I CAN DO IT
an entry for the On Display collab

27 July 2002

So having established that I cannot write in support of the view that homosexuality is wrong, I'm still left with the task of writing an argument from the point of view of someone with whom I disagree. I've decided to write about abortion, to argue it from the point of view of someone who is against abortion.

I'm pretty qualified to do this. For several years, I worked in an office where abortions were performed. It wasn't an abortion clinic, but it was an ob/gyn office that did some abortions one night a week. For years I had described myself as "adamantly wishy washy" on the subject of abortion. I had strong feelings--but even I couldn't tell you which way I had strong feelings. I got around the whole issue by just not being in the office on "TAB" nights (therapeutic abortions).

But when I was hired full time at this office, I realized I had to come to some sort of decision about my feelings. Ultimately I decided that while it would never have been an option for me, that I had no right to stand in judgement of anybody else. That, very, very briefly, is how I came to be pro-choice.

However, our office was picketed regularly, doctors' homes were picketed, office parties were picketed, patients (whether there for an abortion or not) were stopped. Even I, at age 50, was asked not to abort my baby. I thanked the protester for the compliment!

At the same time, my former roommate had joined Operation Rescue and was getting herself arrested in anti-abortion protests and we had some heated discussions (via mail) over the subject. So I do feel that this is a topic on which I can argue the opposite viewpoint.

Because the bottom line is that abortion is murder. At the moment of conception, no matter that the future baby has all the definition of a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule, there are all the ingredients there to develop into a fully formed human being. The baby is a living, if not quite breathing, thing who will very soon have a teeny beating heart.

Abortionists generally speaking do not perform abortions until the baby is big enough to be assured of a successful murder. If they attempt to terminate the pregnancy (don't you love the euphimisms for "murder"?) too early, they run the risk of not getting all the "tissue," or missing it entirely.

So they wait until the little baby has a beating heart, and a definable body shape.   Maybe it can alreayd suck its little thumb. But then they suck this living thing out of its mother's womb.

They say that the baby feels nothing--but imagine how you'd feel being vacuumed up into a test tube?

Ask any mother who wants her baby if that baby is real to her before she begins to feel him move. Of course she does. From the moment she knows she could possibly be pregnant, she is already projecting the child to whom she will soon give birth.

Just because a mother doesn't want her baby, it's no excuse to go against the law of God ("thou shalt not kill") and murder an innocent being.

There are couples out there longing to have babies, who can't give birth to them. A woman should choose, instead, to give her baby up for adoption--save the life of an innocent baby, and help a young couple complete their family.

There are people who are willing to help a mother who chooses not to abort her baby, but who has no support. She has options.

By choosing not to terminate the pregnancy, the mother gives an innocent baby a chance, instead of watching it be vacuumed up like yesterday's garbage and tossed in the trash.