Abortion is rarely associated with life and death of the mother. It’s all about life and death of the fetus - not a tumor nor a hangnail, but a potential, fully formed human being that is more often than not, not wanted
Many years ago I attended to a young couple who had gone through a genetic abortion. Something was wrong with the fetus and the decision was made to abort. I walked into the storage area where the two young people stood looking at the "fetus" which was fully formed and pink. The baby was on a towel on a shelf and a nurse was standing by. It was, after all, a fetus, wasn't it? Despite the fact it looked no different than many newborns. I wonder if Mr. Maher would have been comfortable twisting the neck of the"fetal tissue"?
The tone of the abortion debate needs changing. Abortion is far more nuanced than the black-and-white Manichean false dichotomy that has developed since Roe versus Wade.
It's time we look at our views on abortion from the perspective of how we see ourselves as a society. We in the West talk about and see ourselves as compassionate caring people, looking out for the weak and vulnerable. We define ourselves by the way we treat the most vulnerable in our society, which ultimately speaks to our compassion, individually and communally.
Let's take the opportunity provided by the Planned Parenthood videos to start another conversation; a different conversation about abortion. Let's throw out the false canard that a fetus is not a living being. True, a human fetus must incubate inside the womb for nine months, unlike a kangaroo fetus which leaves the womb at a month and lives outside in the pouch, until fully grown. Is a kangaroo fetus considered a living being because it lives outside the womb, despite the fact that it is as helpless as a human fetus in the womb, while a human fetus is just cells?
The abortion debate has devolved over time into one issue- a woman's right to choose based on women's health issues
The abortion debate has devolved over time into one issue- a woman's right to choose based on women's health issues. Yet, thankfully, in America, only 650 women die from complications from a pregnancy. Would prefer that it were zero but it is not a health catastrophe as it is in third world countries. Rape and incest are often used as scare tactics to prevent opening and broadening the discussion about abortion. So far in 2015, of the more than 685,000 abortions that have been performed in the USA, approximately 6600 abortions were the result of rape or incest. Approximately 33,000 were performed after 4 months gestation, while more than 17,000,000 black babies have been aborted since 1973. The good news is that although 1.06 million abortions were performed in 2011, it's down from 1.21 million abortions in 2008, a decline of 13%. Source
Focusing on women's health as the only criteria for the right to abort erases the fact that more often than not a fetus, potential life, is created by two consenting adults. We have decided, though, that men, who donate half the DNA to this as yet to be born creation, have no rights at all because they cannot incubate their genetic material.
I have watched as over the years of this debate there has been a tendency by those who demand an absolute right to abortion to dehumanize a fetus. Make it into a thing. Some refer to it as a glob. Others, like Bill Maher, deny the facts before their eyes. Science has given us the ability to see a fetus moving in the womb; with sonograms and now 3D sonograms. We can identity all the functioning body parts needed to live outside the womb. We can hear the heartbeat early in the first trimester. While science has given us the ability to humanize the fetus in the womb, pro-choice organizations who call themselves Progressives are busy with language debasing the fetus.
I think we have consciously chosen to call a fetus a thing to make abortion more palatable, easier to perform because we have dehumanized it. We have taken away any notion of life. Have we not learned from the past about the danger in dehumanizing life? Remember Rwanda when the Hutus demonized the Tutsis; defining them as rats and vermin. Easier to kill a rat, to kill vermin than people. The Nazis excelled at that propaganda and at killing living beings, I think beyond their wildest imagination.
If there is to be a truly open and honest debate about abortion, let us have the courage to call what is about to be destroyed by name. Let us not fall prey to disingenuous language and obfuscation. I suggest that how we speak of a human fetus speaks to our humanity; our compassion. Let us have the courage to acknowledge that this isn't about women's health; physical or mental. Abortion is rarely associated with life and death of the mother. It's all about life and death of the fetus - not a tumor nor a hangnail, but a potential, fully formed human being that is more often than not, not wanted.
Diane Weber Bederman is a blogger for ‘Times of Israel’, a contributor to Convivium, a national magazine about faith in our community, and also writes about family issues and mental illness. She is a multi-faith endorsed hospital trained chaplain.
Bill Maher, a man much admired on the left and who speaks to a large audience addressed the selling of fetal body parts by Planned Parenthood as revealed by The Center for Medical Progress. He said "They're not body parts. They're fetal tissue. 'Body parts,' you make it sound like Frankenstein is in there."
