Roe v Wade

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris assume that a majority of the US population want Roe v. Wade enshrined in law; (https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-says-if-amy-coney-barrett-overturns-roe-v-wade-hell-make-it-law-land-1536546 ) but what if that isn’t really the case.

Roe v Wade has been controversial all these years due to different beliefs as to when life starts. As a high school debater, I understood the concept of life beginning at conception. I also understood the concept of life beginning at birth. Events that clearly demark or trigger a change of status. Logical points of defense and debate. But what I didn’t understand were the arguments regarding first trimester abortions were okay but second and third trimester abortions were not.

And then in my thirties, I got pregnant. All of a sudden, I also understood the arguments of what I considered parsers of the debate. When the baby kicked it was alive; before that it wasn’t.

Some like Elizabeth Warren during her campaign for President make economic arguments. Namely when abortion is forbidden by law that it really only applies to the poor as the wealthy are wealthy enough to go to areas where it is allowed and if they so choose, do so. But that is an economic argument not a moral argument.

If we morally decide that killing is wrong, be it through euthanasia or outright killing, then whenever the fetus is determined to be alive, killing should also be wrong. If you support euthanasia and the death penalty, supporting abortion is quite consistent. If you don’t support euthanasia and the death penalty, supporting abortion makes no sense. And yet most of the strongest supporters of abortion do not support the death penalty.

The messaging argument of pro-choice, of a women’s right to control her body, is just that a messaging argument not a moral argument. Does that women also have a right to kill a child, kill an attacker, kill a rapist, euthanize her parents? If she does then she should also have the right to kill a fetus. If she doesn’t then, the fact that the fetus is within her should not be a reason to allow her to kill a fetus.

When Roe v Wade was decided, severely pre-mature births almost always resulted in death; but today more and more extremely premature babies are able to be saved and kept alive. So why is eliminating a fetus OK, when eliminating a child is not?

So the mother is in trouble physically and so abortion should be OK. Not necessarily, maybe it is best to save the unborn child then the mother. Yes, when a choice can be made, it should be made but we should not assume that the mother’s life is always more important than the child’s.

The reality is that the American public is not as sure about this subject as it would appear which is why it is still so contentious. Ross Douthat, a columnist for the NY Times, recently had a great article on the subject: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/opinion/sunday/supreme-court-democrats-republicans.html

Probably the most shocking line for me was the following Gallup poll statistic: “public opinion barely changes — stuck at around 20 percent pro-life, 30 percent pro-choice, 50 percent unsure.”

Looking into the original data at Gallup one sees that the number of pro-choice is growing very, very slowly. I have to wonder if it is a real change or the pressure of the press and the desire of people to fit in. I can’t imagine anyone saying that they were pro-life these days; who wasn’t 100% pro-life. As a woman if you are pro-life you are almost branded as a traitor to your sex. You should be able to control your body right? You should and really must be pro-choice. Just watch how Amy Coney Barret is being treated.

Amy Coney Barrett has written that life starts at conception:

https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/lazy-i-students-faculty-mark-40-years-of-roe/

but even more importantly she has actually made a life choice to have a special needs child. That personal action supports her view a lot stronger than mere words. Needless to say, I have heard of women who were pro and who when it came time to decide what to do with a personal pregnancy decided not to do it and those who were con and did. When words meet actions, the reality of your convictions is sometimes not quite as great as you thought. In her case, it is pretty clear where she stands.

A woman who isn’t pro-abortion. However she is treated by the press, by politicians and others as if not being "pro-choice" was not appropriate for a women . Just to clarify while I could support Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to SCOTUS because of her views on abortion, I actually don't support her nomination because of her views on the Affordable Care Act and Medicare for all, which she is against.

But back to the polls, let’s consider those who responded to the poll and say they were always pro-choice; I can imagine the small additional increments over time to be a lot of those people responding in that way due to societal pressure not an intrinsic belief.

The reality is that some people think that in reality nobody is "pro-abortion;" once upon a time I might have agreed with this thesis. But organizations like Planned Parenthood have made abortion into effectively the moral equivalent of a contraceptive. A new generation of women are being pushed to believe that abortion is a type of contraception and that is just plain wrong! That messaging needs to stop and is worth fighting against.

So what am I? If you haven’t figure it out, although like over fifty percent of us, I certainly go back and forth on the spectrum. Realistically these days, I am much closer to pro-life then pro-choice. Pro-choice is very effective marketing but it is not a moral position that I can support. It may turn out there are a lot more of us then what some people including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the left would really like to believe.