Abortion & The Law

   There are mediating factors between abortion and the law.  The two primary ones are morality and science.  Semantics tend to get involved too.  Some might call the termination of a pregnancy a murder.  I wouldn’t strenuously object to the use of the term.  It is the willful termination of a human life.  I hate to admit it, but the Catholics got it right on this one.  “Life begins at the time of conception.”  The embryo is certainly alive and is it not the first stage of a human individual?   Put out enough religion based moral decrees and sooner or later you are bound to get one right.

   The embryo, fetus, unborn child, baby are all the same critter.  They are stages of development.  The same is true of the twenty year old water skier and the eighty year old in assisted living.  It is the same human in a different stage of life’s journey.  And how is it different to end this human life at 13 weeks than it is at 25weeks?  The mother and her doctor are deciding to end a human life in either case.  An embryo is not a chicken or a lizard.  The acorn is part of the life story of the mighty oak.  Same critter, at a different stage in its development.

   Fetal viability is an odd concept to be used in laws governing abortion rights.  For one thing, ending a life at 19 weeks isn’t a whole lot different than ending one at 20 weeks.  For another what does viability refer to?  A baby born in a well-equipped hospital can be born premature, in the last trimester and still have a good chance of survival.  Not so good for a baby born at home and delivered by a mid-wife.   I believe that this early birth technology will be developed to a point where an embryo can be on high-tech life support through gestation.  What will that do to the definition of “fetal viability”?

   When the pro-abortion women claim something like, “My body.  My choice.”  I believe they are somewhat incorrect.  They are housing and feeding another human being.  That is who they claim the decision of life or death over.  Perhaps they have that right.  Not because it is their body, but because it is their possession and they have the right to end its life.  A woman surely has a better right to kill her unborn than a man has to fly half way around the world to kill a stranger, afforded by his membership in the military.  I would guess that the best captain to guide a moral rudder would be the half-bred child of The Golden Rule and reason.

   So, to me, the best three guiding factors for considering an abortion would be:  is the child wanted, is the child the result of a rape and what are the pending health ramifications for the mother and the child in child birth?  There needs to be the nationally legal, over the counter availability of a cheap “morning after” pill.  This pill would result in the least guilt for the woman and the least pain for an unlikely embryo.  On the morning after, there would be very little embryo awareness even if there were an embryo.  Possibly less awareness of pain than grass has when you mow your lawn.

Merry Christmas, Old Buz       12/03/2021      

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