why we should all care about abortion

This is a post I’ve wanted to write for some time, one that brings abortion numbers into clear focus. One casting abortion into its rightful place among the various forms of violent death prevalent in the United States.

Unfortunately, there’s been a problem, one that has stopped me dead in my tracks on several occasions.

You see, I’m a man.

Conventional thinking among abortion advocates holds that a man has no business expressing an opinion on this subject. Abortion, the advocates say, should be between a woman and her doctor. In this view, it appears that a man’s sole role is merely to “support his woman” — emotionally, should she choose abortion, physically and financially, should she not. Otherwise, men are apparently expected to hold our collective tongues and keep our hands off of women’s bodies.

Of course this point of view implicitly concludes that a fetus is not a human being, and does not merit the protection that normally accrue to anyone qualifying as a person. Many pro-abortionists offer an alternate explanation of a fetus’s nebulous status – that “life” begins at birth as opposed to at conception (or at another, subjectively determined time in between) and that prior to birth it is simply a “clump of cells.” The pro-abortionist appears to base this argument on the belief that a child must be capable of survival outside of the mother’s body (as per Roe v. Wade) or even later before it actually achieves the rank of “unique, protected human life.”

I appear to be missing the scientific and moral arguments that underpin this position. It seems to me that identifying the “beginning of a unique human life” at any point in time other than when a sperm fertilizes an egg is arbitrary. Fertilization is when, after all, the stuff of creating a new, distinctive set of DNA actually occurs. Everything beyond that seems to me to be a stage of subsequent growth and development. Many on the pro-abortion side of this controversy appear to sidestep the question of when life begins. I saw one argument that asserted the “personhood” of the fetus was immaterial as long as it existed in a woman’s body, and until it was no longer dependent on her to survive it was her right to kill it. At will. The logic behind her argument – something theoretical about society’s right to dictate how a person’s body is used – was quite unconvincing to me.

If one disagrees with the abortion advocate’s viewpoint (and honestly, I have a difficult time comprehending how abortion advocates can characterize a fetus as “a clump of cells” or a “parasitic organism”), there is another, ugly, alternate name for abortion that unavoidably comes to mind — murder.

If one sees a fetus as a human life, then one must also see abortion as murder. And murder is a subject that no one — male or female — has any business ignoring. Religious beliefs aside, I struggle to see how any civilized society can advocate murder in any form (abortion, capital punishment or euthanasia). If someone does have a persuasive argument in favor of murder, particularly one as seemingly weak as the pro-abortionists “freedom to manage my body the way I want,” then why not extend that argument to include advocating the murder of young children? Any parent can tell you that children represent a substantially larger burden (mentally, physically, and financially) after birth than they did when in the womb. Why don’t pro-abortionists advocate for “child convenience killing?” After all, if human life’s beginning is arbitrarily determined to as a point between conception and birth, it seems an argument could be made to withhold the designation of “personhood” until a child can smile, right? Or crawl? Or speak? Or perhaps until they have a high school diploma?

We don’t make such arguments because we know they are wrong.

Of course, there are many wrongs in today’s world, all screaming for a tiny sliver of our attention. We know murder is wrong. And so is assault. Racism is wrong. As is cruelty to animals. So what makes abortion such a big deal?

It’s the numbers.

To illustrate my point, I collected data on various forms of violent and non-violent death in the United States from 2010 (the latest year with complete data). Here they are:

• Criminal executions — 46
• Murders – 16,539
• Suicides – 38,364
• Influenza & Pneumonia — 56,979
• Strokes — 128,978
• Cancer — 584,881
• Heart Disease — 611,105
• Abortions – 765,651

Based on the numbers, abortion stands out. It is the leading cause of death in the United States. Greater than the “great killers” of heart disease and cancer. Almost 50 times more common than murder. Four orders of magnitude greater than the government’s executions of criminals.

It is an astonishing total.

And although the abortion body count has declined in recent years – a desirable outcome, to be sure – it makes my heart ache to live in a country where the routine murder of the unborn is common. Abortion as the great moral crisis of our time. And I cannot remain silent, even if present day thinking claims that men’s opinions on this subject are invalid and irrelevant.

Men, don’t allow your voices to be silenced on this issue. A favorite tactic in today’s debates over anything controversial is to question your right to hold a belief, or to label your opinion itself as “bigoted” or (in this case) “misogynistic.” Toughen up. It isn’t okay to sit on the sidelines and dispassionately ignore our modern American holocaust, offering the lame excuse that “abortion is between a woman and her doctor.” You have a mouth and a keyboard, and the right to express your opinion over this moral outrage.

As noted Irish statesman Edmund Burke wisely said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Respectfully…

TS