The latest that I've heard purports that, since abortion is allowed (supposedly) by the Torah, to make abortion illegal is to violate the religious rights of Jewish women. It's hard to imagine anything more absurd. I've never read the Torah, but I imagine it allows its adherents to keep livestock, yet there are laws in many cities to prevent it. Unless the Torah commands one to have an abortion, anti-abortion laws can in no way be called a violation of the Jewish religion.
Here's another: if abortion is illegal, then women have fewer rights than men. The truth is that women already have more rights than men. Men have zero say in whether the baby they fathered lives or dies. Men are automatically guilty in the majority of harrassment suits brought against them. Men can not get child custody rights unless they can prove the grossest negligence on the part of the child's mother. To make men and women equal, you would have to give the father an equal voice in every abortion. So don't go there.
Abortion should be legal, it's been said, because otherwise teens who have abortions will be arrested and jailed. Is that supposed to be news? Yes, violators of laws face arrests and penalties, and, yes, some will no doubt be frightened teens. I would imagine that every lawbreaker is frightened when he or she is caught. As with any law, the hope is that people, young and old, will elect to obey the law and save themselves from the penalties.
How about this one: abortion laws impact poor people more than rich people. Absolutely true. Everything impacts poor people more than rich people, because rich people have more resources to deal with every situation and, thus, more choices. So please stop using this pseudo-argument as a justification for anything. Otherwise, there can be no laws of any kind.
Now let's look at the anti-abortion arguments.
There is only one: it is and ought to be illegal to kill an innocent person. We call that murder. That's the beginning and the end of it.
So there is only one question to answer: is a child in the womb a person? All other considerations are meaningless. If it is a person, then you can't kill it, even if it is temporarily within your body and dependent upon you for life. If it is not a person, then cut it up, poison it, rip it out, burn it, do whatever you like to it.
For those of us who are Christians, and not every anti-abortionist is by a longshot, the Word of God gives the answer. Samson was chosen by God to be a Nazarite while still in the womb (Judges 13:7), Jeremiah was ordained a prophet by God while still in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5), John the Baptist leaped for joy while still in the womb (Luke 1:41). For us, God's Word on the subject is enough, and God treats the unborn as persons. Those who reject God's testimony can look to science. DNA evidence tells us that the baby in the womb is a distinct person from the mother. Men have been sent to prison for life on less evidence.
But we can not look to personal opinion, or to what the unborn child looks like, or to society to determine personhood. That's where we were three centuries ago when Africans were declared by both society and public opinion to be non-persons because they looked different. Did public opinion make them truly not persons? No, nor ever will. Let's not heap that same evil indignity on the unborn.
One last point: if there is the tiniest grain of doubt as to whether that fetus is a person or not, then we must, not should, but must not destroy it. Better to find out when you stand at the Judgement that you protected something that was not a person, than to find that you murdered someone. What spurious argument will you offer then?
No comments:
Post a Comment