Some Thoughts on Abortion (In Reference to My June 11th Post)
I know I haven’t posted anything in a while, but a recent comment on my last post (Which was a while ago) prompted me to respond. I started writing it as a response comment, but decided move it over and just create a whole new post.
I appreciate the people who have taken the time to post your perspectives. In reference to the last comment (At this point in time anyway) I definitely agree that women are not ‘baby-making factories’ and should not treat themselves as such (And unfortunately putting our money into policies and programs isn’t solving much of anything in many cases, let alone abortion-the root issues are whole lot deeper…but maybe that’s another post =D).
Here’s the thing for me. There seems to be a huge blind-spot in our society (North America) regarding the issue of abortion, which special interest groups have been looking to cultivate through media and a myriad of other avenues for quite some time now. The blind-spot or deception says this: A baby human being is not really a baby human being, until it has left the confines of his/her mother’s womb.
I was watching a great movie the other day, called “Amazing Grace”. It is a dvd you should be able to pick-up at any block-buster (or Rogers Video as well if you live in Canada). The movie is based on the true story of a young politician who lived in the late 18th and early 19th century, who gave his life see the abolishment of the slave-trade in the English Empire.
The deception I saw surrounding many 17th and 18th century white anglo-saxons, regarding the obvious equality and humanity of the black race reminded me of the deception I see today.
Why do some only call a child-in-the-womb “my baby” if they want the child, but if they don’t want the child, all of sudden they describe him/her as “the fetus”?
Life begins at conception, therefore from that point forward there is a responsibility on the man and the woman to serve and protect that life-that child, as any good parent does.
What gets me is the hypocrisy of my society (Canada) in regards to partial-birth abortion (Which by the way, is one of the first things Obamahas promised to institute, if he is elected). Partial-birth abortion allows a baby to be killed in the womb right into the 9th month of pregnancy!! It is not a typo! You read that correctly!!
Cassandra somewhere between 1 and 2 years old.
Now consider this…I have an adopted baby-sister right now(She is just about to turn 4 years old now). She was born pre-mature at the age of 6 months, at which point her twin died; but with the doctors and child-services going the extra mile and a strong will to live, Cassandra is now a healthy growing little girl.
The astounding and horrific thought is that, while surgeons and nurses were working over-time in hopes of saving her sickly and fragile little life, in the very next room over there may have been a strong and healthy 6 month old baby (or older), being brutally murdered (I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I have to call a spade a spade). Does that make any sense at all??
I mean, it is absolutely rediculousto me, that a baby has virtually no human-rights at all (at least in Canada), up until they exit the birthcanal, at which point they “become human”. Literally, you could be in your eighthor ninth monthof pregnancy and decide to set up an appointment for an abortion. On the way to the appointment your water breaks and you go into labor. You can’t get to the abortion clinic quick enough, so the baby is born. You still don’t want the child so you stop the car and go find a trash can. You are caught in the act, and tomorrow your face is on the front page of every newspaper in the country as the most heartless, irresponsible, selfish person of the year-possibly the decade!! You walk down the street and people look at you with disdain and disgust, like you’re a monster!
…WAIT A MINUTE!!! Do you see what I see?? Isn’t that lady, the same lady who was just on her way to dispose of the child anyways?? So what’s the difference?? The difference a little word called deception.
The other thing I don’t get, is when people bring up all these exceptional-case situations, as if they are the norm, like ”What if you find out the child is seriously handi-capped”, or “What if the mother doesn’t have means by which to care for the child?”, or “What if the child is a product of rape?” These are great questions, but for many people even by asking these questions they have revealed that they are often walking under the same deception that I have been talking about.
What do I mean?
While, let’s change the circumstances and see which questions would still be considered socially acceptable questions. The child is no longer in the womb, but was actually 3 day-old new-born, born 3 months pre-mature. Now which of those questions is a socially acceptable question when we are talking about new-born baby?
I understand there are some people reading who have had or been involved in having an abortion. Please understand, my heart is not to be judgemental towards you, but my harshness is more towards the issues that exist in our society, especially the mass-deception that has been often preciprocated by our government, health system, and various forms of media. I personally know people who have had abortions, so please hear my heart. I am by no way trying to minimalize the pressure and life-changing implications of raising and providing for a child, I am just saying that abortion should be considered no more of an option than the mother who leaves her baby in the dumpster, in the cold stairwell in the middle of the winter.
So what is the solution? I humbly suggest adoption. There are thousands of couples who dream of raising a family, but do not have the ability to produce children. If you find yourself in a situation where you are not able to take care of the child that is on the way, bless them with the opportunity to live out their God-given destiny. Bless a heart-broken couple with the opportunity have a family. Why not?
(In my next post I will actually be sharing a video with statistics showing that the babies are not the only victims of an abortion…)
Sincerely,
Joel D. Witton
Joel, you’re mistaken on a number of important issues here that have nothing to do with your beliefs per se (which I of course respect).
!) Comparing the the attitudes of white colonialists towards blacks and attitudes toward the position of the unborn fetus is erroneous. The fact that a fetus delivered before 20 weeks is not viable outside the womb, and those born between 20 and 34 weeks not viable without extensive medical support not available to 95% of the world’s population renders this comparison untenable. A black child is every bit as viable and biologically capable of achievement in any human endeavour as a white child born in identical conditions.
2) While there is no Canadian law that expressly prohibits abortion beyond a certain phase of gestation, less than one percent of Canadian abortions in 2003 were performed after the 20th week. In fact, it would be exceedingly difficult to find any physician to do the procedure in Ontario anywhere close to 20 weeks unless the mother’s health was imminently in danger. I am willing to bet that given my profession I know far, far more obstetricians than most people and I can’t think of any that would consider performing an abortion that stages you mention in your post if the mother’s health was not in immediate danger, or the fetus was not viable. There are unfortunately numerous conditions that could kill a mother without treatment that involves the expedient delivery of the fetus, and there are conditions affecting the fetus that can result in death in utero, shortly after birth or within a well established timeline. These are often only discovered at the 18 week anatomical ultrasound or at the time of second trimester screening. Even then, almost every imaginable step is taken to protect mom and baby late in pregnancy, including suggesting bed rest, administering steroids to speed the development if immature lungs, emergency C-sections if needed etc. There is more to this issue than the women who (unfortunately) use the procedure as a means of after-the-fact birth control for no other reason than that they do not want a baby. Also, unfortunately, many anti-abortion persons frame their arguments exclusively in that context. At the end of the day, the mother is a living, breathing individual who by definition has been viable for a number of years, and a fetus cannot survive outside the womb independent of aggressive medical intervention until at least half-way through the 8th month. That cannot be ignored in a discussion of comparative rights, and a woman’s right to have a say in what happens to her body must be respected particularly given the real risks associated with childbirth, which is not a benign process. 500 000 women die per year of complications associated with childbirth, 5-7.5 million suffer permanent serious dysfunction requiring ongoing care, and even in Canada between 1991 and 2001 over 11000 women had at least one incident that could be labelled as “severe maternal morbidity” including death.
Essentially, your post framing the debate as one in which mothers exclusively make a conscious decision to murder their children who could otherwise be happily given up for adoption into happy homes is disingenuous, (willfully?) conveys an ignorance of the realities of the provision of abortions in this country and of reproductive physiology (understandable, you are not a physician) and does not contribute to honest debate on this subject. Your statement that ” abortion should be considered no more of an option than the mother who leaves her baby in the dumpster, in the cold stairwell in the middle of the winter” is nothing short of callous. As your post was restricted to “partial birth abortions” I will restrict my comments to this topic.
You also fail to acknowledge the interesting paradox that while there are “thousands of couples who dream of raising a family” there are even more children awaiting adoption, or bouncing around the foster system, while thousands of people pay thousands of dollars for IVF treatments. If there were thousands and thousands of waiting families, there shouldn’t be any orphanages or children in temporary foster situations.
Thanks for starting this Joel, I appreciate a open debate on this subject!
I have to say though, that the viable/not viable argument isn’t a strong enough one for me. Consider someone who has been in a car accident – without assistance from other humans (blood transfusions, CPR, surgery, etc) and medical equipment they would die. They are, at this point, not viable on their own. But they are still human.
Newborns are not “viable” either, they need constant care to survive. But they are fully protected by the law.
And I think that’s what it boils down to – if an unborn child is human (and I don’t see how that can be debated), then its life is valuable and it should be entitled to human rights, regardless of its state of development or viability.
Every person, if they go back far enough, was an embryo, a zygote, a fetus, and then a newborn. We can’t say that we were one species, and then suddenly became another at birth. If we do that, we need to break everything down into separate species “newborns” “toddlers” “children” “teenagers” “adults” etc, which right now are stages of development under the banner of personhood, and not separate entities.
We also cannot say that one person is more “fully” human than another, as that does not make any sense, and is what I think Joel was getting at with discrimination – if one segment of the human race is considered “superior” in any way to another, atrocities happen. If a person falls under the human species, then they are equal with all other humans, regardless of their development, age, race, sex, etc. The fact that we have chosen to ignore a part of development that every single person has gone through in order to grant more rights to women, is tragic, as all women were once fetus’ and in fact many women are never born because of sex selection abortion.
I think the debate needs to stop being about women’s rights. It is pitting a person against a person, and the way we have solved it is to take personhood away from one party. I have to give up many “choices” and even rights in order to function in a society where all persons are considered equal, but I don’t even notice it unless I start thinking about it, because we have made it a part of our culture and mindset. Really, 9 months is not a long time in the span of a life time to share your rights with someone else.
And in the very small percentage of cases where abortion is performed to save the life of the mother, there are other surgical ways to remove a fetus without destroying it with complete lack of regard for its dignity and value then ripping it to pieces and vacuuming it out, or stabbing its brain with surgical scissors.
Anyways, those are my two cents! I’m looking forward to adopting.