Let's Get Serious: The Big Issues About Abortion

One of the biggest issues in our country is the morality and legality of abortion. The pro-choicers and pro-lifers are sharply divided, to the point that I've seen friendships ended over arguments about abortion. And there is no middle ground - if you are pro-choice, you're pro-choice all the way, and if you're pro-life, you have to be against abortion for any reason. If you're liberal, you have to be pro-choice, and if you're not, then you're labeled as conservative. But it's not that simple. Abortion should be removed from political discussions... it's not about politics, it's about people.

People tend to get fired up about these issues to the point that they refuse to hear the other side of the argument, or worse yet, are unable to put together a coherent and logical response when asked the tough questions. I hope that I can address some of the common questions here, and I hope that the points I bring up will give you some food for thought.

So we understand each other: the terminology of abortion
Before we get started, let's clear up something about the terminology, and get all the stereotypes out of the way. I am pro-life. I choose to call myself pro-life rather than anti-abortion. No, that doesn't mean that I think pro-choicers are anti-life - I'm not that naive. They support a woman's right of choice; I support a baby's right to life. Simple as that. And my being pro-life doesn't somehow imply that I'm anti-women's rights. I am a woman, I'm all about women's rights -- I just also happen to support the rights of the unborn. I refuse to place the rights of the woman above the rights of her unborn child. It also doesn't mean I'm some crazy right-wing conservative, or that I think "a woman's place is in the home raising her family." I think that line is a load of crap... a woman's place is wherever she wants to be, whether that is at home or in the office. And also, just because I'm pro-life does NOT mean that I hate people who are pro-choice, or that I think badly about women who have had abortions. I can't judge these women based on one action. I can, however, have opinions on the morality of the act itself.

Is the fetus a life?
Now that we understand each other, let's move on to the reasoning portion of this article. I am a Christian, but honestly, that has nothing to do with why I'm pro-life. I'm not uneducated, I know how to think. There was a time when I was pro-choice all the way, until I thought about it more thoroughly. After much reflection and research and internal struggle, it just seems absurd to say that a woman has rights, but a fetus doesn't. Yeah, ok, so a fetus can't vote, can't drive, can't even sustain life on its own outside its mother's body, but it's still a life, and all life has rights.

So you say, but a fetus isn't a person, it's not really alive. According to whom? About a hundred years or so ago, black American slaves weren't considered to be people either. If you killed your own slave, no big deal, you just probably can't run your farm as well, and if you killed somebody else's, no big deal, just give him the couple hundred bucks that the slave was "worth" and we'll call it even. Sounds barbaric, doesn't it? Sounds absurd, doesn't it? Of course we know that black people are people, so we think that reasoning is pretty stupid... so now tell me how that is different from somebody saying that a fetus isn't a person. When exactly does a fetus become human? Second trimester? Third? After he passes through the birth canal? Or is it sometime later, like when he learns to talk, or brush his teeth, or go in the potty? How can you determine exactly when this little being suddenly qualifies as a "person"? If a baby is born at 28 weeks gestation and his eye sockets aren't even formed yet, is he less of a person because he wasn't carried to term? Should we give up on him, not even try to save his life, because he's not yet fully developed and as such doesn't count as a "life"? And if a fetus isn't a person until he is actually born, why are late-term abortions illegal everywhere? Who decided that it was ok to abort a little bitty fetus, but not a bigger one? Where's the reasoning?

I was talking about this with some friends a while back, and one of them said something that I've heard from pro-choicers countless times: "As much as I detest the practice, I too am not anti-abortion. As an American I must support the right of choice even if I want to stand on the highest mountain screaming at the top of my lungs against it." Just a moment before this, he had called abortion "murder." I have to say, this is a load of crap. I highly doubt that anybody thinks it's ok for someone to murder another adult, and I doubt that even the staunchest pro-choicers would actively support a mother's "right to choose" to murder her 3-year-old, or even her newborn, because she isn't ready to be a mother. So why is it ok to condone the murder of her unborn baby?

I also know of many pro-choicers who have had babies themselves, so I ask them if they stayed away from alcohol and drugs while they were pregnant. They of course say yes. I ask them how they feel about women who do continue to use drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. They invariably say it's irresponsible, because it's damaging to the health of the child. Now, I personally can't think of any one thing that is more damaging to the health of the unborn than an abortion. A crack baby has problems, to be sure, and his mother should be imprisoned for doing such a terrible thing to her defenseless baby, but at least he has a shot at some kind of a life. An aborted baby has no chance. So you say, "But a life of pain is no life at all, so the baby is better off not living." That's a lot of bull. The baby can't make that choice... who are we to decide for another person that life just isn't worth it for him? Who are we to determine whether or not this little baby could end up having a wonderful life, full of joy? What if that's the next Martin Luther King, Jr. you're aborting? How do you know? There are countless examples of disabled children and even just plain unwanted children who go on to do great things with their lives. They end up being happy, healthy adults, and I doubt that they say, "Man, my childhood sucked... I wish I had been aborted." Don't believe me? Read A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer. Ultimate example of the unwanted child. Mentally and physically abused, tortured, malnourished, even stabbed by his own mother and then denied medical treatment. And now he's a child advocate, and he has a beautiful family of his own. His case helped turn child safety laws on their head and forced people to really look at the way children are treated. He's just one example; I can find you more if you're still not convinced.

The rights and responsibilities of the woman
But wait, the mother shouldn't have to go through a pregnancy and childbirth if she doesn't want to, because after all, it's her body, right? YES! It is her body. And she should know how to take care of it. If you don't want to get pregnant, and you don't want to get an STD, maybe you should be on the pill and using condoms to protect yourself. Or -- and here's a novel idea -- maybe you have sex with people that you're not seriously dating. Have crazy rabbit sex before marriage. Have multiple partners. That's fine. But for the love of all things good and pure, at least have the self-respect to know your partner, and to protect yourself.

Envision this: woman meets a dude in a bar... he's really hot. He thinks she's hot too. They go to the hotel and have sex... no condom, because she doesn't have any in her purse and there's just no time to go to the drug store. She doesn't even know his name. Three weeks later, she finds out she's pregnant. She doesn't want to be pregnant, so she goes to the clinic, and has an abortion. End of story. Nice. Neat. But... change one little thing about that story, and suddenly it's not so neat: woman meets a dude in a bar... he's really hot. He thinks she's hot too. They go to the hotel and have sex... no condom, because she doesn't have any in her purse and there's just no time to go to the drug store. She doesn't even know his name. Three weeks later, she finds out she has HIV. She doesn't want to have HIV and later get AIDS, so she goes to the clinic... where they tell her there's nothing they can do, so she just has to try to deal with it the best she can with medication and hope that her life is prolonged. Not so neat, is it? So that poor woman didn't want a baby, and she didn't want HIV. All she had to do to prevent both was either to have a condom (and refuse to have sex without one) or NOT have sex with a stranger. Am I comparing a baby to HIV? Absolutely not. AIDS is a terrible disease, and I don't wish it on my worst enemy. I do have immense sympathy for anyone who gets HIV, just as I have immense sympathy for someone who gets pregnant when she doesn't want a baby. But what I'm saying is, there are some mistakes that can't be undone. If you don't want these things to happen to you, then you need to have the foresight to take measures to protect yourself. Maybe that sounds harsh, but that's what I'm going to teach my daughter, because I don't want to lose her to a terrible disease or watch her have a rough life because she got knocked up by some dude she met at a bar. I love her enough to want her to protect herself from these things. Why don't women love themselves enough to use protection?

Alternatives to (and prevention of) abortion
Another friend of mine pointed out that there are women out there who would be ill-advised to take hormonal contraception because of various health issues. I'd like to take this one step further and add that hormonal birth control is not really very good for anybody, especially young girls. Those well-meaning parents who put their daughters on birth control as soon as the first period comes around are doing their girls a disservice... pumping a developing body full of synthetic hormones is bad news. Google "hormonal contraception risks" and see for yourself.

Anyway, I absolutely don't believe that any woman (or any man, for that matter) should have to pump their bodies full of hormones in order to keep from getting pregnant. That, too, is a choice, and the risks and benefits should be weighed carefully before a decision is made. However, if a woman cannot or chooses not to use hormonal contraception, then she has to make another choice: a) practice safer sex using other methods, such as condoms/diaphragms, spermicides, etc., or b) not have sex. If a woman doesn't want to get pregnant, these are her two options. And yes, condoms can break, and yes, even hormonal birth control can fail, but if you choose to have sex before you're ready to deal with the eventual outcome of and natural reason for sex (i.e., procreation), this is the risk you take. And if a woman chooses to have completely unprotected sex when she is fully aware of how babies are made and how disease is spread, then I don't feel that she should simply end a pregnancy just because she wasn't ready for a baby. It's not the baby's fault, and it's not the baby's choice, so why should that baby not get to live because his mother was irresponsible? There are options for a woman, she doesn't have to get pregnant if she doesn't want to - all it takes is a little foresight and responsibility.

And as to the point of some women not being able to afford birth control, I have this to say: I used to get my birth control for free at Planned Parenthood. There was a time when I had to pay $15 a pack, but that was because I had a good job at the time. Yeah, the people there weren't always very friendly, and yeah, that meant I had to go in there and fill out the papers and get examined by their doctor, but I did it because I didn't want to get pregnant. It's not a matter of pride, it's a matter of responsibility. I know that the laws vary by state, and I am told that Planned Parenthood doesn't give free birth control everywhere, but it is always at a lower rate than what you would get at your doctor's office. Besides that, if you don't want to/cannot take hormonal birth control, condoms are not expensive, and you can get them at any corner drug store or gas station. Hell, if you're a college student (or even a student at many high schools) you can get them for free at the school nurse's office. Problem solved.

You might say that I'm looking at this as a rather cut-and-dry issue. That's true, I am. Because it is. If you don't want to have a baby or get a disease, don't have sex with someone until you're ready for that responsibility. If you choose to have sex before you're ready for a baby, then there are options for you, and some are pretty darn affordable. And when you think about it, there is one point that is glaringly obvious: abortions are not covered by insurance either, and a box of condoms is a hell of a lot cheaper than an abortion, or a baby. In the old times, before condoms and hormonal contraception was invented, and before abortions were commonplace, there weren't a whole lot of babies born out of wedlock. Why? Because the culture frowned upon having sex before marriage (except with prostitutes, but I don't want to get into all of that). And why was it frowned upon? Because nobody wanted their daughters getting knocked up and/or sick from having sex with the neighbor boy. Our current culture of sex on television is pretty new in the grand scheme of things. While I don't think sex is anything to be ashamed of, I do think that we take it far too lightly these days.

Rape? Incest? The tough questions about abortion
Ok... we've come to perhaps the most serious portion of this article. Many people have asked the important and heartwrenching question: what about women who are raped? What about cases of incest? What about the young girls who were never taught about the dangers of unprotected sex? Shouldn't they be allowed to have an abortion? Should they have to put their bodies through the torture (and sometimes it is torture) of pregnancy and childbirth?

My first instinct is that they absolutely should not have to go through with the pregnancy. In these kinds of cases, there is clearly nothing the woman could have done to protect herself. She is completely at the mercy of others. Even if she were to put the child up for adoption, she has had to endure 9 months of pregnancy, and the changes to her body will likely be permanent. There will be stretch marks, her body fat will move to new areas, her breasts will probably get saggy. Pregnancy and childbirth are painful -- for a woman who feels a bond with her child, that pain is beautiful, but in a case where the child represents loathing and fear for the mother, I can imagine that it would be almost unbearable. Not to mention that even with the advances in medical science today, pregnancy and childbirth can put the health of the mother at risk; sometimes, it can risk her very life. Not to mention that the medical bills related to pregnancy can be expensive. Then you have to think about post-partum depression -- it's hard enough to deal with when you want the baby, but when you were raped and are dealing with those emotional issues already, I can't imagine going through that. That has to be one of the most traumatic experiences in the world.

Then another part of my emotions and reasoning kicks in, and I'm suddenly unsure of how I feel in these cases. While it is in no way the mother's fault that this happened to her, it's also not the baby's fault, so I wonder why the baby should have to die for someone else's crime (the rapist, not the woman here, just so we're clear). I go back and forth, because I feel that the woman shouldn't have to go through all of that because somebody else wanted to get their kicks... but then I think, she has the rest of her life to try to recover from this, but once that baby is aborted, it's all over for him or her. So again, while it's painful, I still don't feel that abortion is the best option for these women.

My concern here is not solely for the child, either. By all accounts, abortion is traumatic for the woman in nearly all cases. The woman struggles with her choice, and often becomes depressed after the procedure, wondering if she has done the right thing. This is why abortion clinics employ counselors and psychologists -- it is a hard choice, and women need help coping with their decisions when they've chosen to end that tiny life. Even in cases of rape, an abortion cannot erase the past; what's done is done, and there is no going back. This woman is most likely going to need extensive counseling to work through this horrible experience, and I worry that adding an abortion into the mix can cause even more harm to her mental well-being.

A life-changing decision, for everyone involved
As I mentioned a moment ago, there are very few women who have had abortions who will tell you that it was completely unemotional for them, that they had no problem making the choice, and that once the choice was made, it was easily forgotten. Most women who have gone through an abortion will tell you that it was hell making that decision, and that they struggled with their choice for a long time after having the procedure. It is a terrible choice to have to make, and it is one that often scars the woman emotionally. (Not all women have trouble with their choice, but not all people cry when their mother dies either. Some are just not as emotional as others.) But my point in bringing this up is this: if any decision is that hard to make, and if the choice is so hard to cope with, maybe that should tell us something about how nature feels about it. If having an abortion wasn't equal to taking another human life, then it would be much easier for the mind and the heart to cope with making the choice. Nobody cries or needs grief counseling when they have a mole removed.

And to those who don't feel that a fetus is a life, I have something for you to think about. Most people who argue that a fetus isn't a life feel this way because a fetus isn't viable on its own without its mother for "life support" so to speak. Many of these same people reason that a fetus is a "potential" life, but not yet an actual life. Ok, that makes sense. But now I ask you to envision this scenario: a woman is in a car accident that leaves her severely brain damaged. She can't eat, she can't move, she can't even breathe on her own. She's not completely brain-dead though, so there is hope for her to live. She has "potential." If someone crept into her hospital room and unplugged her without the consent of her family and hospital staff, she would die, and that would be considered murder (or at the very least, manslaughter). At the time she wasn't viable on her own, and needed life support... but there was hope that she would eventually get off the machines and live. She was a potential life. You may say it's not the same, because she's an adult who has previously been viable, self-sustaining. But that really has nothing to do with it... at the time the plug was pulled, she was not viable. At the time of the abortion, the fetus was not viable, and had a doctor not "unplugged" him, there was hope that he would eventually live on his own... more hope of life, in fact, than the woman on the life support machine. I know that if someone had pulled the plug on my aunt when she was not viable, our family would have demanded that person be punished for their crime of murder... she was completely reliant on life support for over a year (longer than a 9-month pregnancy) and is now living and breathing on her own, perfectly healthy except for the one-year hole in her memory. In the same fashion, the aborted baby would be perfectly healthy if left alone to grow and develop in the safety of his mother's womb. It's the same principle.

So what should we do about it?
I think I've said all I have to say about morality in this issue, so I want to talk briefly about the legal issues surrounding the matter. As I said before, those pro-choicers who say that abortion is murder, but they still think it should be legal because they want to keep the government out of our bodies... that's a load of bull. If you feel it's murder, then it should be just as illegal as killing your neighbor or your three-year-old child. Before anybody can say how they feel about abortion law, they first must think about whether a fetus is a life, and if it is, and you consider abortion to be murder, then logic would dictate that it should be illegal like any other murder. You cannot tout the woman's right to choose and then in the same breath call abortion "murder." A life is a life.

That being said, I don't feel that we are in a position at the moment to outlaw abortion. There aren't enough options available for women to protect themselves, and to be able to afford taking care of themselves and a baby in the event of a broken condom or a missed pill. Even those options that are available aren't well-advertised, so many women aren't even aware of their existence. There isn't enough emphasis on sex education in our schools and in our homes. There aren't strict enough penalties for rapists and child molesters, to protect our women and children from accidental pregnancy in those cases. We do make women feel as though there is no way to make it as an unwed mother, and we condemn those young women who choose to keep their babies out of wedlock. There is too much sex on television and in movies and on the radio, making kids think it's ok to hook up with random people they meet in a club, without telling these kids the dangers and risks. We do glorify sex and show our children all of the fun aspects of sex without also warning them of the dangers. We don't allow open communication about sex... we show it on television and commercials for crying out, but we don't allow them to ask questions, and we don't offer the information, because it's "uncomfortable" for us. We dangle the carrot in front of them, and then expect that they won't try to reach for it until they're grown up (and we're shocked when they do go for it at an early age). We don't help them understand the changes in their bodies and their emotions in a healthy way, yet when they turn to sex at 15, 13, even 11 years old, we ostracize them and call them sluts.

Until all of these things are changed in our society, while I still feel that abortion is worse than murder, I'm afraid that we cannot make it illegal at this point without running the risk of thousands of women dying in back-alley abortions done with a rusty coat hanger. We must educate our women, as well as our men, on the true risks of sex, if we want to eliminate the need for abortions so that we can justify making it illegal. Yes, it does need to be made illegal... but we need to first make some changes in our society so that women are fully aware of their options.