Eight week fetus(? or embryo?)
For four years I was a hardcore anti-abortion activist.
There. Said it. Now you know.
President of Cornell (University) Coalition for Life for 3 years. March for Life? Been there done that got separated from my group and searched the city for hours until I found them again. Articles. Debates. Meetings.I still have a cassette of anti-abortion songs and speeches by Randall Terry in my garage.
Once I hit graduate school I pulled out. My views on the issue did not change so much as I was sick of it and became convinced that spiritual transformation was more important than politics. Also realized I had been zealous and self-righteous and often obnoxious about the issue. Friendships were poisoned because of differing convictions. You can be right in all the wrong ways.
So please understand I am no longer actively against (elective) abortion. One thing I do still care about is how people think. And I see a lot of truly dreadful arguments and rhetoric in defense of abortion rights. Part of me wants to say to (most) people who favor elective abortion, “You may be correct and perhaps abortion at any stage of pregnancy should not be restricted. But your arguments stink. Big time”.
Please keep that in mind as I refer to a remarkable piece by Gary Graham at Big Hollywood. The whole piece is well worth reading – from a man who used to be strongly “pro-choice”* and has paid for at least a few abortions that he knows of. This is the part that got my attention because it has always struck me as a self-contradictory refrain one often hears after someone says “I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice“.*
I’ve heard from liberals the following quote: “We want abortion to be legal…but rare.” And I ask, Why rare? What’s wrong with abortion, that you think it should be a rare occurrence? I’ve had moles removed from my skin. Doctors don’t tell us that a mole removal should be rare. So what’s with this ‘rare’ business? Or is it a tacit agreement that abortion…is plain wrong?
Read the whole thing here. You do not have to register.
If abortion is not the unjust destruction of a preborn human being then who cares whether it is rare or common?
Let me add this one while we are at it.
Why would anyone want to be against elective abortion? Life would be so much easier and less complicated. Bad time to have a child? (*cough still in seminary and three of us scraping by on about $20K per year? cough*) Abort it. Severe defects/abnormalities? Abort it. Product of a terrible and abusive relationship? Abort it. Human-Cylon hybrid? Abort it. And no I am not being flippant or sarcastic. I am being completely serious. (Except for the human-Cylon bit.) I think any normal rational human being would want abortion to be a good thing or at the very least ethically-morally neutral and certainly legally available. It is not in anyone’s self-interest to be against elective abortion. (Read that last sentence again. Thanks.)
The only reason to be against elective abortion is if there are compelling *compelling* reasons why it is morally-ethically problematic. Why it might be the unjust destruction of a preborn human being.
And if it is not that… then why does it need to be “legal but rare / rare but legal”? Just do it. No regrets.
*Postscript: Notice the language I use. I try to avoid “pro-life/pro-choice” because neither label is fair or accurate. (Are people who favor legal abortion by implication “anti-life”? Really? They favor genocide and mass executions? Are people against abortion by implication “anti-choice”? Really? They think no woman has the right to choose Diet over regular Coke? Whether to wear pants or a skirt?) If I use them I use them in quotation marks only because they are sometimes the prefered terminology. (In other words – I think the expression is inaccurate but if you like it I will sometimes use it to keep you happy. But not without quotes.) Several years ago someone came up with more descriptive neutral language: “abortion opponents” and “abortion rights advocates”. Clumsy but both accurate and fair.
UPDATE 02/03/2009: Just figured out that Gary Graham is the actor who played Vulcan Ambassador Soval on “Star Trek: Enterprise”. (Hard to tell from the photograph.) Dang!
