Disagreements about abortion nearly always end at the same impasse
writes
Benjamin Duffy at
Patriot Update
—an endless debate about when life begins.
The pro-life position is usually that it begins at conception. The
pro-choice position—and I hate calling them that—is more nuanced, which
is a nice way of saying convoluted. They’re sure that a human being
exists at the moment of birth and that none exists at the moment of
conception, but everything in between is a mystery that they are
curiously uncurious to solve. While the pro-lifers’ preferred point
comes with some of its own problems, it’s at least precise and
non-arbitrary. The same cannot be said of pro-choicers’ squirming
refusal to answer the question.
… For the rabidly pro-abortion, the question of when life begins is not
a scientific one but a matter of deeply held feelings. If a woman
thinks the two-celled organism in her fallopian tube is a child, then
she’s right. But if she thinks that a child just minutes before birth is
merely a problem, then she’s right too. And it doesn’t stop there! Even
when the nurse places the bouncing baby boy in his mother’s arms, his
humanity is still an unsettled question. 
What’s the verdict, mom? Baby or problem?
If mommy gives the thumbs down, the clump of cells in swaddling
clothes can be whisked away to the incinerator. Notice I didn’t say
“killed” because killing implies that a life existed in the first place.
In the sick mind of [an abortionist like] LeRoy Carhart, the child never existed if his
mother never accepted him.
It isn’t possible to understand Carhart’s analysis without
considering how the pro-choice crowd perceives the issue. They believe
that a child is a burden that no one should have to bear without full
consent, ergo he must do a disappearing act if his mother finds him
inconvenient.
Yet everyone knows that the question of when life begins has an
answer, and it isn’t “when mama says so.” Mama could decide that her
four year old is a problem, or her rebellious teenager, but we all agree
that she can’t kill them. (Don’t we? Paging Dr. Carhart…) At some point
life is an unambiguous fact, not subject to interpretation.
Pro-choicers are very, very squeamish about drawing that line because
someone will always cross it and then they will be in the position of
having to condemn it.
The emergence of quick and legal abortion has warped our thinking in
regard to pregnancy. “Baby bumps” are developing children only in the
wombs of mothers who want them, as if nature cares at all what mama
thinks. Our ability to convince ourselves that unwanted children never
really existed in the first place borders on schizophrenic delusion.
… The reason we’re still having this debate forty years after Roe v.
Wade is because ordinary pro-choicers honestly believe that lives are
not at stake. People on the inside of the abortion industry know better,
but they don’t admit it when they know the cameras are rolling. If they
ever spilled the beans the debate would be over because it’s the
premise—that a growing fetus is a life—that’s disputed. The
conclusion—that lives shouldn’t be tossed into a medical waste
container—is not.
