Stopping a Beating Heart
Yesterday while waiting at a red light, I noticed this bumper sticker on the car ahead of me: “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.”
This emotionally powerful slogan made me wonder… At exactly what point does the fetal heartbeat begin? (40 weeks from conception, my gynecologist told me.) I also couldn’t help wondering about the mother’s heartbeat… what about her future, her feelings, her life?
Equivocation aside, in most cases an abortion does stop a beating heart. So why, when I can’t go to an animal shelter without agonizing over the puppies I leave behind, when my heart swells with tenderness at the sight of a baby’s face, related to me or not, do I stand so firmly as a pro-choice advocate?
Another way of phrasing this conflict: Can I preserve a choice I believe is fundamental to a woman’s freedom without sacrificing that part of conscience that instinctively protects the small and helpless?
Yes, I can.
Pro-life supporters often use abortion as an issue wedge for imposing their convictions on everyone else’s rights. While “Pro-life” implies support for the vibrancy of living, those with pro-life views typically oppose sex education, premarital sex, the distribution of condoms to protect teenagers from contracting AIDS, same-sex parent adoptions of children who might otherwise languish in institutions, and most importantly, social welfare programs to support the unwanted children and unqualified parents who would proliferate without the option of legal abortion. These views do not support life. They punish it.
Pro-lifers, especially those who base their views on religious doctrine, wave the flag of a moral code from centuries ago, one in which all sex outside of marriage is promiscuous, one that defines sexually active single women as immoral while excusing the same behavior in men as “normal.” In this punitive view, women who fail society by having sex outside of marriage deserve the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. But when pregnancy is enforced as a punishment, it is the unwanted child it creates that suffers most.
No one dictates how a pregnant woman should rest, or nourish herself, or make any one of the infinite decisions affecting the life of her unborn child. Why should anyone dictate when or if she becomes a mother? The Pro-Choice option empowers women to take full responsibility for their own lives, as well as the lives they create or choose not to create.
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I know that many decent, caring people hold pro-life views. At the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC four years ago, as marchers passed the pro-life contingent near the end of the march route, I saw an elderly woman, probably a grandmother, holding a “ Choose Life” placard. She seemed bravely alone as nearly a million pro-choice marchers streamed by. I wondered: was she genuinely heartbroken over the loss of aborted lives? Did her concern for life motivate her to contribute to the homeless? Oppose the death penalty? Vote to end the war in Iraq? One thing I know for certain is that she was never forced by pro-choice opinion to have an abortion against her will.
By definition, “pro-choice” has no agenda to influence decisions to have, or not to have, babies. It merely provides an opportunity to act in accordance with individual conscience.
Yes, not counting the morning-after pill (which pro-lifers also oppose), abortion after 40 days of pregnancy stops a beating heart. For now, though, legal abortion enables us to create wanted lives or not, and to consider ourselves free, not immoral, when we take responsibility for these choices.
posted by Yakpate at 8:00 AM
7 Comments:
ANother provocative, beautifully written post, Yak. To me, this issue comes down to one important reality: compulsory pregnancy laws are completely incompatible with a free society. To insist that a woman's rights to her own body autonomy and rights to her own decisions about procreation be placed always second to the rights of the unborn is to legislate women into a separate and unequal status behind men and fetuses. If the government should be allowed to dictate that any woman who becomes pregnant be forced to carry that child to term, what is to stop that government from someday demanding other physical sacrifices of women? Let's suppose we use the bodies of women to always choose life in other circumstances: like if a man needed a kidney to live and a woman's were available, why not just harvest it? The man MUST LIVE! And the woman will probably survive, so what's the big deal?
THis is the only argument that ever held water for me. Many on the left have tried to downplay the fact that abortion does kill an unborn person. Calling it a "termination" or referring to the embryo as "products of conception" or "a division of cells" does not blunt the reality of it. Making big pondering declarations about how nobody ACTUALLY knows when life begins is superficial and insipid. Yes, it usually stops a beating heart. Yes, it destroys a small human being. And yes, I understand that grandmother's horror as she stood on the sidelines of the pro-life march.
But this is not a question easily answered and as long as we proclaim to have a civilization that values the rights of ALL its citizens, we can never REQUIRE that half of them sacrifice their bodies and risk their lives because the unborn life matters more than their own.
FOr any of us who have had complications with a pregnancy, been forced on bed rest for preterm labor, had our own lives risked with preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, lost jobs due to the medical leave required to bring a healthy baby to term, we know that this simple act of reproduction is often far from simple. We also know that it is a private, personal choice to take that personal risk. ALso, to insist that every pregnancy be carried to term does not take into account the babies with major chromosomal anomolies who would needlessly suffer and die if carried to term. It does not account for many complications of pregnancy -- far more than most realize -- that risk the mother's life. It also conveniently ignores the fact that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. Nature, it seems, is the biggest abortionist of all.
I do recognize that abortion kills. But it also saves -- it saves lives, families, futures, and it saves an equal society. And as long as we at least pretend that women are equal to men, we must always leave the choice of pregnancy firmly in the hands of women. Will the choice be abused by some? Yes. Will it result in the death of potential lives? Yes. But this is not a simple question and it requires a far more complex reasoning about it than the quotable, dumbed-down call to "choose life." Whose life do we choose?
9:50 AM
I have a friend who told me once on this issue that she was Pro-Life. I said you are? Why? Do you think it's murder? She said, "I don't think it is, if you do it early enough...but I got pregnant at 15 and chose to keep my baby and raise him and it was hard..but I chose to keep him...I think if you want to mess around you need to be held accountable for your actions and raise your child." I just said, you made my Pro-Choice arguement for me...you just said the word twice in your own Anti-Abortion speech...you said I "Chose"...I said and that's really the point isn't it...you chose...
So exactly the same reason I can't go tie the tubes of a drug abusing women, or clip the stuff of a dead beat man...is the same reason Abortion has to remain legal. People can make the choice to become a parent or not...and if we would spend our resources educating on birth control/morning after pill/etc. and making this stuff accessible to ALL...then lots of very young girls indeed would not ever have to be faced with such a awful choice.
Also, I am sorry for all the guys out there...but I personally don't even think you should be allowed to vote on this matter unless you have a womb...
And for the people against it because of religiuos belief..SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE..it's a legal matter...you are not being forced to have one. So believe it, express your beliefs with whomever you want...and for goodness sakes, by all means...don't have one!!!!
7:30 PM
I understand people being against abortion. That is their right. They dont ever,ever have to have one, because it is a choice...Making the right to choose illegal is really trailing on a slippery slope....What's next? What if we then decide testing for birth defects should be illegal?What next? Maybe choosing to take birth control should be illegal? and on and on and on........It is dangerous business. I understand not agreeing with abortion....I dont understand not agreeing with a person's right to choose what is best for them. This is, after all, the United States of America. Land of the FREE.....
5:18 AM
Wow Laurie and Nikki..Look at us all agreeing! :)
5:19 AM
Ha! LMAO....we agree:):):)
6:13 AM
Very well penned. I was astounded to hear the fundamentalists condoning Palin's daughter's preganancy by saying "kids will be kids". This means yes they oppose sex education but they know kids will have sex anyway, and as long as they get married and are not on welfare it's all good. Then Palin said her daughter "chose" to get married. But no one got to ask what were her other choices. Quite hypocritical.
It is tragic how limited the choice of abortion has become, the assaults have been from all directions. We must stand strong to keep from losing any more ground, and hopefully, soon, gain back the rights many women have already lost, women who are rural, poor, and young. This is the most basic of the rights of women.
11:53 AM
Heck, y'all -- we ARE on the same team. :-)
2:31 AM
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