposeful causing of a human life to end in death is called murder and it is illegal, immoral, unethical, and just wrong. Most people recognize that. I love the “personhood” movement going on in several states. I’m frustrated at the response, that it’s not getting the justice it deserves. Babies are people. Small people, but people nonetheless.

Another thing that just makes my heart sad is thinking of all that lost potential in those lives. Hundreds of famous, successful, creative, noble, honorable, heroic people were unplanned pregnancies. Just think of what the world would have lost if their mothers had chosen to end their lives. Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Alexander Hamilton, and Eva Peron are just a handful of people who were born outside of wedlock, unplanned, inconvenient to their mothers. Oh, but what they have offered the world! Now think of the abortion clinic in your town, killing the next great inventor who might have revolutionized transportation. The next great doctor who might have found a cure for cancer. The next great leader who might have transformed a society. It’s sick. So much potential is being snuffed out before it can even begin.

Save the trees. Save the baby seals. Save the whales. Save the endangered beetles. But kill your children. Is something wrong here?

//end rant