Abortion

[Martin Hash]

Protestors.JPG

My granddaughter was born 9 weeks premature. That event clarified the abortion issue in my mind which has always been muddied by politics and the vehemence of the opposing sides. To me, a liberty advocate, I’ve tried to calculate the liberty of the child vs. the liberty of the mother. Abortionists have successfully confused the issue in law by calling the baby a “fetus” that isn’t human but medicine has advanced to the point where a baby can survive after 5 months, as proven by my granddaughter, so they are definitely people by that time and have a strong claim to protecting their liberty. The mother’s choice not to carry a child is certainly an important liberty issue so that’s what has to be examined to make a comparison.

Back-in-the-day, there was no birth control and childbirth was a leading cause of death among women, the social stigma against unwed mothers was substantial, the burden of raising the child without assistance was enormous, and orphanages were more a supply of young workers than family placement. But the facts have changed: contraception is common and complete; modern medicine has virtually eliminated the danger to the mother, society now condones and even applauds “single moms;” and the state heavily subsidizes them. Also, since so many women are waiting too long to get pregnant, there’s a huge demand for adoption. Plus there’s that uncomfortable fact that half of all abortions are to Black women.

Then there’s the issue of personal responsibility: the original intent of abortion being “safe, legal and rare” has become “often and anytime,” and the “my body, my choice” argument has been completely undermined by the same people supporting vaxx mandates. There’s no excuse for getting pregnant due to a plethora of methods of birth control including mechanical, hormonal, and timing strategies. The “Morning After Pill” right after sex corrects whatever accident might happen, and the “Abortion Pill,” RU-486, works up to 8 weeks. (I know that many people consider using post-conception drugs “abortion” but one is OTC and the other has wide underground availability: combined with ease of use this form of contraception is a fait accompli.)

The liberty calculus becomes: the life of the baby vs. inconvenience for the mother, about the same as recovering from a broken arm. Therefore at this point, the excuses to have an abortion must be extreme to qualify, and as a doctor who has delivered babies, I know there aren’t many of them. I always told my daughter before she was married that if she got pregnant, she should have the baby because 20 years from now, no one will care, and you’ll have a child you love, but my daughter, as beautiful as she was, remained conscientious, so I had to wait 2 decades more for grandkids. The world has changed and so has the need for abortion. The Supreme Court was right to let the decision go back closer to the communities who will have to live with it.