Against Murdering Babies (Sorta)

By: Vindictive | 23October2000

If you are only interested in considering the major US party candidates, deciding on who you'd prefer to be the next president may be tricky. There are more issues on which they agree -- or seem to agree -- than on which they disagree. Consequently, many voters feel that either choice is the wrong choice. This may be the number one cause of so-called voter apathy. The situation is further complicated by: Texas governor George W. Bush's unwillingness to clearly state positions during the debates that might be unpopular among large blocks of citizens, and Vice-president Al Gore's offers of more taxpayer-funded programs (bread and circuses), which must be hard for some people to turn down. However, there is one issue on which George W. Bush and Al Gore take opposite positions: a woman's right to chose to have an abortion. Although Al has stated that he personally opposes abortion, his position is that it should not be outlawed by the federal government. Furthermore, while he was in the US Senate, Gore co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act, which sought to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law so states couldn't limit the rights Roe v. Wade provides. W's position, on the other hand, is pro life except in cases of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is at risk. Even George's own mother, Barbara, doesn't agree with him on this issue, although now that she's stumping for him, she refuses to discuss it. (Come to think of it, her son doesn't say much about abortion either, if he doesn't have to.) Pro-choice isn't necessarily pro-abortion I doubt that, statistically, there are many of them, but irresponsible and ignorant women who terminate pregnancies rather than prevent them are an embarrassment to the pro-choice movement. Few pro-choicers say that they think abortion is a Good Thing, or the best possible solution to an unpleasant situation, especially with contraceptives so readily available. They do believe, however, that for some issues, there should be a difference between what might be stupid and possibly sinful (whatever that means) and what the law should allow. There is a big difference between saying smoking cigarettes is harmful and stupid, and saying cigarettes should be illegal (unless it's a marijuana cigarette, for some reason that escapes me at the moment). Only in a theocracy is the Word of Allah / Jehovah / [insert name of deity here] the same as national law. The United States was not designed to be a theocracy. However, for the sake of understanding, suppose for a moment (if you are pro-choice) that the pro-lifers are correct in their belief that terminating a pregnancy by the expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive on its own is precisely the same thing as murder. If this were true, then abortion wouldn't just be a possibly-unwise personal choice resulting from carelessness, and a personal decision to be made between a woman and her physician. Murder is illegal everwhere. (If you don't think abortion=murder, you should at least understand what the pro-lifers are all passionately concerned about.) [Parenthetically... A semi-effective method of protesting gall-bladder surgery Like most of you, I have seen the signs and posters of aborted fetuses that the pro-life people crank out by the thousands. I am unimpressed by that particular argument because it is not an argument at all. Displaying images of broken fetuses is an attempt to appeal to people's emotions, mostly by just grossing them out. I have often wondered what kind of reactions I would get if I set up a booth at the county fair next to the pro-life booth with enlarged pictures of gall bladder operations, tonsillectomies and Halsted radical mastectomies, etc. to decry surgical operations, since they violate the sanctity of the human body, or some such verbiage. Also parenthetically, if every pro-life family adopted at least one child, they would be a hell of a lot more convincing. Another consequence might be fewer abortions, if all women in an unfortunate position knew for certain that their offspring would end up in a loving home, rather than an institution. To the same degree that I respect all people with sincere, consistant moral beliefs, I have little respect for insincere anti-abortionists. I know a lot of people on both sides of the issue, but I only know one pro-life couple who have adopted children -- two of them. I would walk in front of a truck to preserve that couple's right to have an opinion I can understand, but with which I cannot fully agree. They live their words.] Pro-life movement and religion The American pro-life movement is mostly made up of Christians, with a few other religionists. To most of them, it is a religious issue to believe that causing a fetus to abort is the moral equivalent of killing a baby after birth, and the same as killing you or me. Militant elements of the pro-life movement have attempted to slow down this 'mass murder' by vigilante action, i.e., executing abortionists for their sins. (So the pro-life movement also has its version of an embarrassing element.) However, many pro-choice Americans are also Christians. It would appear that anti-abortion beliefs aren't necessarily based on Christian or other religious belief systems. It would be handy for religious anti-abortionists if their own Scriptures included some mention of unnatural abortion (as opposed to a non-induced miscarriage), and its consequences. Actually, there might be something about that... Legal standing of a fetus in Scripture Women have been using herbal abortifacients for thousands of years. However, if we assume for the sake of this discussion that the Law of Moses was given to him by God, Jehovah never issued an official statement about terminating a pregnancy along the lines of "Thou shalt not...". (Maybe He just didn't realize what women kept putting in their tea when they didn't want to be pregnant!) However, there is one passage in Judeo-Christian Scripture that sheds some light on the legal standing of a fetus from Jehovah's point of view. 22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. -- Exodus 21, King James Version of the Bible Now, I'm no Bible scholar, i.e., I haven't had the alleged benefit of someone telling me what to think about what I can read for myself, but my reading comprehension really is quite good. According to what Jews and Christians consider to be God's law -- the same law which includes Ten Commandments which some fundamentalists would like to post in every child's classroom -- if a man accidently caused the death of a woman (the 'mischief'), the miscreant paid for it with his life. But if he caused the death of a fetus (a woman's 'fruit'), he paid for it with money. According to "God's law", a fetus does not have the same legal standing as does a woman. It is property. Eye for eye and wound for wound, but only a fine for the loss of a fetus. If the Law of Moses provided a fetus the same rights as its mother, the penalty for causing its death would be death. From a pro-life viewpoint There are various opinions about the details, but the majority pro-life position seems to be similar to how George W. Bush's web site defines it: "...with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother." Considering them in reverse order, the 'life of the mother' clause seems reasonable. There are times during battles, natural disasters and in maternity wards, when somebody must make the heart-rending decision of whose life is going to be traded for another. Sometimes there just isn't room for everybody in the lifeboat. To terminate a pregnancy so it doesn't kill the mother could be called an act of self defense. But how about the exception for incest? Especially (but not necessarily) if the potential mother was not a willing participant in the incestuous relationship that caused the pregnancy -- or was underage, which is the same thing -- I can see that this exception might be reasonable. Human stock that breeds too close to the family tree often results in characteristics that are less than desirable, such as birth defects. This would have a detrimental effect on a child's quality of life. From a genetic standpoint, a pro-life position may need to take more than one generation into consideration. However, if it would be preferable (or at least permissable) to terminate a human pregnancy because the parents are too closely related, would it also be OK to terminate a child already born for the same reason, maybe upon finding birth defects that weren't detected while it was in the womb? If terminating a birthed child for birth defects would be considered murder, but terminating it while still in the womb is not, then there is a difference between a fetus and a baby. This is what pro-choice people have been saying all along. The 'rape' clause makes the least amount of sense to me. I do not doubt that when a rape victim turns up pregnant, it intensifies the violation to an inestimable degree. But if a fetus equals a birthed baby and the same protections should apply to both, why would it be permissable to murder a baby for the sins of its father? Since a fetus is blameless, we can't say it is being aborted as punishment. If a birthed baby and a fetus do not have the same moral protections , than -- once again -- there is a difference between a fetus and a baby, just as the pro-choicers insist. The point of all this ...is not to try to convince readers that abortion is or is not murder. Both opinions are each held by good, respectable, sincere folks. Their differences may be as much a matter of priorities as anything else. My point is that if you believe that abortion is murder, and believe that murder is wrong, you would be inconsistent (and -- some would say -- heartless) to make any exceptions at all outside of self defense. If you allow for other exceptions because the child might be at a severe disadvantage (because of incest), or because the woman shouldn't be and doesn't want to be pregnant (because of rape), than you are already halfway to being pro-choice. Few women make the decision to undergo an abortion lightly. Both pro-lifers and pro-choicers believe that pregnancy is a delicate business between a woman, a man (if he's available) and her doctor. With these exceptions to the pro-life position, its only substantial difference from the pro-choice position seems to be whether the government -- with its gun-toting police, judges and jails -- should be allowed to have veto power over the whole delicate process.