My Corner

One of the things that really gets my blood boiling is the entire concept of abortion being a "reproductive choice". There are a host of so-called reasonings to justify keeping abortion-on-demand legal, but if just a smidgen of logic is applied to replace some of the women's rights hysterics, these arguments fall apart. Observe.

"We don't know when life begins."
Children in elementary school are taught that every new organism (higher forms, anyway, not bacteria and such) come into being when a sperm and an egg combine to form a zygote. This is when the organism's unique DNA is created, and the zygote begins to reproduce until it becomes an embryo-fetus-screaming infant. The zygote is human, it is alive, and it will continue to reproduce until it becomes a human adult. Human life begins at conception, according to science and logic.

"The fetus is part of the woman's body."
The fetus is within the woman's body, but it is not part OF her body. It has a separate genetic signature and its own bodily functions and systems. It is not part of the woman's body.

"An embryo is a blob of tissue the size of a period at the end of a sentence. It is not a human being."
An adult is a blob of tissue the size of a human adult. But if all human embryos were killed from now on, how many people would there be in 120 years? We were all there once. Case closed.

"An embryo or fetus is just potential life."
An embryo or fetus is already here. There is nothing potential about that. A baby can die from SIDS, does that mean it's only a potential? I'll answer that - no.

"Why not say that human life begins with a sperm and an egg?
Human beings have 46 chromosomes. Sperm and eggs have 23 chromosomes. A sperm or egg is not a human life.

"An embryo or fetus should not be granted personhood. It is unaware, it cannot think. If we consider them people, we should give death certificates every time someone miscarries."
If awareness was the criteria for personhood, it should be legal to kill someone as long as they are asleep. If it is their future awareness that makes it murder, if the fetus was left alone, it would be as aware one day, too! And if someone decided not to give me a death certificate when I die, does that mean I wasn't human? Legal documents don't decide personhood - reality does.

"Human life begins at viability."
Viability is the ability for the baby to survive outside the woman's body. It's used as an imaginary boundary to promote abortion, but in reality it has nothing to do with whether or not something is human. After all, once born, the baby is completely dependent upon adult intervention or it will die. Toddlers are completely dependent upon adult intervention or they will die. Does that lack of actual viability make them legal to kill? Also, viability is largely dependent upon medical technology. If technology advances to the point that we can sustain life all the way back to conception outside the woman's body, I guess that would do away with abortion, huh? And what if viability is defined at a certain week of development - a fetus one day away from reaching that imaginary milestone isn't human, but a fetus one day older is? Ridiculous.

"Life begins at birth."
So what is that creature within a woman's womb that is completely identical to the baby that magically appears when an umbilical cord is cut?

"The government can't tell a woman what to do with her body."
It can tell her what to do with her offspring's body, if it would grow a spine and defend human life. And it's not like the government made her have sex and get pregnant to begin with.

"Reproductive freedom is a basic right."
That's correct. Don't want children? Don't have sex. Wow, what a Sherlock-ian deduction!

"Abortion is between a woman and her doctor."
Two people can't simply decide to terminate the life of a third human. If a woman wants to commit suicide via medical assistance, that's between her and her doctor.

"Young people should not be forced to carry through with a pregnancy, it will ruin their lives."
Play with fire, get burned. That's true for everyone from the youngest child to the oldest adult. It sounds heartless, but one person's poor decision-making does not justify taking the life of another. Truth isn't always easy.

"There are lots of children who are unwanted, it would be better to not bring them into the world."
I would rather be alive and unwanted than be unable to ever experience life. And maybe the authorities should lower the cost of adoption. Who knows, maybe more people would adopt?

"Stop trying to impose your religious beliefs onto me!"
How many times have I quoted scripture so far? Read to the end of this post, and then tally up how many times I have by then.

"If abortion was illegal, women would go to back-alleys to get them, resulting in serious injuries and death."
Suicide is not justification for confiscating all firearms, just like women who use coat hangers on themselves do not justify legalized abortion. If people make poor choices, THEY WILL GET BURNED. You can't legislate sense. All you can do is educate.

"A woman whose life is in danger should be allowed to have an abortion."
That's right. As sad as it is, we all have the right to self-defense. Although it isn't the baby's fault, if there is no other way, the woman has the right to protect herself.

"A woman whose health is in danger should be allowed to have an abortion."
Depending on what the health hazard is, this could be true, as well. But if the hazard is purely psychological, how about counseling?

"Abortion should be allowed if the baby is deformed."
If the baby has its heart growing inside its skull, that's understandable. But for such things as Down's syndrome, there is absolutely no justification for taking that life. We don't have the right to decide which lives are worth living. That's purely selfishness on the part of the parents.

"Abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest."
If I found out my father was actually a man who raped my mother, or my uncle, I wouldn't run off and kill myself. What we could do, however, is make the penalty for rape so profoundly hideous that no one in their right mind would even fantasize about doing it. It's horrible for the mother to get pregnant from rape, but set the emotion aside and we realize the offspring is just as human as any other.

"Pro-life people are hateful to women. They want them back in the Stone Age, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen."
We also want to hit them over the head with giant stone clubs and drag them into caves, as well as donating them to UFO's for alien experimentation. Honestly, if you believe this, you don't belong in the sphere of intellectual discourse. Go play with your Wii.

"If pro-life people cared about children, they would care for all these unwanted children."
So now it's up to pro-life people to not only fight to keep bad parents from killing their children pre-natally, but also adopt whenever these same bad parents don't want their own babies? It must be nice to have no personal accountability.

"Abortion is not a man's business."
If it's my child on the line, you just try it and see what happens. Decide if it's my business after that. From an impersonal standpoint, if a woman has the right to abort, a man has the right to cause a miscarriage without being penalized for the fetus dying.

"Pro-life people bomb abortion clinics and kill abortion doctors!"
While crying how killing people is wrong, pro-choice people kill millions of human lives every year. Be quiet.

What it all boils down to is, since human life always begins at conception, the pro-choice position actually is about giving authority to determine which human lives have value and which don't. Using all the rationales behind keeping abortion-on-demand legal (and at least 95% of all abortions are just for birth control and not for exception cases like rape), who could the government make legal to kill? Anyone who is unconscious or asleep, a man who is having sex with a woman (within her body), any homeless person, any child too young to fend for itself or any elderly person unable to care for themselves, anyone who is handicapped, and anyone who is alive due to rape or incest. These people meet the same criteria that has deemed it legal to de-humanize and kill the unborn. But I don't see many pro-choice people acknowledging the complete lack of reasoning behind their position.

"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end." - Leonard Nimoy