The Right to Choose? An Argument about Rights

Whatever you think about the pro-choice camp, they don't want for cleverness. The idea that abortion is a woman's right is very powerful. We are a nation of rights.  They are prominent in our founding documents.  Our hearts beat a little more quickly when we think about liberty.  The mere suggestion of abortion as a right conjures an image of battle-weary women marching behind a flag, fife, and drum. 

Embrace the fiction for a moment and suppose abortion is a woman’s right. Instead of mere cleverness and an appalling Supreme Court decision, suppose it was actually listed in the Bill of Rights along with the other freedoms that we hold dear: speech, religion, assembly, press, etc. We would be basically where we are, except we would be spared the “safe, legal and rare” mantra spewed by pro-choice politicians when giving full-throated support to abortion and a deceptive nod to life.

Of course, a corollary to this right would have to be the right to actually have the baby.  They are two sides of the same coin.  Intrinsic in these rights is the notion that the unborn baby has no rights whatsoever.  It can’t, or they might interfere with the mother’s right to abort.  Also, the unborn babies must have no inherent value.  They can’t, or the father might have grounds for an objection which might interfere with the mother’s right to abort.

Not all countries are as free as us, though.  So, maybe some of the more outspoken abortion activists should visit a clinic in China.  There they can comfort one of the mothers undergoing a forced abortion.  As she wails hysterically for the child she’ll never know, they can pat her hand and explain that it’s no big deal.  It’s not infanticide or an atrocity of some kind.  The baby had no value.  Her government is just a little more restrictive, and this is simply one of the rights she doesn’t enjoy.

~ Rob

Born Alive Infant Protection Act: Thoughts....

We’ve got a link here to “October Baby” but that’s as close as I’ve gotten to the movie.  I’d like to see it, but we do live in the UP.  For sure I’ll see it on DVD.  Don’t expect it to be screened at the White House any time soon, though.  While a state senator, these were the very lives that our president was voting to end: survivors of abortions.  Three times he opposed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois.  Read more here http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/index.html.  He’s given lots of explanations, and they’ve changed many times, but the bottom line is certainly that he wouldn’t even risk the appearance of doing something to discourage abortion.

~ Rob

The Bio Ethics of "After-Birth Abortions" aka Murder?

In late February, two bio-ethicists published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics which advocated “after birth abortion”.  This is a euphemism for an act which is more commonly known as murder.  Part of their argument was that the justification for an abortion of an unborn child could be just as valid when applied to the abortion of a newborn child.  I’d like to see this idea get spread beyond an obscure medical journal, because I agree.  In both cases the justification for the death of a child is equally valid, in other words, not at all.

Even so, I’d like to see the idea advanced because it is clearly a case of turning up the heat a little too quickly on the proverbial frog in the pot of water.  A lot of people have been swimming around as the water has gotten progressively warmer: accepting abortions, accepting later term abortions, accepting partial birth abortions to protect the mother’s life, and accepting partial birth abortions to protect the more broadly defined mother’s health.  But this is too big of a step and more people would jump to the cause of life.  

It would simplify the debate, though.  It would end the deliberate deceptions, and we could stop arguing about masses of tissue, when life begins, and viability.  There would be no reason to object to mandatory ultrasounds.  Everyone could openly agree that it’s a baby. The “choice” position would be that it doesn’t matter that it’s a baby, and the “life” position would be that that’s exactly what does matter, and a few more people would finally understand the horror of what we've been talking about.
                                               ~ Rob


image: flickr:  License Some rights reserved by Chris. P