THE hot topic. Really has been for the last couple decades. About to be again, with a vengeance, as the Supreme Court is about to overturn it's legality, as it should have done years ago.
As is usually the case with big hot-button issues like this, the majority of the general public doesn't know the actual facts and truths, and instead are much more eager to form their opinions both on what they're told by others and what they see in the media. Social media has muddied those waters exponentially.
There's a ton of "myth-busting" websites out there, both for and against abortion. Each one basically cancels out the other. But they cover all types of topics including racism, Christianity, American citizen support, safety, infertility, etc. But most of it is just blather. None of it really gets to the crux of this issue, but is rather just trying to sway us to their cause. I'd like to get down to the heart of the matter.
First, the myths:
1) Abortions are necessary because of rape -- Abortions in the case of rape account for anywhere from just under 3% to less than 1% of all total abortions, depending on which data you look up. Regardless, it's such a low number, it's hardly worth including in the legality discussion.
2) Making abortion illegal puts women's health at risk. -- In and of itself, that's mostly an outright lie by the abortion industry. There is nothing inherently dangerous about not being able to legally obtain an abortion. Is it true that sometimes -- VERY rarely -- pregnancies need to be terminated to save the Mom's health? Yes. But we'll get to just how rare that is later.
3) Roe vs. Wade was about women's health. -- It was no such thing. Roe sued so she could have the right to kill off her kid because she wanted to. That's it. In fact, Texas law at the time -- it was Texas legislation she sued against -- had a provision against abortion except in cases where the Mother's health was in danger. Read this little tidbit from a synopsis of the Roe case put together by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. It reads, "A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life." (Emphasis mine.) The abortion debate has always revolved around the CHOICE of abortion, rather than the medical NEED for one. The reality is that medical professionals have always had, and still do today, the option of terminating a pregnancy if the Mom's life is in danger.
First, the myths:
1) Abortions are necessary because of rape -- Abortions in the case of rape account for anywhere from just under 3% to less than 1% of all total abortions, depending on which data you look up. Regardless, it's such a low number, it's hardly worth including in the legality discussion.
2) Making abortion illegal puts women's health at risk. -- In and of itself, that's mostly an outright lie by the abortion industry. There is nothing inherently dangerous about not being able to legally obtain an abortion. Is it true that sometimes -- VERY rarely -- pregnancies need to be terminated to save the Mom's health? Yes. But we'll get to just how rare that is later.
3) Roe vs. Wade was about women's health. -- It was no such thing. Roe sued so she could have the right to kill off her kid because she wanted to. That's it. In fact, Texas law at the time -- it was Texas legislation she sued against -- had a provision against abortion except in cases where the Mother's health was in danger. Read this little tidbit from a synopsis of the Roe case put together by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. It reads, "A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life." (Emphasis mine.) The abortion debate has always revolved around the CHOICE of abortion, rather than the medical NEED for one. The reality is that medical professionals have always had, and still do today, the option of terminating a pregnancy if the Mom's life is in danger.
4) My body, my choice. -- As a society, we really don't subscribe to this notion under any other medical circumstance outside of abortion. Yes, people, generally speaking, have a say-so in their own healthcare. But mostly, it's about what a doctor CAN'T do, as opposed to what they CAN. A doctor can advise a patient that he or she needs a particular surgery, but any coherent patient has the right of personal refusal if they choose. Conversely, one cannot force a doctor to perform a surgery under the banner of "my body, my choice." You can walk into a doctor's office with your leg snapped in half, but you cannot force that doctor to perform a surgery just because it's "your choice." Medical and surgical procedures, are, by and large, performed only on an as-necessary basis, through the coordination of the patient and the doctor. "My body, my choice," rarely plays a factor in those decisions if something is deemed medically necessary. Moreover, doctor's make decisions without patient consent every day in trauma care facilities where life or death is on the line. We pay doctor's to do that. If a decision needs to be made to save a patient's life and they're not conscious to make it, the decision gets made regardless.
Of course, the obvious elephant-in-the-room objection to this is simple. An abortion isn't about a women's body. It's about a baby's body. There's really no way around that.
5) No uterus, no opinion / Men have no say in an abortion. -- That's just offensive to men like me. There is not a woman on the planet, despite what CNN might contend, who has any chance of getting pregnant without the assistance of a male, either directly or indirectly. Simply not possible. For men who are responsible, caring partners and fathers-to-be, they have just as much right in the say-so of the baby's life as the mother. To insist otherwise is just evil.
6) Planned Parenthood is not about abortion, but rather provides vital women's healthcare. -- This is mostly a lie. Planned Parenthood does indeed offer women's health services beyond abortions. However, they do not offer a single health benefit that any woman can't get with her family doctor and the local hospital clinics. My wife birthed two babies and there wasn't a single benefit PP could have offered her that wasn't available to her through our regular health system. Moreover, now that Obamacare has made healthcare mandatory for everybody even if they can't afford it, there is literally no need for PP outside of their abortion services that aren't readily offered by standard medical facilities.
More importantly, it should be noted that PP was founded for the sole purpose of providing abortions, are BY FAR the largest abortion provider in the US, and every PP facility that is opened is REQUIRED to offer abortions. And, according to data, over 90% of the services rendered to pregnant women who go to PP are abortions. Planned Parenthood is about abortions. Period.
7) Life begins at birth -- Any sane person knows this isn't true. ALL rational medical data proves life begins at conception. There is no scientific data anywhere that shows otherwise. It doesn't exist. Abortion ends the life of an innocent child. Period.
Now, the truths:
1) We've already talked about rape percentages. There are those who contend those percentages are low because many women are afraid to come forward and go public after a rape. There is most likely some truth to that, and some of the data you'll find tries to take that information into account. However, the number is so low to begin with, that no significant authority I've read reasonably contends that the number would go up at all significantly. A couple percentage points, maybe? Still leaving the number so low it shouldn't factor in to the overall legality of abortion. Less than 1% to even 5% or 7% is not a number that validates recreational abortion. Programs could be put into place that cost a lot less money and don't sacrifice millions of unborn babies to assist pregnant women who have truly been raped. It's sad we don't already have those programs in place. And despite what Liberals would like you to believe, Conservatives in general are not opposed to having a conversation about abortion options in the case of rape or incest.
2) Women's health -- Again, a quick look at the stats show that necessary pregnancy terminations to save the mother's life are infinitesimally small. Like, off-the-charts low. Truthfully, actual health of the baby itself holds a bigger percentage for reasons for an abortion than does the health of the mother. Overall, preserving the health of the mother accounts for 5-7% of all abortions.
3) The debate, as it stands, and at its most vile push, is completely about recreational abortion. Again, depending on the data you choose, but looking over data from the CDC, the World Health Organization, and independent sites like USAFacts.org and Abort73.com, recreational abortions account for anywhere from 75-85% of abortions, WORLDWIDE, and it's even higher in black communities than white communities. All the other talking points are just that -- talking points. A vain way to validate a woman's choice to kill off her baby just because she wants to. Liberals, in general, do not like being told what to do, and rather, LOVE dictating what everybody else does. (Interestingly, most PRO-abortion sites I've visited, like Prochoice.org, Prochoiceamerica.org, and the Planned Parenthood site don't list statistics on REASONS for abortions. Wonder why that is?)
4) Adoption is too freaking expensive and difficult -- Ridiculously so. Why our country allows a woman to take an afternoon and kill off a child, but charges tens of thousands of dollars and forces good, solid families to wait months, and even years, to adopt a child is beyond me. Asking adoptive parents to put a little skin in the game and be vetted thoroughly is wise, but the process is needlessly too exhaustive, difficult and expensive. If it were not so, FAR more good people would be willing to step up and adopt.
5) Criminalizing recreational abortion will result in much greater number of problem children. -- It's true. But then, whose fault is that? It's not mine. I chose to have children, raise and support them, and help them to become useful citizens of society. Millions of parents do that everyday. Should millions of children be sacrificed because we have a nation full of men and women who choose -- CHOOSE -- to be immature, irresponsible, horrible parents, and dregs of society? Is that really the answer? Is it too much to believe the most powerful, wealthy nation on the planet can't come up with a better system?
6) Conservatives like me are not against saving a mother's life by all means necessary. While the strictest definition of abortion is the termination of any pregnancy, the definition of abortion we're debating is "recreational abortion." Simply put, there has never been a doctor prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy in any case where it was determined without doubt the mother's life was in danger. As noted before, that scenario was never illegal prior to Roe vs. Wade. And despite the lies that "doctor's can now be put in prison for life for saving a woman's life," it literally has never happened.
As noted above, doctors, on a daily basis, make necessary decisions to save people's lives, and in rare occasions, that decision involves terminating a pregnancy. To date, no doctor has ever been prosecuted for making that decision when it has been deemed authentic.
I have no problem admitting publicly -- and have done so many times -- that I emphatically made clear to my wife's OB doctor during her second pregnancy that I had no qualms with sacrificing our unborn baby if it meant saving my wife's life. Many of those reading this know our second son was born 11 weeks premature. However, my wife's water broke at 26 weeks, landing her in the 24 hour care of a hospital bed. After a week or so, the complications of the pregnancy began piling up and my wife's overall health was declining. The drugs they were using to help our son were in turn hurting my wife. I would have none of it, and told my doctor he needed to make a decision that most benefitted my wife, and that I had no reservations if those decisions put our unborn baby in peril. I'm not ashamed of it, and would make the same decisions again in a heartbeat.
The boogeyman argument that doctors are gonna start going to jail for terminating pregnancies to save a woman's life just aren't true. The stories you see floating around social media about 11 year old girls who get raped and women who have a disaster happen at 21 weeks when the law cutoff is 20 weeks are so rare, they're not valid arguments for recreational abortion. If you are in favor of sacrificing millions of innocent babies so one 11 year old girl (who's likely going to get the help she needs anyway) can get an abortion, then I'd say your priorities might be a little out of whack.
Should we help the 11 year old rape victim? Absolutely! And I have no problem with the idea that that help should come from the state, but there's no reason that can't be done without sacrificing millions of other innocent babies. If our government, and Planned Parenthood, wanted to do something right, they'd have real programs in place to help innocent young rape victims, and women who find themselves in medical catastrophes. And instead of funneling public money into killing innocent babies, they'd funnel that money to programs that seriously reduce the cost of adoption for the millions of families who would like to adopt and can't afford to!
If an 11 year old girl is raped, there should be a program she can go into, wherein she is taken care of medically, counseled, loved, and paired with a loving couple who will take the baby and raise it right. Why can't that happen? Abortion need not be legal for that to occur. There are billions of dollars spent on abortion every year, plenty of money to put good care programs in place for women who truly find themselves in trouble, and funds which will drastically reduce the cost of adoption.
The crux of the issue is simple -- all the hoopla you see on the news, all the protesters you see carrying around cartoon pictures of vaginas are all arguing for one thing: the choice to kill off a baby simply because they want to. There's not a single, rational person arguing AGAINST helping rape victims and women in medical peril, so there's no reason to be protesting anything in those regards. We're arguing against killing off a child just because someone was irresponsible and is now deciding they don't want to be a parent. Period. That's all it's about.
It's wrong. It's evil. And it should be outlawed.
