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|  | | Mike Murray | | in my own words |
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| | | | --by Mike Murray
Presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama was asked the other day by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, to reveal the point at which he believes a fetus attains human rights. Warren was asking, in effect, when life begins. The answer to that question is central to the reasonableness of abortion. Because if life begins at conception – as many religious adherents contend – then a woman’s supposed “right to choose” is macabre.
No sensible person believes that anyone should be permitted to terminate healthy, innocent life. Which leads politicians on the “left” side of the abortion debate to bob and weave, to twist and convolute when they attempt to answer that simple, fundamental question: When, exactly, does life begin?
2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry supplied the worst possible response. Kerry (a practicing Catholic) replied that he believes that life begins at conception. Fair enough. But it was what Kerry said next – that he didn’t believe it is the government’s role to interfere with a woman’s decision whether to carry her baby to term or to abort it –- that stunned.
Think about that for a moment. At the very instant of conception, a fetus becomes a human life in Kerry’s eyes. But he nevertheless considers it a woman’s prerogative to decide whether the unborn child is permitted to continue to live. That is a troubling revelation.
If Kerry had said, “I don’t believe that life begins until after the first trimester” of a pregnancy, and that a woman, therefore, should be permitted to abort up until that point, his answer would have made sense. Reasonable people could have disagreed with his medical / spiritual assessment. But they could not have taken issue with his ethics.
But Kerry, in the tradition of snarky politicians everywhere, tried to have it both ways. He tried to placate religious types (by stating that every fetus is a life), while simultaneously, and absurdly, claiming that every mother nevertheless has the “right to choose” her baby’s fate – to, in effect, play God. To wield the power of life and death.
No one has a “right” to extinguish innocent life. That’s murder, Mr. Kerry.
Many of the slogans associated with the “pro choice” movement are unpersuasive. “Get the government off my body” especially rankles. The government, my dear, did not impregnate you. No G-Man was anywhere near your bedroom (or the backseat of your car) when you conceived.
“A woman’s right to choose” also misleads. Women have numerous choices. And most of them precede potential pregnancy. Among them: abstinence, avoiding copulation during the fertile days of the month, contraception. Except in cases of abuse or rape, women routinely exercise choice (including whether to remain sober) before they engage in sexual activity, before they ever risk becoming pregnant. No one has ever suggested that such choices be taken away.
It is the extra, the additional choice of abortion, that women have sought and that U.S. courts have granted them that is at issue. There is no moral dilemma – so long as we’re talking about an organism that is not a human life. But that’s the rub: who really knows for sure?
Several women I know who consider themselves feminists (and who strongly believe that legal abortion should remain an option), have sported “Baby on Board” T-shirts when they were in the early stages of pregnancies about which they were pleased. But if they had instead intended to abort, I am quite certain that they would have characterized things differently. There would have been no announcement T-shirts, no happy talk of being “with child.”
It is that rationalization about the nature of life, the kind that John Kerry so ridiculously and frivolously engaged in, that disturbs. The central issue is one of the most important ones with which modern civilizations grapple. Free societies strive to provide as many liberties as possible. But those liberties are not limitless. One person’s rights extend to the precise point where another’s begin.
And that brings the matter back to the central question: When does life begin? If a fetus is not a life, then a woman can reasonably abort “it.” But if a fetus is a human being, then no one has the right to terminate “his” or “her” life.
Viability has emerged as the deciding factor. That is, a best-guess estimate as to the likely point during a pregnancy at which a normal fetus can survive outside the womb. The first-trimester guideline resulted. Many believe that a typical fetus in the first third of development would have difficulty surviving outside a human host, and so may be ethically aborted during that period. Hence, a de facto determination was made that – for all practical purposes – “life” begins during the second (or perhaps the third?) trimester.
That rationale troubles many. And it opens a very large can of worms. People often lack medical viability: when they are sick or injured, when they are elderly or infirm, when they undergo open-heart or transplant surgery – when they are under general anesthesia for any reason. At several points during a typical life, the ability to survive without extraordinary assistance is absent. At such times, are people not “human?” Are they not alive?
Because I am uncertain about when, precisely, life begins post-conception, I believe that America should err on the side of caution. Humane societies routinely do so. It is the concept that underlies the practice of putting the burden of proof on the prosecution in the case of a criminal trial. We deem it acceptable that we occasionally fail to convict a guilty party, if the tradeoff is that we reduce the chance that an innocent person will be wrongly convicted.
The same protection should apply to the unborn. Because no one can know for sure whether they are truly human (though no one can deny that they are innocent), I contend that we should decide in their favor. As inconvenient as it might be for some women to carry an unwanted baby to term, it is preferable to an alternate, potentially awful outcome: sacrificing life to expediency.
Speaking of expediency, Barack Obama’s response to the question of when life begins: “That decision is made above my pay grade.” It was a flippant, evasive answer. And it revealed (yet again) Obama’s arrogance. He was asked only to express an opinion. No one beseeched him to make a “decision.” That prerogative belongs to God. And, no matter how often Obama’s adoring fans among the electorate (and the media) attempt to deify him, reasonable people know that he is very much human.
The question remains, is a fetus?
Copyright © 2008 Michael F. Murray -- All rights reserved.
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