Posted on 06/08/2003 5:44:03 AM PDT by RJCogburn
AFTER Roe v. Wade, 30 years crept by before New Hampshire placed a single restriction on abortion. Last week, the Legislature passed a bill requiring, in most cases, that parents be notified before an underage daughter can have an abortion.
Once Gov. Craig Benson signs the bill as promised, New Hampshire will lose its dubious distinction of being the only state in the country with no restriction on a procedure that is becoming increasingly more difficult to justify as the years go by.
As more time passes since the U.S. Supreme Court decision forbidding states from outlawing abortion, the harder it becomes to defend abortion as either a privacy issue or a woman’s right.
With each passing year and subsequent study on pregnancy, science discredits those who contend that the content of a woman’s uterus is a mere clump of cells, an appendix of the mother, something with no potential for life without a nine-month commitment from a woman.
Babies born in the second trimester, when abortion is considered legally acceptable because the fetus supposedly isn’t viable, now routinely survive and thrive. Unwanted embryos created in laboratories truly look like clumps of cells, but are adopted and transplanted into women who have trouble conceiving.
Such examples of viability were unthinkable when Roe v. Wade was handed down. Science can change social thinking so much in three decades. This is not just a pro-life viewpoint. Even Newsweek notes in tomorrow’s edition the relationship between science and abortion politics.
Thirty years from now, a woman seeking to end her unwanted pregnancy might be told by her doctor that the 4-week-old life inside her could be removed and given to a good adoptive mother that very same day - with no more physical inconvenience than a first-trimester abortion, and with far less emotional duress than traditional 20th century adoption.
What will a woman say then? “I understand you can remove this fetus from me and give him or her to a good home, but it’s my right to have this fetus removed and then killed instead.” Surely women won’t be that black-hearted in 2033?
Even in 2003, it’s becoming embarrassing to demand abortion whenever, wherever and however.
In Washington last week, Democrats joined Republicans in Congress to pass a ban on partial-birth abortions. The more Congress learned about how doctors deliver second- and third-trimester fetuses - who often are viable on their own - halfway out of the mother only to stab them in the base of the skull with surgical scissors, the less sincerely Congress could defend canards like “a woman’s right” and “medical privacy.” Partial-birth abortion is no different than infanticide, and Congress tacitly admits this.
With every passing day between 1973 and 2003, science has helped blur the difference between abortion and infanticide. Thanks to an expanding field of research on prenatal care, society is coming to regard the pre-born baby as a real baby.
Sonogram pictures of one’s pre-born kids are everywhere these days. They are pinned to office bulletin boards, placed in picture frames on the desk, slipped into plastic sleeves in the wallet. Family members and colleagues pass these fuzzy black and white images around with glee, and usually having learned the baby’s sex from the sonogram, talk about “Caitlin” or “Max” as though the child was already cradle-able. Is it OK to abort Caitlin or Max?
Upon learning they’re pregnant, women nowadays don’t quit working, but they do quit smoking and having their hair colored, lest the chemicals interfere with fetal development. A woman who enjoys a glass of wine while she’s pregnant is often forced to defend herself, as onlookers grow wide-eyed at the sight of such “child abuse.” But a “dilation and evacuation” (aka partial-birth abortion) procedure wouldn’t be considered child abuse?
Equalization of the sexes has brought fathers out of waiting rooms and into delivery rooms in the past 30 years. Fathers are expected to show up for every sonogram appointment, to attend birthing classes, and to coach delivery. “We’re pregnant,” you hear couples say. Coed baby showers are becoming the norm.
How can a woman then turn around and claim, “Ultimately, it’s my body,” when society is finally acknowledging it’s a third person’s body in question, for which two other bodies are equally responsible?
Although New Hampshire’s parental notification bill addresses the relationship of the pregnant woman to her parents, and not the pregnant woman to her pre-born child, it’s still a baby-step in the right direction for the Granite State. Perhaps it should not be surprising that it took 30 years of science and societal change to move a state so practiced in skepticism.
Using the argument, that a baby is just an appendage is like saying "cut my arm off". But if you cut someone's arm off, there is a loss to that person "as a whole". Cut a baby out and there is no loss to that person "as a whole". Only the baby loses.
And what we also know is that the law has always held that an unborn child, until they become a living, breathing sentient being, outside of the mothers womb, has no rights.
So that being true instead of trying to restrict the rights of the individual, and thereby increasing the rights of government, why don’t we look into extending rights to the unborn child? It seems to me that none of the pro life groups ever consider that by giving the government the right to tell one that they cannot have an abortion, they are by default seting the precedent for the government to, at some future time, dictate that one must have an abortion. After all, we are setting the principle that rights in this matter do not reside with the individual, but with the government.
Do you understand the difference between the two choices?
So clearly murdering one's neighbor shouldn't be illegal, right?
And understandable so.
We set the precedent for the government to murder a long time ago. It's called capital punishment.
My God - we have more laws protecting swan & goose eggs than we do unborn children! If I go out to the lake I live on and addle a swan egg I'll go to federal prison but if I go to the local abortionist/murderer it's okay. What's wrong with this picture?
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