Less than a week ago, a woman in Ireland died
because the country’s abortion laws apparently prevented even a health based
procedure to save a woman who had miscarried. Apparently the Irish government
neglected to learn that abortions can be elective or spontaneous and that not
all abortions are done because people are “whores” or “sluts”. In the case of
this woman dying, the line that sums it up is “They valued the life of a 4
month old fetus over that of a 30 year old woman” I am glad our own country
isn’t so stringent and ridiculous on such things, but there are still people
that insist that every pregnancy is a gift from God, including those that
result from rape or incest, as well as those that would threaten a woman’s
life. My very first blog post spoke about this topic and how it was irresponsible and selfish of Tim Tebow’s
mother to insist on the pregnancy when she and her unborn child were in danger.
Pro life as a position should not mean you get to endanger lives on purpose and
say you value life and hold it sacred at the same time. By no means am I
suggesting forced abortions, since that would contradict my values of
individual choice and liberty as a libertarian at heart. But inversely, someone
should not be able to claim their liberties are being trampled on when they
are, in their own general metaphysics, forcing a child to be born in cases
where teens could get an abortion and move on with their lives, learning from
their mistake. Societal pressure is a strong influence, however, and you have
women feeling like they commit a horrible crime, even a sin, when trying to
make a choice between themselves and something that isn’t even remotely human
in appearance in many cases when the pregnancy is discovered.
Any involvement of God in these situations is next
to nothing, especially if we assume from the get go that God cannot interfere
when it comes to human free will. And it also makes perfect sense to say that
rape children cannot, in any way, shape or form, be a part of God’s will,
because that would mean God either forced a human to rape or had no problem
with one of its creations being violated for some greater good that could’ve
been advanced in a far less violent manner. I’m not saying there can’t be good
that results from evil, but rape is one of, if not the most horrible things a
human can experience and survive next to attempted murder. A God that would
create good things from such horrors is far distanced from the human experience
and could accurately be termed a sociopath with no empathy.
Partial birth abortion, strongly opposed by many so
called “pro life” advocates, is simultaneously death and life, but is a life
saving procedure similar to some abortions (ectopic pregnancies or the like,
for instance) in that if you don’t do it in particular cases for which it’s
performed, both the mother and child will die. Do you want that on your
conscience or do you think that death is preferable to life? If the latter,
then how can you really consider yourself pro life? A more overarching idea of
what pro life means is preferable to using the term to mask your anti abortion
stance because you don’t want to be anti something, you want to be pro
something. Be honest and just say you’re against abortion instead of saying you’re
for protecting life and yet care nothing about people’s liberties to manage
their reproduction or otherwise. Valuing life over liberty may make sense
sequentially, but it makes no sense ethically. Basic logic does dictate you
need to value life in order to truly value liberty, but to preclude liberty in
order to protect life is far more counterintuitive than accepting that
sometimes life must be sacrificed for liberty, especially if it cannot be
adequately provided for or is not viable in a world where artificial womb
technology does not exist.'
A middle ground can be met. One should not take sex
so casually and irresponsibly, which will prevent unintended and unwanted
pregnancies, leading to a decrease in abortions for reasons of pure convenience
and selfishness. The abortions that are absolutely necessary are those that
would save a woman’s life from accidental pregnancies that threaten her
physical or mental health. Abortion is not birth control and shouldn’t be used
as such, not only because it’s more expensive, but it becomes wasteful of
potential life, which has its own value, especially to prospective parents,
especially adoptive ones who either cannot have children themselves or want to
provide for what amount to orphans. Instead we can “waste” what are renewable
resources: namely the sperm the body produces. So that’s yet another abortion
related post from me. We’re getting close to 200 posts and I’ll be doing
something special for that, I hope. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.
