Abortion
I watched a video on John Kerry’s campaign website that showed the senator at a “women’s rights” rally getting endorsed by various groups because he has a “pro-family-planning” voting record and would support a woman’s right to “choose.”
And it made me sick to my stomach, really. What is so sick about it is that all of these people – mostly the fairer sex – were rallying behind abortion as if it were a good thing to have around. I can acknowledge that there are arguments that abortion appears to be, from some perspectives, a better option than going through with birth, even if I don’t agree with such arguments.
But why do all these people gather around and act as if we want more people to have more abortions, as if abortions are good and wonderful and help us all live better lives. Maybe we should force everyone to have at least one abortion, so they can experience the positive results of that “right.”
Then the speakers at the rally go on quote meaningless statistics, like that 87% of counties don’t even have abortion clinics. Oh the horror! Well, did you ever stop to think that maybe 87% of counties don’t have much demand for abortions? So maybe we should use tax dollars to pay for abortion clinics to go into those 87% of counties so that even more people can be coerced into having abortions by ativist “family planners.”
I do believe that it is true that some of the sentiment that “abortion is good” among pro-choice activists is really just a knee-jerk reaction against the strong pro-life sentiment that “abortion is bad.” I also believe that if the pro-life crowd were to focus more on making abortions less needed than on making abortions illegal (which won’t solve the problem), then more babies would be born than are today, and, just maybe, some of the “abortion is good” sentiment would go away as well.
So, clearly, I do not think abortion is good, nor do I think it should be made illegal at the national level. On the other hand, the federal government most certainly should not fund any group that condones or encourages abortion either – I think the so called “gag rule” is a good compromise between funding “planned parenthood” type groups and funding abortion. However, the real solution is to stop public money from going to these organizations at all.
Just because I would not support federal legislation outlawing abortion doersn’t mean that support it. My stance against such federal legislation is a result of my strong views on liberty and the need for as few laws as possible to preserve liberty. I think, in fact, that abortion is akin to murder, and that the “choice” argument is fatally flawed. Let me explain:
My stance that abortion is akin to murder stems from my understanding of biology as opposed to some religious notion of life. An egg in a woman is not unique in the world – it is wholy derived from the woman, and as such, I would consider it a part of her body. Let her do with it what she will. The same goes for a man and his sperm. However, after fertilization, the zygote is no longer a simple combination of the man and the woman. Due to the process called crossover, the DNA of the zygote is unique in all the world. This is what defines a new individual – we have what is indeed a unique human being. To snuff this indivual out on purpose seems little different to me than to snuff out any unique person’s life on purpose.
In fact, fertilization is the single place where an event occurs that causes a distinct change – after that its all just one continuous process. I do not understand how passing through an orfice in birth suddenly makes someone a person that can’t be snuffed out legally (except in the case of partial birth abortions, which somehow are different, I suppose because the baby has a vacuum in the brain). While birth is a significant event, there is no justifiable reason to make this the boundary any more than, say, teething, or sexual maturity. Maybe we should let mothers kill their children until they start noctural emissions or ovulation. Or maybe menopause and middle age is a better indicator. At least then kids might behave…
Now, onto the argument that this is about a woman’s reproductive right to choose. I’m sorry, but the reproductive choice was made when the woman choose to have sex. After the sex comes reproductive responsibility, namely carrying any potential product of the sex to term and ensuring that the potential child is cared for and nurtured into a productive adult. The man shares in this responsibilty, have no doubt, since he also made the choice. I am of course aware that this doesn’t not account for sex that the woman does not choose to have – namely in cases of rape. I think reasonable people could disagree on this topic. I personally lean towards killing the rapist, not the baby.
As for Roe v. Wade, it is fairly clear to me that the ruling was not legally justified, and is probally the single best example of the damage activist judges with radical agendas can do in this our system of common law and judicial review, an extremely flawed paradigm for a judicial system.
Well, thats all for now. I’ll get off the soapbox for just a while now.