Laura Bramble
THE RED MENACE
Laura Bramble
Science has yet to prove when a zygote (the fetus' state for the first 10 weeks of the pregnancy) becomes a true "life" and a fetus is only considered viable (able to survive outside the womb) at 21 weeks. That said, there is a lot of room for the validity of abortion rights supporters' belief that early term abortion is not murder, so there is no moral issue for them. It is simply a procedure. While I think it is a little more complicated than that, the pro-life movement's insistence in making all abortion murder in order to justify their indignation with no scientific evidence to support them is a little simplistic as well.
In yesterday's news, Pro-lifers, while not coming out and publicly supporting the killing, are more than happy to point out that Dr. Tiller was one of the few pracitioners that still perform late term, or partial birth, abortions. To them, that is especially heinous and Dr. Tiller "reaped what he sowed." I can't say as I approve of late term abortions; as a mother, I can't understand having one for anything other than the direst emergency. That said, those emergencies do exist. Many birth defects are not discovered until very late in the pregnancy and many mothers do not develop serious complications that are life threatening until very late in the pregnancy. A woman who chooses to have a late term pregnancy simply to terminate the pregnancy is either making the most difficult choice of her life for reasons we will never understand, or is so un-bonded to her baby that she really is unfit to be a mother and has likely not taken care of her child and her body during pregnancy.
Late term abortions are not common- only about 250 to 300 of these procedures get performed a year, a very small percentage of all abortions performed annually. It is typically extraordinary situations that cause them to be done, making them medically necessary. These few doctors performing these abortions are performing the dirty job that no one else wants to do, but that needs to be done. They are not heroes, but they certainly don't deserve to die.
Besides, if there is knowledge beforehand that childbirth is going to kill the mother or that the child will not survive the trauma of childbirth, isn't that allowing murder too? Will we kill or imprison infants for committing murder in the death of their mothers? Of course not. We all recognize that there are exceptions to every rule, even murder. It is the pro-life movement that wants to convince us that all life is sacred, no exceptions. It is convenient for them to operate under a blanket rule which is bendable when the "need strikes." That is hypocrisy in action.
The next time a foreign civilian is killed by a US bomb, a terrorist is shot dead by a US soldier, or a murderer is executed on death row, I'll be looking for the pro-lifers who will come out to protest the loss of sacred life. I hope my eyes hold out...
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