Abortion Rights: Safe, Legal, and Early

Rod Dreher has a post on his site on this article and a nice little debate going on in the combox, mostly with the usual suspects. I don't have much to add except that I think Roe v. Wade is built on exactly the reasoning that Waldman is using. It's nothing very new.

But one thing this article did do for me was help me clarify my own position. I am pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I do feel that life begins at conception and so the issue of whether a woman is "taking a life" is not in question. She is. The issue of the timing of viability also doesn't really move me much. The same moral questions apply.

The only issue that is relevant for me is whether the woman makes a choice to complete the pregnancy and give birth, or if she will be forced to do that against her will. Is a woman's womb a baby farm to be owned by a man, the state, or is it hers to use as she chooses?

I have moved on this over the years, to the point of thinking that I would hope that if all is well that the woman would choose to give birth to a new life, and not choose to terminate it. But that choice is hers alone. The father's wishes should have some weight, but ultimately she must have the freedom to make the choice. Nothing else makes any sense.

This is NOT a silly article, it is raising a point I've been feeling strongly about for a long time. Government needs to separate the spiritual arguments about abortion from the civil arguments. Until a fetus is viable, the only "citizen" in question is the mother. Prior to viability the fetus is a part of the mother's body and that is all it should and can be in the eyes of the government. At viability it begins to have rights separate from its mother, but not before.

On the other hand, to say that fetus, if left alone, will grow up to be anything but a human being is soul-less. If both sides could make these concessions, we might actually see some real progress toward seriously reducing abortions in this country.

For those who believe that life begins at conception and who want to abolish abortion I ask this question - do you or does your church offer funeral services for miscarried fetuses? If not, then I would suspect your position is more based on the need to control pregnant women than it is about compassion.

Given the overwhelming support among conservative American Christians for torturing people whom they dislike, I am having a great deal of difficulty believing that they actually care a the slightest bit about the unborn child.

For them, it is purely and simply a matter of controlling all aspects of a woman's life.

Were they to truly care about all life, they wouldn't support torture.

Those of us Christians who actually do respect life need to stop hiding behind the "well, they are just a small but very vocal minority" excuse and strike back. Strike back hard. People who actively engage intorturing American citizens will stop at nothing.

And to think I actually had to listen to people here telling me only a few months back that I was paranoid and had nothing, as a gay man, to fear from the conservative Christians. They were only interested in the good of my soul. Well, now we know what methods they prefer for attending to the souls of those whom they dislike.

To them, seeing a young girl bleed to death on a bent coat-hanger in a back-alley abortion is God's will and they delight in it.

What horrible, horrible fruit has fundamentalist Christianity brought forth in the US.