(Note: I do not mean anything regarding cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's health is at risk. Those are complex cases and fodder for a separate post. Further, I do not speak as much to abortions before viability--I see them as abhorrent, but they do not present as stark a case as I wish to present here.)
I started studying the so-called "right to privacy" as created by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago. While studying the abortion category of the "right", I wandered onto the internet to find exactly what an abortion is--medically speaking. So I Googled it. I found a "Christian" site that purported to have comprehensible descriptions of abortion procedures, distinguished by the time during pregnancy in which each is used. As soon as I entered the site, I was struck by the ads there. Three in all, they consisted of an abortion information hotline, a Christian dating service, and a "save children" sponsor-a child-in-poverty-so-she-doesn't-starve organization. The latter ad struck me as contradictory to the purpose of the site. The purpose, which I found after a few minutes of browsing, was to promote any and all types of abortion (in any trimester) and to understand the promotion in Christian terms. If abortion is the destruction of life, or, before viability (the point at which the baby will survive if removed, alive, from the mother--usually after about 20-23 weeks), the destruction of potential life, how is it that the same site can advocate saving life and not be incongruous?
I use this example to show that some people who believe in "human rights" also believe in "abortion rights" which include the killing of viable fetuses. Indeed, many of these people see abortion in particular as a fundamental human right. How is this congruent? It is not, and cannot be. Some arguments say that a fundamental right of autonomy exists, which calls for the ability to make personal decisions that go to the heart of "personhood" and "existence" for one's self, personal decisions like whether to carry a pregnancy to term. If this were so, then laws prohibiting homegrown (or home-cooked) drugs and drug use, laws prohibiting child abandonment, and laws prohibiting ceremonial sacrifice of children, would be subject to strict constitutional scrutiny and likely stricken down. If society is going to have any laws at all, then those laws will necessarily impede upon one's ability to be autonomous.
What, in the end, is the difference between a viable fetus, which will require some money from the "state" or private sources to live and yet which nobody in particular wants/can raise, and a starving child in the Congo whose relatives are dead? Why care more about the latter than the former? There is no cognizable reason, aside from the fact that the latter child is older.
If we are to shape society by our votes, by our participation in politics and the judicial system, then how should we approach a question like this? I think it is far-fetched to say that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. That is something we should hope for and fight for, but most of our resources should be focused on changing hearts. The problem with the viable fetus, which has to be called a "life" since, although it is in the mother's uterus, does not need the mother for survival, is that it is not WANTED by the mother and/or father that is pushing for an abortion. The CHILD, which can be saved by international aid agencies, is wanted. Sadly, tragically, we allow one of these to be killed while we send money to save the other. Indeed, some think it is RIGHT that one be killed while the other saved.
So in the end, the contradiction remains: how is it that neither of these children need a mother to survive, yet one is saved while the other slaughtered? How is it that human rights can circumscribe the saving of one and the slaughter of the other? Answer that, won't you? As for me, I think both should be saved, if possible. Whether it becomes possible will depend on the changing of hearts. If people can only agree that life is worth saving, then the law will reluctantly follow.
