Much Ado About Abortion

The following video of a Planned Parenthood executive discussing the harvesting and selling of unborn children’s organs, tissue, and extremities has reignited the abortion debate in this country. A “third-rail” topic and a Republican fund-raising topic (Republicans raise millions of dollars off of the abortion debate every year and do absolutely nothing about it), abortion is a difficult topic to grapple with. (damn prepositions)

Click here to view the embedded video.

We Libertarians are split on abortion, between those who believe that the government should keep its’ collective nose out of a woman’s pregnancy and those who believe that using force against unborn human beings is just as wrong as using force against born human beings.

I have written many papers, participated in debates, and read everything there is on abortion ethics and abortion commentary; and I think we often gloss over the fundamental realities of what abortion is all about, why it exists, and why abortion really is as awful as some people claim it is.

The reason abortion exists, is because of the fiscal and emotional costs and responsibilities associated with pregnancy and with raising children. Human beings love sex, but they do not want to take care of every single baby that results from their sexual activity. Women and men alike, both have a vested interest in contraception and abortion – whatever it takes to prevent the human consequence of sexual activity from taking place and becoming a reality in their lives. I know that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about the murder of a human being, but most people are raised to believe that a person does not develop rights, as a human being, until after they are born and after they have proven themselves capable of sustaining life after birth. So, we aren’t talking about cold hearted killers. We are talking about irresponsible people – people literally unwilling to take responsibility for the sustenance and life of their conceived children.

We try hard to pretend that these babies aren’t “people”, as if some one event in the life a person results in their person-hood. This is pretense. There is no sound philosophical or medical or ethical argument which has ever successfully demonstrated that human life starts anywhere but at conception.

When we talk about justifying abortion, we have to talk about what we’re really talking about – which is killing those of our children we are either ill-equipped or ill-prepared to care for. The only reason we cannot have this discussion, is that people who favor legal abortion do not want to have a debate wherein they must recognize that we are talking about killing a person when we talk about abortion. The rationalizations are absurd and I don’t think anyone really believes that their babies aren’t ‘alive” or “people” until after they are born. People aren’t that ignorant.

So, could we stand to live in a world where every healthy baby conceived was born? People complain about all the babies poor people have that we, as a society, are forced to pay for; how much worse would this be if it were not for the fact that we kill so many of these children before they are born? Honestly, societies are always interested in procreation, because we have to deal with every person born, good or bad, brilliant or less so, dependent upon the state or a member of the tax-base.

We argue that open borders can’t work, because of our welfare state. If it cost us nothing to accept immigrants, that is one thing. If two out of three immigrants are sucking up our tax dollars, that’s another thing all together. Is it not the same with children?

Do we truly want every 12 and 13 year old girl, who gets knocked up, to actually have and raise those children?

Do we truly want every poor person who seems to get knocked up every year or so to have all those children?

Do we really believe that forcing women to go through with their pregnancies will actually put an end to women killing their children?

Do we really want to go back to an age of back-ally abortions? Coat hanger abortions? Drug-induced abortions?

The answer to each of these questions is, that no human being has the right to murder another human being. I understand that if killing our unborn children is rightfully considered a crime, that many of our lives would look a great deal differently than they do today, and that our society would experience an untold number of complex and difficult problems; but if the only answer we have is to kill a living human being, then maybe we’ve got deeper problems than we’ve even considered. That we have to kill 3,300 children every day is a remarkably horrific reality.

We should be dealing with the causes of this reality, not with laws or murder, but with reason, morality, and individual responsibility. I know, it seems impossible to imagine that adult human beings can be trusted to behave responsibly, sexually, but I cannot accept, or stomach, the idea that abortion is a solution we can live with.

We are killing 3,300 people every day and planned parenthood is selling their organs, tissue, and extremities for god-knows-what, and we consider ourselves civilized or moral? We are barbaric. We have actually decided that murder is a just act, insofar as it alleviates responsibility. This is madness. This is evil. And this has to stop.

Abortion is a gruesome cruelty. I understand why it exists and why we accept it and why we don’t want to talk about it – but it is wrong. We must begin holding ourselves accountable for our actions, and stop excusing our worst sins by virtue of the fact of our unwillingness to deal with reality and the consequences of our actions.