Since when has killing a person become the answer to life’s less-than-ideal circumstances? Definitely since Roe v. Wade allowed abortion on demand. But even before that, mothers and fathers from different cultures willingly killed their children—some born and some unborn—based on life’s hard situations. For example, centuries ago, children were sacrificed to pacify a god’s anger, supposedly demonstrated through a drought, famine, or natural disaster. Roman parents sometimes killed their children after birth if they were unwanted. Mothers in many countries self-aborted when they discovered they were pregnant during a family financial crisis.
My question is this: why is it so easy to kill our children when we don’t like how life is treating us? Why are their deaths the answer to our problems?
According to an article at Salon.com, women need (yes NEED) late-term abortions. Even this pro-abortion site doesn’t disagree that second trimester babies can suck their thumbs and act in an obviously human way. (Hmm…maybe because they are human.) However, Susan Schewel, executive director of a women’s abortion fund in Pennsylvania, tries to explain why women still need to abort their very human babies: “They have so many balls in the air, and more pressing financial needs—for example, housing. They just can’t manage everything.”
Right. The answer for lacking the funds for housing is killing your child. That’s definitely the way to raise money for rent. Wouldn’t a more realistic answer for women be to seek out government services for housing while they get off their feet? To go to a pregnancy center that gives you free baby supplies? Or to live with family or friends? Perhaps to stay at a women’s shelter for a time? I’m not understanding why killing is the end-all answer here.
What about adoption? Granted, it may be difficult for a woman to pay for a child for eighteen years if she doesn’t have help. (Trust me, though, there are a very high number of strong women who have done just that.) However, anyone can find enough help to pay for nine months of pregnancy. Many adoptive couples will even pay for all the medical bills, maternity clothes, prenatal vitamins, and more. Killing is certainly not the answer. It never is, but especially not in a world where mothers can hand-pick their baby’s parents. That is certainly a kinder option. Why isn’t this obvious?
Perhaps Susan Schewel’s abortion fund can explain why it’s just abortions they fund. Go to their website, and they give you the option of donating for someone else’s abortion. Why don’t they raise funds for adoptions? What about for women’s housing money, if that’s what women really need?
Why don’t groups who claim to care about women actually give women what they need instead of giving them an abortion? How cruel is it to say, as Mrs. Schewel does—here, you need money for housing? You can’t manage everything? Let me help you kill your child. Death always solves more problems.
Cruel. Devastatingly cruel and absolutely wrong. Death creates its own host of haunting problems. Killing an innocent child is never the answer that struggling women need.
LifeNews Note: Kristi Burton Brown is a pro-life activist in her home state of Colorado, a pro-bono attorney for Life Legal Defense Fund, and a stay-at-home mom. This column originally appeared at the Live Action blog.
