President Bush has declared Sunday to be National Sanctity of Human Life Day.
The issue of abortion is one where I can be numbered among those who have changed their minds to a pro-life outlook. The argument that originally swayed me over was the human rights one, equating it to the practice of slavery which we ended in the nineteenth century. The notion that African-Americans were not truly human is similar to the argument that an unborn child cannot be considered to be a living person. Both beliefs were used to justify acts of violence, slavery and murder, against others.
I made my pro-life decision before becoming a Christian, though the decisions were not that far apart. If you consider Jefferson's words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" to be the raison d'etre of our country, it seems to me that the life of an unborn child is more important than any inconvenience a mother would face, since the right to life is explicitly stated in both our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and there is no mention of the right to kill others for ones own convenience. The pro-abortion lobby always loves to bring up the health of the mother, but that's just a red herring; they don't bother to mention that the courts have adopted a very loose standard for the health of the mother, and abortion is practically available as an alternate method of birth control during the entire term of pregnancy. I see no merit in the argument that late-term abortions are too rare to worry about restricting; there are abortionists who specialize in performing late-term abortions, so it must be done often enough to support their practice.
What bothers me about the rhetoric about abortion is how it has been elevated to a sacred human right, with no consideration of how other rights are being trampled upon to protect it. Pro-life messages are censored from our culture, people who hold pro-life views are barred (or were when the Democrats held the Senate) from serving in our judiciary, and the free speech rights of people protesting at abortion clinics are not respected. [NB: I do not endorse or support anyone who commits any act of violence in the cause of pro-life activism, including acts of violence against any other person or their property]
Posted by joelfuhrmann at January 18, 2003 04:27 PM