This column is in response to the many pieces that have recently aired abortion-rights opinions in the Daily.
If we are to regain a moral foundation for legal and medical ethics, the “right” to terminate another human life ought to be restricted by law to curb what I consider premeditated murder and limit the violation of a fetal human’s right to life to cases of true medical necessity.
Induced abortion, far from being “safe,” is lethal to the pre-birth womb inhabitants; the mother decides to remove from her protective maternal custody by violent force (induced abortion). Saying induced abortion is “legal,” as seven Supreme Court justices did in January 1973, does nothing to assure equal protection of the law for fetal human lives. In fact, failure to restrict induced abortion to cases of true medical necessity is a travesty of justice, which has become the most common form of medical practice used to extinguish genetically healthy human lives.
The abortion rights community has been complicit in the “legal” and “medical” extermination of more than one-fifth of the pregnancies since Roe v. Wade’s elevation of a woman’s privacy rights over the fetal right to life. As a result, the legal and medical communities in our nation have sanctioned the violent termination of more than 37.5 million pre-birth fetal humans since Jan. 22, 1973, more deaths than the total casualties in World War I. More induced abortions have been reported in Hennepin County than United States deaths in the Vietnam War over a similar 10-year time period. If all induced abortions were prohibited by law except for cases of true medical necessity, there would be 750,000 to 1 million more births of babies each year. (I use this specific number because the government of our nation is now about four years behind frequency, reporting 2001 data in November 2005.)
Abortion frequency induced by medical doctors peaked in 1990 at less than 1.5 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s surveillance summaries on this topic. Assertions that “there would be a few extra million children born every year” is an inaccurate statement according to the CDC’s statistics on legal induced abortion frequency since the epidemiology watch on this topic was established in 1969.
Making premeditated murder of the innocent and defenseless pre-birth baby via induced abortion methods illegal may not prevent mothers from having their own pre-birth babies exterminated. But if it were not once again illegal, the legal and medical communities would take a great stride toward correcting a Supreme Court arrogation of power in defiance of statute law enacted by more than 40 state legislatures prior to Roe v. Wade. Is majority rule really assisted when seven black-robed people can overrule thousands of duly elected state legislators?
Some try to find ways around laws prohibiting the murder of the innocent. Does that make it right to legalize violent assaults upon the defenseless by medically licensed practitioners? Anti-abortion laws would elevate the protective capacity of the legal and medical communities in our nation, providing the laws created to protect fetal heartbeats and brainwaves. Such laws could create a more humane environment for low income families by making fetal lives worthy of protection and legally enforceable actions. They would not be as dismissive of the lives of poor people as current legalization of induced abortions without motivating true medical necessity.
The United States should be an ethical leader for Canada, our neighbors to the south and the rest of the world. Currently, we are permitting doctors to legally terminate more than one-fifth of all pregnancies, many of them “elective” rather than “therapeutic” in nature, with no true medical justification for such life-ending actions. Pre-birth babies may be small, but they already exist, and given time for cell division, nourishment, protection and love, will become children if they survive their mother’s pregnancy and are born. Many columns seem to suggest pre-birth fetal humans are not as worthy of protection and nourishment as those who have been born.
Really being pro-life is to never take an action that destroys or intentionally attacks the life of another human-being.
Abortion will become a thing of the past when women prioritize maternal protection of every fetal life they carry and men agree to protect those lives against any would-be assailants. We’ve been losing those battles every day for more than three decades now thanks to the failure of our Justices to uphold such laws. I believe it is time we stopped making fetal lives pay the penalty for teenage and adult sexual behavior.
Consider please, that about half of those babies being aborted are probably female in gender. How does abortion advance women’s rights in light of this? Please consider opinions in light of the statistical database available on this topic. I see 37.5 million good reasons for that reconsideration.
Charles Smit is a resident of Wabasha. Please send comments to [email protected].
