One of the interesting things about the regime of legalized abortion under Roe is that we have pretended that “When does life begin?” is an intriguing question for which we do not have an answer. It’s not only that the decision imposed an answer, though it certainly did, but that the answer was wrong. Any other answer besides “at conception” creates huge ethical problems that our most intelligent people can’t solve.
Think about what happens when we say the unborn is “potential life”: that means at any time up to birth,—and after—we could argue that there is some achievement of independence or consciousness that the person has yet to reach. Before that, it’s said that there is no problem in killing the product of conception. You’ll have to forgive me; we have to deal frankly with the implications of arguments. We see that “potential life” essentially talks about the living being in terms of its ability to defend itself, or to be defended by someone else. In contrast, the “conception” answer treats all the skills and abilities of the nascent person as capacities they already have, even if they can’t use them. Personhood and its dignity isn’t a life stage to be reached; it’s a descriptive quality of being a human individual. We don’t say that a person missing an arm is not human; we say there is a defect. Human beings are supposed to have two arms, et cetera, and anything else is a special case. Do we protect the vulnerable—as often we rightly do—or do we decide that only the strong deserve to live? We were all once these vulnerable people; are we really going to say we don’t know this?
The question does get stickier, in the sense that human sexuality can be abused, and forcibly taken. Rape. I suppose saying that product of conception deserves to live would be painful for some, but no more so than looking into the eyes of the person thus conceived, and saying, “It would be better if you were dead.” These are the stakes, for those exceptions to abortion laws, which we think are so noble and wise. They are not.
This absolute reproductive freedom, begun about 60 years ago, codified in Roe nearly 50 years ago, has made us think that our sexuality carries no responsibilities or duties. This is of course false, but we have killed the results of our choices, before they had a chance to remind us.
I want to reaffirm that I don’t actually believe women are servants, or any such thing. People are right to say that motherhood and fatherhood are limiting. We make choices all the time which cannot be unmade. We maybe ought to respect the power of our sexuality, instead of making others pay the price for us.
One of my favorite shows is called, “Broadchurch.” In it, a young family copes with the murder of their young son. The father, Mark, spends most of the series consumed by grief and anger, unable to move forward. His wife Beth finally says, “You need to decide if we matter enough for you to change.” Mark replies, “What if I can’t?” She retorts, “You’re acting as though life is something that just happens to you.” Let’s make the point: if you can choose to kill, you are certainly not the helpless victim of a baby, at least not in almost all cases. The true patriarchy is the abortion regime. It treats pregnancy like a disease, like the common cold. I can almost hear Jerry Orbach saying, “You’re the one who got Penny in trouble.” The film “Dirty Dancing” is the most patronizing, misogynistic claptrap I have ever seen, and it’s essentially a commercial for Planned Parenthood’s abortion services.
Contemporary feminism is playing word-games now, so that “male” and “female” are whatever you want them to be. Ironic that a movement begun to advance the rights of women is unwittingly erasing women, or at least the frank acknowledgment of their embodied existence. That’s another issue, but is it any wonder that most of abortion’s young victims are girls? Which regime hates women? Not mine.
I could say more, and perhaps I will, but I need to handle the rest of life.
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