For years, pro-choicers on abortion have insisted that they are not “pro abortion.” Indeed, many insisted that the decision is “difficult” and that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”
I didn’t believe they meant it. But the logic of their argument implicitly agreed that what is terminated in an abortion is more meaningful than an inflamed appendix.
As a consequence, the pro-life movement has pushed the country more in its direction. And it also allowed some limitations on the abortion license.
That has some pro-choicers taking off their masks and coming out as pro-abortion. Case in point: A column in today’s Washington Post by Janet Harris. From, “Stop Calling Abortion a Difficult Decision:”
When the pro-choice community frames abortion as a difficult decision, it implies that women need help deciding, which opens the door to paternalistic and demeaning “informed consent” laws. It also stigmatizes abortion and the women who need it…
Pro-choice advocates use the “difficult decision” formulation for a similar reason, so as not to demonize women. It also permits pro-choice candidates to look less dogmatic.
But there’s a more pernicious result when pro-choice advocates use such language: It is a tacit acknowledgment that terminating a pregnancy is a moral issue requiring an ethical debate. To say that deciding to have an abortion is a “hard choice” implies a debate about whether the fetus should live, thereby endowing it with a status of being. It puts the focus on the fetus rather than the woman.
As a result, the question “What kind of future would the woman have as a result of an unwanted pregnancy?” gets sacrificed. By implying that terminating a pregnancy is a moral issue, pro-choice advocates forfeit control of the discussion to anti-choice conservatives.
In other words, the humanity of the dead fetus matters not a whit. That’s known as truth in advertising.
Like this pro-life news article? Please support LifeNews with a donation!
With this kind of advocacy increasing, it is clear now that pro-abortionists also want Roe v. Wade overturned. Why? Roe permitted limits.
In contrast–as I have written–a ruling that protects abortion as necessary to protect sexual equality would permit abortion through the ninth month–if not beyond–with the only regulations permitted being those required for basic sanitation.
After that, the next step would be to require free abortion, either paid by the state or required as coverage under Obamacare. Pro-abortionists believe that women won’t really be free until they are guaranteed the right to a dead fetus.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
