ABORTION: To Be or Not To Be

I fine it interesting how things become political which have no reason to be political.  Shouldn’t climate change be a scientific issue, and minimum wage the parlance of the economist?  I feel the same way about abortion.

I have no ducks in this tub; what I am putting forth is an intellectual exercise. This is definitely a discussion we must have as a society because we, in the US, perform approximately 1,300,000 abortions each year. Are those 1.3 million murders, or 1.3 million medical procedures?

If you’re a pro abortion Liberal, I’m going to ask you to suspend that belief and put yourself in the place of some one who passionately believes human life begins at conception. Then any abortion is infanticide. I’m sure you would do what ever you could do to prevent the murder of the most vulnerable of children.

If you are a pro life Conservative, I would also ask you to suspend that belief. If human life does not exist until it is viable outside of the womb, then an abortion performed before that time would be merely a medical procedure, no more worth discussing than a buttocks enhancement.

Now the problem: Science really can’t, at least to both side’s satisfaction, answer the complex question, “When does life start?” Is a “potential” life, a life? Does a fetus have to be able to clog dance for it to be life?  I sure don’t know the answer to when the fetus is “alive” and I’m not sure anyone really does, and yet we sure put a lot of effort into defending our positions, as tenuous as they may be.

As with most things in our lives, we tend to politicize everything we can get our mind around. Liberals generally go with the several weeks’ belief and Conservatives generally go with the belief that it’s a baby before the potential mom and dad have had time to take a shower.

Like so many things in politics, there is a dichotomy here. Liberals as a rule believe in pro choice (abortion), but do not believe in capital punishment.  They are OK with terminating a fetus, but not terminating a convicted murderer.

Conservatives normally believe in pro life (no abortion) but do believe in capital punishment. They are not OK with terminating a fetus, but are OK with terminating a convicted murderer.

Since we are not 100% sure when a life is a life, or if a convicted murderer is really guilty, and neither side wants to kill an innocent baby or innocent convict, what do we do? If society terminates a fetus or a convicted murderer, we stand a chance of being wrong, which puts both the left and right in a box. Maybe no one, no fetus nor convicted murderer, should die “unnaturally” That would put us in a pro-life, anti-capital punishment society. Pardon the pun, but could we all live with that?

If we easily terminated fetuses and easily hung murderers from the nearest oak, we would then be a society of pro-choice, pro-capital punishment folks. Would that be something you would just die for? (Again that pun thing.)

Since I’m out on a limb already, let me scoot out a bit further. What I’m about to say is extremely general. I’m doing it to make a point, so please stick with me. (The “delete” key will always be there.) Here I go. I believe there are two kinds of abortions: those of necessity and those of convenience.  Necessity would be loosely defined as the potential death of the mother, rape, incest, etc.  Abortions of convenience would be a one night hook up followed by “I love my body too much to be pregnant.” Left and right always tend to focus on one or the other. Left sees abortions as primarily those of necessity, the right, those of convenience.

So, when the two sides “discuss” abortion, the left sees the poor woman who faces death or a life of severe emotional pain, and the right sees someone who, wrapped up in her own pleasure, snuffs out a potential life because she doesn’t want stretch marks and refuses to take responsibility for her own actions. (“I certainly supported a woman's right to choose, but to my mind the time to choose was before, not after the fact.” 
― Ann B. Ross, Miss Julia Throws a Wedding) Do both the necessity and convenience  conditions exist? Of course. Is the federal government up close and personal enough to tell the difference? Of course not.

If I were King, the government, federal or state, would have no part in abortion. Abortion, from the government standpoint, would be treated as any other medical procedure. From a religious point of view the acceptance of abortion would be between the couple, their doctor and their religion. A person could choose, or not, to buy an insurance policy that paid for abortions and if she chose to have an abortion, she could (woman’s right to choose). What is happening now is that people who believe abortion is child killing are made by the federal government to pay for it.  Obamacare’s one size fits all just makes that whole complicated mess worse.

Any time a Republican expresses uneasiness with abortion, either because he or she is very uncertain about what’s being killed, or can’t reconcile our constitution with the government’s involvement in procreation, the “war against women” signs pop up.  I believe we ought to be waging wars, but the wars we ought to be waging are wars against ignorance, (a quest for scientific knowledge regarding the beginning of life), a war to establish and market alternatives to abortions, if desired, like the establishment of adoption centers. Above all we should all, men and women, pick up metaphorical pitch forks and torches against the government insatiable quest for control and power over every aspect of our lives.