It is a common phrase for politicians and others to say they are personally against abortion but don’t want to impose their morality on others, and that their goal is to make them safe, legal and rare. (When pressed they will often admit that they think abortion kills an innocent human being. For this analysis I’ll ignore the absurdity of being personally against killing innocent human beings but wanting it to be legal for others to do so. Exhibit A: Rudy G.)
They obviously want abortions to be legal, so their words and actions are consistent there. Most pro-choicers were outraged that Partial Birth Abortion (aka infanticide) was deemed illegal.
What about the safe part? As with most pro-choice arguments, it assumes what it should be proving: that there isn’t another human life at stake. Abortion is never safe for the unborn. Another 4,000 innocent human beings will be crushed and dismembered in the United States today. Without anesthetic.
Do they fight for higher standards in abortion clinics or do they fight against them like the abortionists do? Check out RealChoice for lots of examples of just how unsafe abortions are. I don’t find them doing much in the way of safety at all.
Most importantly, what about the rare part? Consider these things:
- Pro-choicers allege that abortion does does not endanger women’s health (that’s a big lie, but I’ll concede it for the purposes of this argument)
- The cost of a first-trimester abortion is comparable to the cost of a year’s supply of birth control pills
- Abortion allegedly has fewer complications and less medical risks for women than some of the most effective methods of contraception.
So if abortions are supposedly morally neutral and are as safe and cost effective as birth control, why make them rare?
From the Life Training Institute:
“. . . Dr. Jonas claimed that women’s reproductive rights were being threatened because there were less and less physicians willing to perform abortions. If women’s rights can be strengthened by having more physicians performing abortions, then why attempt to make them rare? Is it a problem if a woman simply chooses to forgo contraception and chooses to have an abortion every year? If it is a positive expression of her rights, why not?”
If they really want abortions to be rare, what are they doing about it other than encouraging the spread of disease and giving women a false sense of security by pushing birth control? I’m not against birth control in a broad sense, just the way it is peddled as a perfect preventative.
If they really want less women to elect abortion, then these politicians and other pro-choicers should be big fans of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs, aka Pregnancy Resource Centers). I realize that Planned Parenthood hates CPCs because they reduce abortions, but shouldn’t the “rare” crowd love them?
CPCs don’t do anything remotely political, so they aren’t trying to take away anyone’s “choice.” They are merely acknowledging that there is a choice and presenting their case. They offer a variety of free services to women and girls in need, including: pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, counseling, life skills training, parenting classes, car seats, diapers, formula, clothes, post-abortion trauma classes and more.
Pro-choice Christians should love CPCs as well. After all, they just help the women and share the Gospel (if given permission). But when I ask them if they support CPCs I am typically met with silence.
Planned Parenthood is the same way. If they were truly pro-woman and pro-choice, they would be quick to refer women to CPCs. But these people aren’t pro-choice, they are pro-abortion.
Do pro-choicers really want abortions to be rare? Do they encourage all girls/women to see ultrasounds before having the abortion? Do they support waiting periods? More information for the women? Parental notification laws?
Abortionists want abortions to be rare in the same way that McDonalds’s wants to sell less hamburgers. Politicians who claim to want abortions to be “safe, legal and rare” typically do a lousy job of backing up those words.
I’ll close with this quote by the Pachyderm:
One of the big problems with the “safe, legal, and rare” philosophy is that nothing which is entirely safe, entirely legal, available, and inexpensive is EVER going to be rare. If you want abortion to be rare, you have to make it expensive, unsafe, or illegal.
Filed under: Favorites, Politics, Pro-life | Tagged: abortion, Politics, Pro-life, religion
Wow- you seem to be really dedicated to your cause, me too. Have you ever considered how successful sex education has been in other countries and how our system of making abortion expensive (unavailable), unsafe (deadly) and/or illegal has done NOTHING to lower the number of abortions? They made it illegal for awhile- read some history- that’s not the solution. Why don’t you understand that some women have the intelligence to be trusted w/the moral decision about growing cells and whether they want to grow that into a life- women don’t need men or government telling us how to live. We are rational moral adults, able to make decisions about our bodies, our health and our lives. We do NOT need the government of old white men to tell us what is right. We understand, its not always an easy decision to terminate an early pregnancy but we also know that we are the best stewards of that decision- we are capable of making our own decisions and government need not interfere. Its not like women are sitting there craving abortion like popsicles…in fact…read this citizenkim.com and then THINK for a while- you might change your mind.
Every statement of your comment commits the same question begging logical fallacy that most pro-abortion arguments do: It assumes the unborn aren’t human beings worthy of protection.
For example, if abortion doesn’t kill an innocent human being, then of course the woman should decide whether to have the procedure. But if abortion kills an innocent human being, then the question of the “best steward” to make the decision is irrevelant. No one can rightly make the decision to kill an innocent human being like that.
Life begins at conception. The pro-legalized abortion view is anti-science.
All of your radical feminist slogans can’t change that. Remember that early feminists were pro-life. Susan B. Anthony’s newspaper viewed women having abortions as a symptom of a lack of equality, not the proof of equality. She called abortion “child murder.” “When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged.”
“[Is the woman] guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh! Thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!”
The ones who bomb and murder aren’t really classified as the same pro-life people as the rest of us. Don’t compare abortion to popsicles, abortion is the act of murdering a fetus, and a popsicle is a snack. You eat snacks because it tastes good, you have abortions because it’s convenient. Banning abortion is about as discriminatory as banning murder. And don’t say that most pro-lifer’s are men, there are many pro life women, so it’s not sexist to be pro life. Hillary Clinton for example.