I remember some evangelism training thing somewhere were the technique was suggested of challenging a person to accept Jesus on the grounds that if they were wrong it would mean eternity in Hell, so it probably wasn’t worth the risk. Don’t know how I feel about that tactic now, but for those (could include me) who don’t currently consider abortion as infanticide, I’m going to ask you to consider the “what if” today. We’ve dialoged already with the assumption that life begins at birth. Today we are going to dialog with the stipulation that life begins at conception. Tomorrow will discuss from a Biblical perspective when we believe “life” begins, but today we are going to, for the sake of productive dialog, stipulate that life begins at conception.
I believe the two things I mentioned Monday still apply to today’s conversation.
- Men should yield the floor to their better half and allow women to lead the decision making as it relates to pregnancy, abortion and women’s rights. We need to support them whole heartedly in their decisions, but do all we can to support and not unduly influence.
- We need to address the grave injustices that continue to face women in our country today. Equal Pay, paid maternity leave and better support for working and nursing mothers. Taking a stand against domestic and sexual abuse. And removing discriminating stereotypes and media create pervasive struggles with body image for our young girls.
As to the issue of abortion itself. Assuming life begins at conception, abortion is murder. But, we must admit that it is unlike any other form of murder, it is unique in the relationship and physical connectedness of the mother and child. I am not saying that to diminish the value of the child, but to simply acknowledge that it is unique and should be considered as such. We think and respond differently to a suicide, an assisination or a fatal accident, though all involve the lose of life.
Is there a way to think of and respond to the situation, to consider the mother and child and the gravity of the situation that does not diminish the intensity of the situation, but also respects the values and rights of both the mother and child?
I’m female and also pregnant, so this is a topic that has been on my mind a lot lately. There are two things pregnancy has highlighted for me:
1) I certainly can’t question that this baby is alive right now. The kicking all through the night, especially on my bladder and stomach, give me a constant reminder that there is a living person in there! Hearing his little heartbeat, actually SEEING it beat on ultrasounds, seeing him wave a hand around during the last ultrasound: these things all confirmed it for me if I ever had a doubt. Even my teenage cousins, who joined me at the last ultrasound, were amazed and keep talking about how he actually was all there and moving around in front of their eyes. I think it was really impressive for these girls to see that pregnancy is more than just a big belly, morning sickness, and food cravings. Until my first ultrasound, when the little guy was bouncing around and you could already see the blood rushing through his heart, I had a hard time accepting that there was a life in me, too.
2) Now, more than ever, I am aware of the absolute terrified feeling that some pregnant women and girls experience. While I am 26, married, with a college degree and the support of every person I know, I am scared out of my mind. My current circumstances include a husband trapped in visa purgatory in Mexico, a temporary and inconsistent job, never enough money to cover all the bills and expenses, and a future that might soon require me to choose life in another country simply to reside in the same place as my husband. The thought of bringing an innocent baby into this cruel and unknown world, and the thought of being in charge of his welfare when I can hardly handle my own? This is sometimes too much to bear.
I feel for young, single girls who are lost, with few resources, and no idea what they’re going to do, even as far as carrying a baby to full term. Pregnancy is HARD, and that’s with a strong support system. For someone who doesn’t have the people and resources to get through 9 months of emotional turmoil and physical chaos, not to mention raising a baby, this could be an unthinkable task.
Simply making abortion illegal isn’t going to help those girls or their children. They still must get through a healthy 9 month pregnancy (easier said than done I’ve discovered), and then if they raise the child, they must figure out how to make ends meet, how to advance themselves further to give both a better future, and how to be a decent parent.
I think more grave than any abortion law are things like the lack of effective sex ed, poor overall support for single pregnant women (especially poor and young ones), dismal health and parenting resources for the people who need it most, the difficulty of education for girls who need to work to support themselves and their babies, underfunded centers that provide abortion alternatives, limited safe shelters for women who choose to have their babies but have nowhere to go, etc. These are aspects of the abortion debate I don’t hear enough about. Sure abortion is atrocious, but I don’t believe passing a law is the only way to reduce its devastating impact on our society.
Unborn children have the right to live, but born children should have the right to live decently.
I totally agree with Amy. I also had those feelings when I was pregnant for the first time. I could finally understand why a woman might feel that she needed to get an abortion. I had bad morning sickness the entire pregnancy and every time I saw the Planned Parenthood Clinic, which was just down the street from my grocery store, I would think about how easy it would be to stop the horrible illness and the exhaustion that accompanied it.
My view on abortion is that it is always evil, but sometimes it is the lessor of two evils. The example that is most easy for both sides to agree upon is ectopic pregnancy. You can choose to abort the fetus and let the mother live, or you can let both of them die. Neither decision is a good one, but it is clear which is the lessor of two evils. There are so many other situations that fall into a gray area morally. If I were raped, for example, I would choose to keep the baby even though I am well aware of how difficult that decision would be. But what about a nine year old girl in that situation? Should she be forced into that situation risking her life and health? In my opinion, if she chooses abortion, the blood guilt for that baby is on the rapist, not the little girl who was put in the situation she should never have had to face.
The problem with laws is that they are very black and white while unplanned pregnancy has a lot of gray areas. I agree with Amy that our focus should be on eliminating the situations that leave women feeling that abortion is their best or only choice.
I have two comments on your first bullet point, and I’m thinking out loud here, so I apologize if I offend anyone:
This post is for us to assume that abortion is infanticide. Your first bullet point says “Men should yield the floor to their better half and allow women to lead the decision making … We need to support them whole heartedly in their decisions.” If it really is infanticide, the genocidal slaughter of living children, why should we support whatever decision a woman makes? Isn’t that the same as supporting whatever decision a murderer makes, to kill or not to kill. Again, this is all under the assumption you want us to go with that abortion is infanticide. If it is, then shouldn’t we oppose a woman’s decision to get an abortion just the same as we’d oppose some other attempted murder?
The second comment I have is that I understand it’s a woman’s body and that a pregnancy is a huge thing and a man should not be able to force a woman to go through it. Hence the woman’s right to choose. Only the woman gets to decide if she goes through with the pregnancy. By why is it only the woman that gets to decide to have an abortion? Shouldn’t it be that if either the father or the mother want the child aborted, then it should be aborted? If the father wants to raise a child, but the mother wants it aborted, then the father’s wishes are overruled. But if a mother wants to raise the child and the father wants it aborted, she can. That is unfair.
Zach, its really more complicated than that. There is really no way that the man and woman can be equal players. The right to abortion is the right to not be pregnant. Pregnancy is not a problem that men have to deal with. I love birthing babies. I’ve had three natural births, two at home. And I wouldn’t have an abortion except under the gravest of circumstances and then with great mourning. But we have to admit that pregnancy and birth can sometimes be a great ordeal for the woman. It can sometimes be risky. For example, one third of birthing women end up with major abdominal surgery (most of which are unnecessary, but that’s the current reality). Major abdominal surgery comes with all sorts of risks. These are risks that the man never has to take in order to produce offspring. In fact, he takes absolutely no risk at all. So why should he have equal say in the decision?
I think it is wonderful when a man wants to raise his child and I think those men who step up when mom isn’t happy about the pregnancy do save many babies from abortion. But to say that they have equal decision making rights with the person whose body is in the middle of the debate just serves to make women even more scared of sharing their decision making with men. It is in essence saying that once a man impregnates a woman he then has control over her body. I don’t see how that is acceptable.
On the assumption that abortion is infanticide, the rights are not the same.
If abortion is infanticide, then the underlying assumption is that the unborn are human beings with rights. Therefore, if you subscribe to the idea that your rights end where the rights of another begins, then the right not to be pregnant ends (or is reduced) when it begins to infringe on the unborn’s right to life.
In the same way, a man’s right to spend his money as he sees fit ends (or is reduced) when it begins to infringe on the rights of his children.
I’m trying to avoid wading in to this, but here’s a thought that has not been raised here:
Pro-choice folks talk about the right to “choose”, presumably referring to the right to choose not to be pregnant, or not to have a child. For me, the elephant in the room is that there is a very easy way to choose not to be pregnant or not to have a child. How about choosing not to engage in the activity that leads to pregnancy in the first place, namely sexual intercourse with a fertile man?
Getting pregnant is not like catching a cold, or getting cancer, or tripping over a rock on the sidewalk. A child is not like a bug that jumps on you, or a leech that grabs on to you ankle as you cross a stream. It does not just happen to you.
Yes, I know: rape, incest, young girls who don’t know better, cases where the life of the mother is threatened, etc. I don’t mean to downplay the horror of any of those situations at all – that is not my point so please don’t jump on that. I agree that in those cases, the activity leading to pregnancy was not a choice.
But look at any given abortion rights protest – it is not peopled with lots of rape and incest victims or young girls who may not know better – it is full of full grown women who just want to “have the option”. They are not just there for the rape and incest victims, or those young girls who did not know better, or else they would hold up signs reading “keep abortion safe and legal for victims of rape, incest, and young girls, and cases where the life of the mother is threatened – but for all others, no”. So, in reality, in the vast majority of situations, abortion supporters are interested in just keeping it as an option if they happen to get pregnant and don’t want to be, even though it is a situation that could easily be avoided in the first place. Sure, ppl want to have sex, and it is a natural thing, but one of the risks is pregnancy, and unless you are a victim or rape or incest or a young girl taken advantage of, you know full well about that risk.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone! Amy glad you could join in.
@Zach: regarding your first question. What I intended was to yield to women on the whole, not an individual woman necessarily. I believe it would still be appropriate to yield to women to make the decisions regarding this issue, without the pressure or influence, but with support from the men in their lives.
I think the analogy comparing it to a murderer misses the point that it (even if it is killing) is uniquely different then all other forms of murder.
I don’t think its as simple as that. When I said the right not to be pregnant I meant the right to autonomy over one’s own body. I think a better comparison than murder would be organ donation. If someone’s life depends on me donating an organ to them and I don’t want to take the risks involved does the state have the right to force me to take that risk to save the person who needs me to live? We can’t even forcibly take the organs of dead people much less living people who do not consent. Why then do we argue that women should be forced to allow their bodies to be used to keep a child alive when they don’t want to take that risk?
The interesting thing about my involvement in this conversation, is that I am actually extremely conservative in my personal ethic of abortion. I can’t think of a single reason except ectopic pregnancy that I would get an abortion. I think that those of us who are Christians should hold ourselves and one another to the highest standards in this life issue and likewise to all life issues such as involvement in war, the death penalty, etc. I think that it is going too far though to say that I will hold every woman to these standards. That’s why I, like Amy who commented above, support methods to eliminate the need or perceived need for abortion rather than laws banning it.
Indie, thank you so much for your comments and thoughts. It’s really opened my eyes and challenged my perspective on the issue in new ways. Thank you.