Notes From Real Life

Abortion is not or should not be a political issue. It has become so as the result of some positive evolutions, including the freedoms of women and the technological and medical ability to keep even very premature babies alive outside of the mother.

Unwanted pregnancy has always existed. In former times it was dealt with through a quick marriage or in others instances the interventions of a midwife. Midwives also helped prevent many of these unwanted pregnancies. Birth control is not just a modern invention.

In the past before medical abortions actions of this nature needed to occur before a certain point in time. This was generally considered to be before the point of the baby taking hold when the mother could feel the baby. We now have a standard called “viability” which becomes lower in terms of gestational age as medical technology progresses.

Even at the time Roe v Wade became law “viability” (for this purpose, defined as the ability of a baby to live outside the mother) was much later in time than today with our more involved technological and medical interventions.

So now we have come to the point of this juxtaposition where a baby could survive apart from the mother very early in a pregnancy and we have arguments that the pregnancy can be be terminated well past that point. It can get pretty cringy if you start to think of the reality rather than whitewashing with terms such as “pro choice”, the “right to choose” or “pro life”. There is a huge difference between supporting the responsible choice of preventing a pregnancy at very early stages (if not before the procreational act) and actively advocating for the equivalent of infanticide. In fact in situations where a late term abortion is “unsuccessful” and the fetus/baby enters the outside atmosphere with a beating heart the abortion providers will set the fetus/baby to the side to let nature take its course. I just don’t know how we reconcile this with the other end of the care spectrum where in a normal birth center every measure is taken to rescue the baby from any distress that occurs or potentially could occur.

Typically in a pregnancy an ultrasound where you can see your baby quite clearly (3D if you like) and discover its gender at around 20 weeks (5 months). At 9 weeks you can see and sometimes hear the heartbeat with ultrasound. These time periods are also always getting earlier and earlier as technology expands. This makes the life seem real to all involved. Typically at this time the mom would have felt baby’s small movements. Contrast this with what people are actively advocating for, the unrestricted legal right to terminate this obvious life up until the moment this being would naturally leave the mother’s body. That is a pretty extreme stance.

So we have this reality we have to deal with on one side along with the contravention that it is only a fetus entitled to zero human rights that can be terminated. We have a suggested amendment to the Florida Constitution whereby aborting this fetus would be legally acceptable until way past this point.

I think we have to consider whether we are becoming less civilized than those societies that addressed this issue on a private level up until a certain point. It was a decision quietly made between a woman and her medical consultant, usually a female midwife. It did not involve men or their medicine or their politics. It was women taking control of their own bodies and wisely and humanely addressing issues before they could be exacerbated.

The fact that abortion devolved into a political issue requiring laws and government lessens women’s autonomy over their bodies and the freedoms to propagate life on their own terms.