This op-ed piece about what life was life was like when abortion was legal follows the typical pro-abortion meme.
First, it paints the desperation of the woman, with the purpose of getting the reader to ask himself (or more accurately herself) "what if it were you"?
Then, describes the horror of the situation: a botched abortion. Often the story ends in the death of the woman. This one doesn't, but that's not the point.
So the reader is supposed to conclude: oh no! That must not happen. We must keep abortion legal!
All the while completely sidestepping the issue pro-lifers bring up that keeps the debate going:
Some try to "spin" abortion into murder. If so, they need to comprehend universally accepted legal and medical definitions of life and death.
Universally accepted, huh?
Obviously not.
The law is a reflection of a consensus in society. It reflects an opinion. It does not make the truth. So appealing to the law is a fallacy.
Medical death? That's a laugh. There are many medical definitions of death. Those get changed by the law, too.
I understand these defintions. That doesn't make them right.
The issue is this: is a fetus a human being, and does he deserve equal rights?
Pro-abortionists who engage in the "abortion-before-legalization" meme almost never address that issue.
One of the reasons why the abortion debate keeps going and going is that pro-abortionists do not want to publicly settle on the status of the human being and whether he has any rights.
Privately, it's settled. They think that a fetus becomes a human being with rights with his first breath. You know that's the case, because they never support any pro-fetus legislation of any kind, such as an unborn victims of crime bill. This is reflected in Canadian law.
This is a shrewd move on their part for the purposes of keeping abortion legal, because as long as pro-life voices are stifled, people won't give it much thought, and the ambiguity of the question works to the pro-abortion advantage.
But if pro-life voices raise the issue, they will be backed in a corner. Eventually, if pro-lifers are smart, they will require pro-abortionists to answer the question. And pro-abortionists will have to give the public an honest answer, which is to say that no fetus is a person, and no fetus deserves any rights.
While the Canadian public does not generally support the criminalization of first-trimester abortions, a majority of Canadians want more restrictions on abortion. They value the fetus to some extent. Many believe the viable fetus is a person deserving of legal protection, if not outright equality.
The Canadian public would be disgusted at the extremism of the hardcore pro-abortion crowd. There is a lot of ignorance circulating regarding the nature of the fetus and abortion in Canada. Some think that there are legal restrictions to abortion in Canada. There are none. No laws. Whatsoever. Although most abortionists won't do third-trimester abortion, it's perfectly legal to kill fetuses past 20 weeks in Canada. There are hundreds of late-term abortions committed in Canada every year, and many of them are performed because the unborn child is diagnosed with Down Syndrome or other medical problems.
But all that is swept under the carpet with pro-abortionists. They think there is only one side to the story. However desperate and in need of help a woman is (and I agree we should help them) nobody's suffering is so bad that it justifies the killing of an innocent child. It does not matter what the suffering is: because suffering can be helped in all kinds of ways. In this day and age, there is no untreatable pain or mental anguish. Suffering is generally temporary and can be helped. Death is permanent and there is no recourse.
What about "unwanted children"? Here's a thought: just want them. How can we give a pass to people to "not want" their children? How dare a parent not want him? If a parent cannot want him, there are parents in Canada and around the world waiting to love that child.
But, the objection goes, giving up the child would cause the woman pain.
If she didn't want the child, it shouldn't pain her, shouldn't it? When I don't want something, I give it away, and I don't think two seconds about it.
So abortion is the "solution" to not feeling that pain. It really serves the interest of the mother, not the child. The fetus is the scapegoat for the mother's inability to cope with it any other way.
It all boils down to rhetorical sophistry.
