I just have to comment on this.
For a long time, I was staunchly pro-life. I'm still pro-life, but I'm not staunch about it.
How do I explain the way that my feelings and beliefs about this have evolved and what they are today?
I guess first I should explain why I am pro-life. To put it simply, I believe that children in utero are people. They are alive, not dead, not inanimate. I believe they have a right to live. If you look at it in terms of just facts, science supports this. Babies in utero have DNA that is different and separate from their mothers. They develop heartbeats and brainwaves pretty quickly. Furthermore, they are constantly growing and they start moving fairly quickly too. So with these facts in hand, we know they are alive. That they have separate DNA and sometimes even different genders from their mothers supports that they are separate individuals. So you have living human beings who are separate from their mothers, yet are dependent on staying inside their mothers for a certain length of time before medical science can keep them alive without the shelter of the womb.
The 'my body, my choice' argument hasn't really held much water for me. Yeah, I think a woman should have sovereignity over HER body. But over someone else's? No. And since I believe that an unborn child is a separate person with his/her own body, then I don't believe a woman should have the right to decide life or death for that person.
So that's why I'm pro-life.
But it's not that simple, is it? It's not just about science or logic. It's also about philosophy and belief systems and whatever situation that each pregnant woman finds herself in.
Other people do not believe that an unborn child is alive or is even a human being, science notwithstanding. And if you try to say that an unborn child is all those things, they get pretty angry. Others ignore altogether the question of whether an unborn child is alive and separate or a tissue blob altogether. Are they right? Am I? Who is? And who decides that?
In America, when we have serious questions and clashing opinions on things like this, we sometimes ask the courts to decide. And the Supreme Court decided that government should pretty much stay out of it and let each woman decide for herself.
That seemed like a good idea. Lord knows that I don't want to decide for every woman in America, with all the agonizing circumstances and all the situations involved in those choices. I feel terrible for the one million children being killed every year, and abortion is a gruesome business, but who am I to tell everyone on the planet what their philosophies and beliefs should be?
So that's why I'm not staunch about it anymore. We need to offer pregnant women more support in the form of services and education. They need a better choice. Why should women have to choose between carrying their children to term or going to school? Why should they have to choose between carrying their child to term or having a career?
So abortion was legalized and now women could decide for themselves. An industry springs up across America to service this new era of choices. America is as deeply divided today as it was when Roe v Wade was handed down.
Enter the pro-life movement. They want to ban all abortions again. It becomes clear fairly quickly that this is not going to happen. The Supreme Court is not down with that and society gradually becomes more and more anesthetized to what abortion is. Abortion becomes acceptable. With this acceptance comes at least one welcome thing - women are less stigmatized by abortion.
So the pro-life movement becomes aware that the full frontal assault is not working and they decide they're going to have to go about it a different way and take the long way around. They decide to chip away at abortion's foundation.
Then they discover one particularly gruesome method of late-term abortion - partial birth abortion. A baby is delivered feet first until just the head is inside the mother. Then the abortionist stabs the child in the base of the skull with a pair of scissors, opens a hole wide enough to allow a suction tool in, and suctions the baby's brain out. Result - aborted baby.
So why deliver the baby feet first until just the head remains inside the mother?
Because if the child was delivered fully, it would be considered a person with full rights under the law. But as long as part of the child remains inside the mother, the child is not considered a person. You can still stab it and suction the brains without legally being considered a murderer. It's in 'my body, my choice'.
That alone is food for thought. So a baby is not a person and has no rights when he or she is just five seconds from full birth? But then when those five seconds elapse, something magical happens, and voila, we have a person? That, to me, is the height of magical thinking and makes no sense. Even the whole bit about it being best for the health of the mother makes no sense. How is it better? The mother's cervix still has to be dilated, and everyone knows that it's the shoulders, not the head, of the baby that is the widest part. See why this particular issue actually made it this far? If you really think about it beyond gut reactions, you can see why the Supreme Court would even consider hearing this case.
They couldn't have picked a better issue to use. Since this method is used for late term abortions, that means the baby is very developed, perhaps even viable. So when the illustrations explaining this method came out, they looked gruesome. Even the most vanilla illustration was gruesome. Of course it was -- abortion is not pretty, no matter how you feel about it. And aborting a late term baby that in no way can be called a blob of tissue? You can't say it's just 'not pretty'. It's ugly. The gruesomeness was factual. Prolife groups championing this legislation had to know that.
People who were prochoice and argued for this method's existence and usage could only come off looking bad. The American public was for this legislation.
So the pro life movement had finally gotten smart. This ruling is the result of that. Next post: what I *don't* like about the Court's opinion...
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