Abortion, revisited

It would’ve passed under my radar, save for a friend’s status update on Facebook on Thursday: “I am mourning the 43 million casualities of Roe v. Wade.” Indeed, Thursday marked the 36th year since the pro-abortion court decision. (I decline the use of the word “anniversary.”) 43 million lives ended. A single life ended is cause for morning; 43 million is cause for sackcloth and ashes.

What’s more, the toll is not limited to the number of hearts stopped by a single act of abortion. My mind lately has been not even on the lives of those children but rather on the social and personal damage done by those who advocate for a "woman's right" to abortion.

In the first place, I cannot understand the push for the so-called “rights” of minors to obtain abortions without parental consent or notification. Though most states have at least parental notification (if not consent) laws on the books, the elasticity of “undue burden” and our nation’s general moral elasticity will certainly allow minor abortion-on-demand before too long. How deeply ironic that states that would prohibit minors from legally having their ears pierced without parental consent, or being caught with alcohol even with parental consent would allow the same young woman they consider a child to undergo an invasive procedure without her parents even having the right to know about it. As a parent, I find this trampling of parents’ rights horrifying. Certainly, there are some situations in which a girl’s pregnancy is the result of incestual rape; clearly, such a child should have some recourse to the law rather than be forced to face an abusive father. Yet such cases assuredly represent the tiniest fraction of teens who seek abortion; for “the rest of us” parents who will or may some day deal with a teenage girl of reproductive age, the possibility of our teenage daughter undergoing an abortion without our knowing about it should be horrifying. Assuming that our child still lives under our roof and still receives support from us, we parents have the God-given right to know what is going on with our child, regardless of whether or not said child desires this. I believe that opinions contrary to this are not held in the interests of protecting women themselves, but in the interest of “women’s rights” and “abortion rights.”

Secondly, I cannot help but laugh (in a mirthless way, I admit) that one of society’s buzzwords these days is “Responsibility.” Responsibility! The irony of an abortion society speaking of responsibility slays me. How can a society teach that “Responsibility is a virtue” teach in the following breath that if one unintentionally becomes pregnant, the most “responsible” thing to do is to pretend that the mistake never happened and just do away with it? Responsibility, in my estimation, is taking a look at what one is doing (“I am having sex”), what the consequences might be (“I may become pregnant”), and then fully owning the choice and the possible consequences (“If I do become pregnant, I will not abort my child”). It brings to mind an article I read several months ago that discussed the possibility of a weight-loss pill that would let one eat as much as he wanted without the natural consequence of weight gain. My reaction to this possibility is revulsion: The decision one makes about what to put into his body needs to have real-world consequences. One needs to take, yes, responsibility for his food choices. Regarding abortion, I would argue that a society that allows and promotes abortion cannot possibly be one that truly believes in the “virtue” of responsibility, at least not enough to bother practicing it.

Lord have mercy.