The arguments favouring legalized abortion rest up moral and philosophical sophistries as well as biological ignorance.
The proponents of legalized abortion treat the unwanted unborn child as a nothing. The wanted unborn child? He’s a baby, a full-fledged member of the family. Some advocates of legalized abortion are so convinced that the baby is member of the family, they acknowledge the need for a law recognizing the unborn victim of crime.
What the proponents of legalized feticide say is that the worth of the unborn child is based solely on the will of the mother. Even though they do not act that way, when the child is wanted.
How can Canada tolerate such a double standard?
The wanted unborn child is as beloved as any other child of the family. No one says of him: he is worthy because I said so. That would be shallow and meaningless. I could just as easily say: this lamp beside me should be considered a human being because I said so! Nobody would take that seriously.
Most people at least implicitly acknowledge that the worth of the wanted unborn child comes from his intrinsic beauty, that of being the fruit of someone’s love; that of being one’s own flesh and blood.
But God forbid should that unborn child be diagnosed with a disease that is difficult to treat! More often than not, if the pregnancy is not too advanced, his membership in both the immediate family and the human family is revoked. And although you may read of women saying “it’s best for the child” and other such non-sense, we know that born children are not treated that way. His intrinsic worth is no longer recognized. The mother’s behaviour no longer reflects his worth, but his inconvenience.
How can we accept that human worth is not intrinsic; and if we do, how can we accept that all human beings, including the unborn, are not equal?
Oh sure, when we receive news of a wanted baby, we act like the baby’s worth is intrinsic. Nobody says “congratulations on your blob of tissue!” or “Hey, fantastic, there’s a human parasite living in you!”. Nobody would have the gall to do that.
But supporters of legalized feticide store in a dark compartment of their minds some sophistry justifying the inferior status of the fetus, to be produced in case that unborn child is deemed inconvenient. It’s stored deep into the darkest recesses of their minds: they wouldn’t want to spoil a wanted pregnancy with that same sophistry. So it’s tucked away, to be trotted out for teenaged moms, Down syndrome babies and online abortion debates. And tucked back when their female friends are pregnant.
The truth is, Canadian society is double-minded about the unborn, and does not want to confront the contradictions between thought and acts.
It is that lack of cognitive dissonance towards those contradictions that sustains legalized abortion. The swirl of emotion that surrounds the debate, or the swirl of emotion that surrounds the circumstances of friends’ abortions—or one’s own—make us reluctant to face them, because in the end we want to feel okay about it. The alternative to feeling okay is undertaking the hard reality of pregnancy, parenthood or possibly placing the baby for adoption. The prospect of that feeling incites us to think on an emotional level, because should a dispassionate examination of facts and logic lead us to conclude the only moral choice is no legalized abortion—we won’t feel okay about it. Because the only way to feel okay is to require anything difficult of ourselves or others. As if doing the right thing in the face of adverse circumstances could never bring a feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment. The only way to avoid this logical trap is to think emotionally, because emotions can withstand contradiction. Reason cannot.
Many people think of pro-lifers as bigots. That charge of bigot is an emotional reaction. What bigotry is there in asserting the right to life of unborn children? Bigotry is the obstinate but ignorant belief of prejudices. How can women be prejudiced against themselves? How can women who’ve had abortions and come to understand it’s murder be bigots?
The truth is the cry of “bigot” is meant to be an emotionally-charged label, to paint pro-lifers as thoughtless people. When in truth, the only real bigotry is lies in the attitudes towards the unborn child, and in the spread of misinformation of his biological development. The attitude towards the unborn, that uplifts him as a family member when he is wanted, but de-humanizes when he is not, is the greatest bigotry of all.
What we, as a society, try to suppress in order to preserve the convenience of legalized feticide is that the humanity of the unborn child is a socially accepted fact.
What must be done now is eliminate the double standard that distinguishes wanted and unwanted. It is through the elimination of this double standard that unborn children will be acknowledged as persons and obtain legal rights.
I know what many proponents of legalized abortion are screaming to themselves right now:
MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
This slogan only makes sense if the humanity of the unborn child is overlooked.
Some proponents of legalized abortion will go so far as to say: even if the unborn child is an equal, the fact that he’s inside of me means that I have the right of life or death over him, because he’s a parasite.
As if that justifies another human being’s death!
As if one’s temporary suffering justifies one’s permanent elimination. That argument refuses to bring the equality of the unborn child to its logical conclusion. Your temporary suffering, however horrible they are, is not worth the life of a human being.
Could you imagine the outcry if someone were to kill a toddler for being too clingy. After all: my body, my choice.
Of course no one would stand for it because a toddler is acknowledged as an equal whose life is worth more than anyone’s temporary suffering.
What that means is “My Body, My Choice” is not the real reason behind legalized abortion.
The real reason is: unborn human beings are not equal, I am superior to them, therefore, I can kill them.
But if that were widely admitted to be the real reason behind legalized abortion, that would sure suck the joy out of a wanted pregnancy, and we can’t have that, because we love our wanted unborns. And then there’d be a blatant contradiction, and we’d have to come to some kind of resolution. Which would mean either unborns are not valuable at all.
Or abortion shouldn’t be legal.
Right now, the contradiction is only at an unconscious level.
It’s time to raise the issue.
If you are pro-life blogger, I urge you to add your voice to this blogburst and denounce legalized abortion TODAY and call for legal rights for unborn children.
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