Abortion has again taken center stage in American politics. It is a central focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, something her surrogates bring up at every opportunity.
Arguments in favor of liberal abortion laws have remained remarkably stable over time, centered on the rights of the mother rather than the humanity of her child.
To acknowledge an unborn baby is a person is a difficult admission for abortion advocates to make. To do so means they must argue a woman has the right to end the life of another human being, who in this case happens to be her own child. Ethically, that’s a tough argument to make.
So instead, advocates cloak abortion in high-sounding phrases like “women’s health care” and “reproductive rights.”
They talk about terminating a pregnancy, not a child, and refer to the unborn baby as a “fetus,” something that is not a separate person, but merely a part of the mother, effectively dehumanizing the child so ending its life is easier to defend from a moral perspective.
Abortion is said to be nothing more than a medical procedure, something akin to removing an unwanted growth, like a tumor. But tumors don’t feel pain, they don’t react to light and sound and they don’t have a beating heart.
The hard reality is, with each abortion, a baby is killed, which is true no matter what language is used to obfuscate that fact.
Even prominent pro-abortion Democrats seem to know this to be true.
When asked his thoughts on learning of the now-infamous leaked legal draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden responded, “The idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard.”
Whoopi Goldberg, arguing passionately on The View in support of a woman’s right to an abortion, said, “But you won’t let me make my decision about my body. You are not the person to make that decision. My doctor and myself and my child, that’s who makes the decision.”
I’m not sure what input the child has regarding that decision, but be that as it may.
You might not like their position on abortion, but I commend both Biden and Goldberg for their honesty.
If society is going to condone abortion as a woman’s right, we should at least do so with our eyes open, honestly defining what exactly it is we are allowing, rather than framing the issue in ways that attempt to deflect the public’s attention away from what actually takes place when a woman has an abortion.
We hear chants of “My body, my choice,” but an unborn baby has a body, too. What the baby doesn’t have is a choice.
Democrats have proudly become the party of unfettered abortion, the party that favors giving a woman the right to end the life of her unborn child anytime she pleases. Ten weeks. Fifteen weeks. Forty weeks. It doesn’t matter.
But no matter how proud they may be, Democrats are still careful to avoid mentioning anything about the procedure itself, choosing instead to stick with the poll-tested euphemisms commonly employed when talking about the issue.
Ultimately Americans are going to have to decide. Do we want to live in a society that is ambivalent toward the practice of sacrificing one life to benefit another?
In what other area of life is it acceptable to resolve a problem involving two individuals by killing one of them?
With each pregnancy, we have a responsibility to respect and protect both mother and child. Denying the humanity of either is not morally ambiguous. It’s wrong.
But so is standing on the sidelines and casting dispersions against women who find themselves in desperate circumstances, which is no more compassionate than extinguishing the life of a child whose existence can no longer be denied.
Chris Roemer resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at chrisroemer1960@gmail.com.
