The abortion division can never be settled

There is no other topic that is so representative of the chasm between the Godly and the ungodly.

In the basket of divisive, good-versus-evil worldview clashes, abortion is unique. It is unique because it alone involves the lives of two individuals, one completely dependent upon the choice of another, who at one time occupied the same place in her mother’s womb. Slavery, the death penalty, torture, concentration camps, economic and violent tyranny, suicide, and possession of deadly weapons by individual citizens all involve decisions made by adults, which affect children, without necessarily also invasively affecting the adults who make them. Abortion uniquely affects both. Therefore, it is unique among these clashes in being truly a zero-sum game.

In cases where the welfare of the mother—her life—must be weighed against the welfare of the child, the mother decides whether to sacrifice her own life to preserve the child’s or to sacrifice the child’s life to preserve her own. In these cases, which today are rare, I don’t think anyone would argue that the mother be consigned to death in preference of the child living. And to set the table for what I’m talking about, I’ll be clear that it’s not this situation.

I’m also not talking about medical decisions based on evidence of fatal conditions in the unborn baby. Incurable cephalic disorders that lead to death or profound disability aren’t part of this equation; neither is Tay-Sachs disease, a fatal genetic disorder among Ashkenazi Jews that can be diagnosed prenatally. These decisions are, morally speaking, up to the parents, though I do have something to say here.

The birth defect spina bifida used to be a guarantee of lifelong disability and an early death. With modern medicine, spina bifida is usually discovered by routine ultrasound examination around 16-18 weeks into pregnancy. There are now prenatal and infant surgical treatments available for this birth defect. In past days, the parents were left with the decision to have a very special needs child who would never walk and be wheelchair-bound, or abortion. Now, that decision is much more complex.

Sickle cell anemia, a condition affecting mostly Black babies (and adults), has various effective medical treatments available. Children with Tay-Sachs can live well into their teenage years. Some babies born with various forms of muscular dystrophy can live completely full and largely independent lives. These diseases are being continually researched and new treatments are tried as our knowledge advances. Who is to say that a baby born today with any of these conditions is guaranteed a short, painful, and unfulfilled life while parents struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide?

The only way to completely snuff out all hope is to commit the unalterable act of terminating the pregnancy.

Moving in toward my main topic: I am also not talking about genetic defects like Downs Syndrome. However, Downs Syndrome is not a death sentence. Many parents of Downs kids love and enjoy their children, who are some of the most peaceful, friendly, and forgiving people on the planet. It’s the same with autistic children—though autism is generally not diagnosed in utero. Read this Twitter thread by S.E. Cupp about special needs kids and parents. Advocating abortion isn’t some mandatory revelation discovered in parenting a special needs kids.

S.E. Cupp @secupp

It’s taken me a minute to decide whether I wanted to share this. But ultimately, iI felt like I had to. Yesterday, @ananavarro, you made an argument that one of the reasons you were pro-choice was because you knew children with special needs, in your family. So do I.

I believe reasonable people can agree on cases where the mother’s life is hanging in the balance of a badly troubled pregnancy. I believe we can reason with each other regarding parent decisions dealing with severe, incurable conditions in the baby. I believe we can even reason on cases of genetic disorders, though the rights of Downs Syndrome kids have been marginalized to the point of genocide. I don’t think anyone can defend genocide.

Where I don’t think people on either side of the abortion divide can ever reach agreement is in abortion for the convenience of the mother. It is here where the rights of the adult human mother conflict with the little human growing inside. The fetus has no ability to assert human rights. It neither knows it has any inherent dignity or value, nor that it is entitled to life. A fetus at 8 weeks lacks any self-awareness, though it is aware of its environment. A warm, nutritious, safe place within mother’s body is all the fetus knows and experiences. To a baby, birth is a violent, shocking emergence into the world, where only the sound of mommy’s voice, the feel of her breath, and the smell of her skin is familiar.

It is in this question of whether babies have a right to experience the safety of a mother’s embrace where we find an unbridgeable chasm.

Nobody would argue (I hope) for the practice of forcibly taking a newborn baby away from its loving mother before the mother could hold it. That would be not only an intolerable incursion into the mother’s rights; it would also be a trouncing of the newborn’s. If the mother wished the baby to be whisked away without seeing it, few would argue it’s not her right, but again, it would be difficult to argue that a baby being held by its mother is detrimental to the baby (of course, let’s not delve into extreme depravity here).

Those who argue for pro-choice, the mother’s choice, to terminate a healthy pregnancy are advocating for selfishness. They argue for the deprivation of the right of a human to be born and exist in this world. They use euphemisms to decorate stark procedures and the death of a little growing human to turn it into some right of the mother to be rid of a burden. They talk of the “products of conception” instead of the miracle of conception, where two genetic halves of a human chromosome pair up from sperm and egg to create a new, unique person who will have that DNA for life.

Another thing I’m not talking about here is babies conceived in rape or incest. Those cases make up less than 3 percent of abortions. There are laws against rape and incest in all states, and there are reasons why it’s illegal. Rapists and incestuous couples are prosecuted for criminal acts independent of the fact that the mother became pregnant or gave birth. We don’t need to rehash abortion rooted in rape or incest. It serves society that neither rape nor incest would exist, but of course, they do. Abortion of the baby, in a healthy pregnancy is in fact secondary in these cases, though a Christian moral framework would encourage the mother, in cases of rape, to gift the child a life on this earth, which is in itself a gift from God.

So let’s talk about a healthy mother and a healthy pregnancy, and does the mother have some right to be free of government interference with her choice to end a pregnancy. The mother is pregnant because she chose to do an act that made her pregnant. She had sex. Maybe she used some form of prophylactic and it failed. Maybe she meant to take a birth control pill and forgot. Maybe she didn’t intend to sleep with the guy she was with, but was drunk. She chose to get drunk. She chose to put herself in circumstances that led to sex. She was aware of the consequences. She got pregnant, and then wants to cancel the act. That’s selfish.

We can’t say that men and women of normal intelligence, and of childbearing age, aren’t aware of how the birds and the bees work. We can’t claim that promiscuous sex somehow is exempt from family planning. We can’t invent tales that contraception is supposed to be ironclad and perfect. In fact, there are all kinds of sayings about “the train pulling out on time” that men hear about not getting their girlfriends pregnant. These facts and warnings have been around since men and women have been getting together—meaning forever. In ancient days, men used sheepskin (which wasn’t always effective). This is a very old problem.

It’s selfish for a couple to get together, have sex, and expect when the woman becomes “with child” that they can simply wipe away their decision by removing the child. Either the child has human dignity and is imbued with a soul, or none of us, born or unborn, are. This is the reason the abortion divide can never be reconciled.

There are really two camps, two worldviews, with irreconcilable claims. Either human beings are soulish beings, having a spark of the divine spirit, transcending the flesh and blood we inhabit, or we are lumps of cells following our senses, our neurons firing, our blood pumping, our hormonal urges, until death takes us and we rot in the ground. In the former, any life that’s taken without consent of its possessor, and the sovereign will of God, is the ultimate rebellion against the Creator. It’s pride, greed, selfishness, hatred—sin. In the latter, it’s the law of the jungle, nature red in tooth and claw.

For any being with ultimate power over another’s life to preserve or end it, there is a profound moral dimension to taking that life. It’s a permanent act. If we are truly souls, then that act must be consistent with God’s laws and wisdom. If we aren’t, then there’s no moral law to overrule our own will for survival, for gain, and for lust. Why bother helping the poor, or caring for the fate of the planet, if the most innocent and powerless among us has no standing? Helping anyone but ourselves is mere vanity and pride taking the form of a kind of fake morality.

Of course, some overtly religious people who claim to be pro-life are as carnal as any pagan. They simply apply their pride and selfishness to a patina of appearing to be Godly. The Bible is replete with warnings about them, and consequences for those who engage in it. But that’s God’s business. Our business is to be wise and consistent in our application of God’s values. That means, in all cases, favoring the life of the innocent, even when sometimes that means sacrifice for the parents. Again, I’m not talking about that a mother must sacrifice her life to save her unborn child’s. But many would, of their own accord.

Holding a worldview that centers around God, His creation, and the immutable nature of His divine spark given to each soul, means that we can’t give women permission to rob those who grow inside them of their innate right to live. Any other worldview that permits that robbery is selfish pride. And until the Great Judgment, and the return of Jesus Christ upon this earth, we will never reconcile those two beliefs.

There is no other topic that is so representative of the chasm between the Godly and the ungodly. And there is no other divide that is so impossible to reconcile on this earth. Until the reign of Christ, we will never settle the issue of abortion, no matter what the courts, or the legislatures, or the nations of this earth decide.

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