How do you feel about baby killing?
by Christopher Ferdinandi
ChrisFerdinandi@hotmail.com

How do you feel about legalized baby killing? Do you support killing babies, or are you anti-women’s rights?

Abortion has been one of the most permeating issues our country has dealt with in the last three decades. But in the 33 years since Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, the discussions (and more often, the arguments) that we have about abortion have become so loaded with rhetoric that they’re usually not really about abortion at all.

Baby killing. Anti-women’s rights. Those are just two of the loaded phrases people lob around like dodge balls in the abortion debate. There’s also pro-life, pro-death, culture of life, culture of death, anti-choice, and so-on and so-forth.

There are a few inherent problems with abortion discussions. First, you’ll be hard pressed to really change anyone’s mind on abortion. I blame this on the rhetoric we use. Phrases like baby killing and anti-choice don’t actually convey information. They convey emotion.

Second, and again because of the use of rhetoric, the debates have become extremely polarized. You’re either pro-baby killing or anti-women’s choice. The honest truth, though, is that there’s a whole spectrum of gray in the middle, and that’s where most people are. For example, let’s look at partial birth abortions. In this procedure, babies are pulled feet first out of the mother. A hole is stabbed in the back of their skull, and their brains are sucked out, death resulting.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, even those who support abortion, oppose such a procedure. But in abortion discussions, there is no middle road. You’re either for it or against it, and if you support a woman’s right to abortion, you also support this barbaric procedure simply by association.

So why don’t we have some honest discussion about abortion right now? The most important issue to the abortion debate, of course, is determining when a human life really starts. That’s really what the debate is all about. People who oppose abortion generally do so because they feel its wrong to take any human life, even that of a person who’s not born yet. To them, life generally starts at the moment of conception.

Some may argue that it starts when the fetus takes a distinctively human appearance. Others (typically abortion supporters) believe that life starts at birth. The underlying pretense in these discussions, however, is always a religious one. “Only God has the right to take life away,” is a phrase that often gets tossed around. How come no one listens when the death row inmates say that?

And not to go on tangent, but that brings us to yet another problem with abortion discussions: They’re never really about abortion. How you feel about abortion has come to represent the entire sum of your entire political beliefs. If you support abortion, you also support high taxes and welfare, you’re against the death penalty, you “love queers,” (but that’s a whole different discussion!) and you may own Birkenstocks or a sailboat.

If you’re against abortion, you like taxes low, you love big business, you support the death penalty, you “hate queers,” and you probably own a shotgun or a trailer. And for pretty much all the same reasons, when you talk about any of those other things, you’re really talking about abortion.

I’ve heard only one solid argument for making abortion illegal. It’s the only one I’ve ever heard that doesn’t invoke religious morality. Phil Kline is the attorney general of Kansas and a vehement anti-abortionist. Kline states, “When we apply a utilitarian measure to human life – ‘Do I want to have this baby?’; ‘Can I afford to have this baby?’ – it permeates all our thinking to the point where it undermines our ability to protect the inherent rights of the most vulnerable people in society. The disabled and the elderly and so on. To me, this is a foundational political issue.”

Think about that: What is the life of an unborn baby worth? $372 (the average cost of an abortion in the United States)? How about the lives of the mentally handicapped, criminals, and social outcasts? Where do you draw the line?

Of course, it’s quite easy to turn that question in the other direction. Why start life at conception? You need a sperm and an egg to make life. Perhaps we should make masturbation illegal. Just imagine all those poor, unborn children who ended up nothing but a sticky wad of tissue in the wastebasket. For the same reason, we should start arresting women who have their period. And don’t even get me started on miscarriages!

I’m being facitious of course, but who decides where we draw the line, and how? It’s not too much of a stretch to apply the same arguments for making abortion illegal to also make masturbation and contraception illegal. Actually, some people already do that! Like I said, you can’t have an honest discussion about abortion. It’s always about something else.

I haven’t talked much about why abortion should be legal, so let’s do that now. The typical argument, even for abortion supporters that would never have an abortion themselves, is that women should have freedom of choice over their own bodies. There are also health complications that can occur due to pregnancy, and sometimes abortions can save the life of a mother.

Rape and incest are two reasons for abortion that are supported by many people who otherwise oppose abortion. Sometimes people choose to an abort a baby because pre-natal tests indicate the child will be born with some type of disability. And of course, there are women who get don’t intend to get pregnant but do, and just simply don’t want to have a baby.

The recent celebration of P-Day by the College Republicans does two things. First, it makes me happy to know that people actually put my ideas into action (see: “The Penis Monologues,” The Cigar, Feb. 1, 2006). But more importantly it brings up another important aspect of abortion: What rights does a man have in the whole thing?

I firmly believe that a woman’s body is her own, and she should be free to do with it as she pleases (within the framework of the law, of course). However, imagine for a moment that an unwed couple had premarital sex and the woman is pregnant. The typical scenario that would usually follow is that the woman wants to keep the baby, the man doesn’t. The law respects the woman’s right to choice, she keeps the baby, and the man (hopefully) at the very least pays child-support until the child is 18.

Here’s the scenario no one talks about, though: The man wants to keep the baby, the woman doesn’t. The law respects her right to have an abortion, and then man just has to “deal with it.” Maybe he wanted the baby. Sure, he’s not the one who’ll be pregnant for nine months, go through hours of labor, or deal with all the health risks pregnancy can involve. But that unborn baby is also half him. Why does the female have sole discretion in whether to keep that life or not?

This article contains a lot of rhetorical questions. That’s because the abortion issue is one with a lot of tough questions and no clear or easy answers. But here’s a question you can actually answer. I want you to strip away all the religious and political baggage and honestly think about abortion, the value of life, and a woman’s right to choice, and then tell me: Are you pro-baby killing or anti-woman’s choice?



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