Thursday, April 19, 2007

"point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable’"

OK so there was this ruling in the supreme court the other day about the upholding of a ban on "partial birth abortions". It got through for a few reasons, primarily because of the testimony that this procedure is never needed for health reasons, thus precluding the often used loophole of... well what ever the hell someone wants to use as a "health reason". This has traditionally been things such as finances, mood, social impact, stress. I'm really not making these up, actual cases cite things such as the mother doesn't want stretch marks as a health concern and reason for a partial birth abortion.
Here in lies the problem, Roe V. Wade very clearly says that an abortion is legal for any reason the woman desires up until the "point at which the fetus becomes 'viable'". Lets take a look at that for a moment, your inducing the delivery of a baby, pulling its head out of the body, and then crushing its skull or sucking the brains out of its head. This is an otherwise healthy baby. This is a baby that in many cases has nothing wrong with it. This is a VIABLE child! I fail to see why we needed this law to begin with. Isn't this procedure illegal as per the confines set forth in Roe V. Wade? It does not say the right to have an abortion under any circumstance for any reason up until the child is delivered (which mind you, what part of partial birth do you not quite understand... so even then)
As much as I actually do be live life starts at conception, I actually agree with Roe V. Wade from a point of view. When I say life its in a vague sense, quite literally every living cell on any living item on the planet is just as alive as a fertilized egg. Do I think its alive, yes, does it have the capacity to grow into a human, yes... However so does every skin cell on your body. Thus I look at the term alive not to mean living separate organism. As a matter of fact I consider a fetus to be a parasite quite a few months after birth through the breast feeding stage. That departs from the question however. At what point is it a viable separate organism? Well for that answer I think we need to look at some common practices.
A baby is typically considered generally viable after 22 weeks, that's mid 5Th month for the math impaired. However we now have this case. In that a 21 week old lived, this forces the question, is the beginning of the 5Th month the point at which an infant could live outside the womb? The answer is clearly yes as it has happened already. So as a rule any abortion, as per the courts own decree after the 5Th month is automatically illegal, I can imagine that a viable infant killed would be, as per Roe V. Wade... murder. OK now the larger question. There are roughly 1million abortions performed in the united states every year, I wish I was making that number up. Mind you there is only 300 million people in the country, only half of them women, so that means since its inception in 1973 there have been 34 million, give or take, abortions out of 150million people. That's a pretty high percentage if you ask me.
Now the advocates of this will say that its a deeply personal and troubling procedure, and is undertaken with anguish. They will say that most of these cases are rape or incest. They will say alot of things to be frank. Well as per this stat site there are only 89,110 rapes in the united states per year. I dont want to say only as if that means I dont think that's too many, however even if every single one resulted in pregnancy, and in reality when women are only able to conceive 4 days out of the month if they are lucky we know that this is just statistically impossible. But lets just go with it and say that someone was really unlucky one year and every single rape victim conceived. That still means that less than 10% of all abortions are due to rape, over 90% are not (even if you say every single victim got pregnant).
People say you should have a choice over your own body... but that's really the question here isnt it. Just exactly who's body, and for that matter, what about the parents... no I'm not talking about the girls parents, that's a whole separate issue, I'm talking about the father. Last time I checked it takes both a male and a female to produce offspring. What about his parental rights? Arnt his rights as a father being violated by her in fact murdering, OK lets speculate that she wouldn't have carried full term and be lenient and say attempted murder, or at least assault. After all that infant has the same chance of becoming a human as the skin cells on your arm right? so if I took a vacuum or some poison and injected it into your arm, killing a clump of cells would that not be aggravated assault?
I think the point I'm making here is its a very dangerous game you play when you start attempting to determine when something is and is not worthless, particularly in respect to life. We take great precautions when executing our dangerous criminals, but there is no respect given for the loss of life which occurs during an abortion.
I say until we have a better way of looking at it that 5 months should be set as viable, and anything beyond that which does not involve the death of the mother should not involve the death of a child. How horrible is it that someone wants a health mandate. You really want to say that emotional hardship is reason enough to kill someone. You will be stressed and don't feel like having a baby, mind you, you did have months to make up your mind, but no, now that it has a chance to escape and survive you deem it OK to kill it... hmm.
On a side note I'm all for child abuse charges for those who deliberately cause harm to "viable" children such as drinking, smoking, taking drugs would be the main ones.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post.