Thanks for reading
my little pro-life story; thanks very much for emailing your thoughts and comments.
And you’re right; I left some things out. What about rape? What about saving the life of the mother? What about the fact that women with unwanted pregnancies have always found ways of terminating them, sometimes with unsafe or even tragic results?
Yes, what about those cases? They are nightmare scenarios, to be sure. I used to think that these kinds of scenarios were so awful that even the
possibility that they might occur made it necessary for abortion to be legal across the board. But once I realized that
pre-born babies are, in fact, human beings, it gave me a different perspective on these scenarios. No longer did an abortion seem like a satisfactory solution—ever.
See, I just don’t think that it’s okay to kill a human being,
ever. Once you open the option of one group—say, doctors—judging the potential quality of life for another—say, a pre-born baby who may or may not be born less than perfectly—and therefore determine whether they should live or die, you start down a slippery slope that doesn’t lead anywhere good.
I clearly remember my dear friend Leslie’s voice on the phone, years ago, when she told me the results of her routine ultrasound with her second pregnancy. “Kim, there are some problems,” she said, and I could hear her tears. Her son had some kind of developmental problem that involved his bones not solidifying. She said that in the many ultrasounds that followed that first one, they could see the baby’s bones curving and spiking at odd, curving angles. Because his bones were so fragile, he would never survive delivery, they said. He would never be able to walk or move or—well,
live, they said. Of course they encouraged her to “terminate” him. She didn't.
Although Leslie and John expected the worst—their pastor was on hand for delivery, ready to bless the baby as he died—her son was born with no problems. He’s now a healthy teenager with no significant health problems.
There are countless stories of doomsday prenatal diagnoses like Leslie’s, which turn out to be wrong. How many of these stories end differently, with heartbroken parents and an empty place at the family’s table? Even if a parent could decide that it was actually
merciful to spare their child the pain of being born for just a short life, or a life of disability, how could they ever,
ever be sure enough of the diagnosis?
There are also many stories of parents who gratefully count their few minutes or hours holding their newborn before he died as some of the most precious time they could have imagined. And most parents of babies born with
Down’s syndrome seem to say that their children have taught them profound depths of joy in life that they never could have imagined. Did you know that over 90% of Down’s babies are now aborted? Who are we—who are the doctors—who is
anyone to say that these babies’ lives are not worth living?
But what about rape? Could anything be more ghastly than having to carry your rapist’s child? Of course not—but how does condemning the baby to death for his father’s crime help? I can’t imagine that it would erase the horror of the rape. In fact, many abortion survivors experience their abortions as an act of violence against their bodies. Of course in the case of a rape, this would make things worse, not better.
It turns out that for many rape victims, giving their children life helps them to overcome their horror and reclaim their strength following the violence they survived.
Incest is actually different from rape as it relates to abortion, because abortion actually
enables the criminal in many of these cases. An obvious pregnancy would
shine a light on the darkness of incest in some situations; conversely, incest often can continue, hidden, due to the ease of procuring an abortion.
What could be more heart-wrenching than facing a pregnancy that might threaten your life, or even deprive your older children of their mother? I can’t even imagine having to face that situation. But which of us, as moms, would not give her life for her child?
Of course we would. And killing a baby to save his mother requires that judgment again—
which life is more valuable.
St. Gianna Molla gives us such a beautiful example for this; her clear instructions to her husband were “If it is a choice between my life and the baby’s, do not hesitate. Save the baby.” No doubt, her older children missed their mother very much, following her death from hemorrhaging a couple of weeks after giving birth to their little sister. No doubt, they are happy, healthy adults now, secure in the knowledge that their mother is a real-life saint.
What about the argument that women will find a way to abort their babies one way or another, so we should keep it legal in an effort to keep it safe? A couple of thoughts here: First, even though it’s legal,
abortion is often still unsafe. And should we legalize all criminal activity because it will occur whether it is legal or not?
All human activity is the result of personal choice; government may limit or attempt to influence those choices for the good of society. The argument that people face difficult circumstances and tough choices so we should make this easier for them because they will do it anyway just isn’t logical. Poor people face difficult circumstances and choose to commit armed robbery to get cash to buy food; should we also legalize armed robbery?
In the case of these nightmare scenarios related to abortion, I'm not sure what the legality of the whole thing should be, to tell you the truth. But a whole lot of abortions happen that have nothing to do with rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and it seems obvious to me that laws in fact do help shape the morality of society, for better or worse.
Each year, in the United States alone,
over 1.3 million babies are aborted. 99% of these abortions are
not the result of rape, incest, or danger to maternal or fetal life. Yet those who favor abortion in our country often use these rare cases as the argument for keeping abortion legal and widely available.
That’s a lot of collateral damage, don’t you think? Imagine the outcry if the U.S. were engaged in a military operation that had 99% collateral damage; could anyone defend the action regardless of the reason?
Once I realized that
a person’s life truly does begin at conception, I realized that protecting a “woman’s right to choose” really does infringe on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for 1.3 million American boys and girls per year. Since 1973, that’s about a third of a generation of Americans. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but to me, this doesn’t feel like something I can ignore.
Speaking of hurting feelings, I want to say clearly that I certainly don’t think that women who have abortions are criminals,
at all. I think they are victims. I want to do anything I can possibly do to help them—before, during, after, or many years after they are pregnant. Abortion is a gravely evil lie that our society spins and sells quite effectively; men
and women should be
saved from it, not judged for becoming its victim. I wholeheartedly believe that we must do everything possible to eliminate the circumstances that lead to unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
Maybe that can be the topic for my next six-part post!
Just kidding--now back to posting family photos…
And now for something from the "be careful what you pray for" files...
