Is Abortion Really a Health Issue?
In the wake of the third presidential debate where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sparred briefly over the issue of abortion, Clinton made the claim that late term abortions — as in, a baby’s life is terminated even in the ninth month — are important to protect for the sake of health issues related to the pregnancy. Trump countered that late term abortion is never okay. Mr. Trump’s statements caused no small reaction among abortion advocates.
So then, who is correct?
Perhaps we should treat this subject like we should have been treating it all along: WITH FACTS.
From a purely medical perspective, the original justification for abortion being okay before a certain date has long been overturned, as medical science has proven that life begins at the instant of conception. So now abortion advocates are using other reasons to try to prop up this barbaric practice, such as raising concerns about the health of the mother.
Again, medically speaking, there are no concerns regarding a pregnancy that a C-section delivery can’t remedy. But research shows that health issues aren’t the reason most women get abortions anyway. According to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research affiliiate), almost all abortions take place because a child would be inconvenient, too expensive, or too difficult to cope with. In that study, 1,209 American women were surveyed at 11 major abortion clinics, and they revealed that neither health problems, rape, incest, nor coercion by family members or partners were the primary or even secondary reasons for seeking an abortion. Ninety-two percent of women said social or “other” factors were the reason behind their abortion. Only seven percent said physical problems or possible health problems with the baby were the reason, and only 0.5% said they were seeking an abortion because they had been raped. No one in the survey cited that the reason that they had an abortion was because the mother’s health was in jeopardy (as in, the mother might die if she carried the child).
This is not a new study, by the way. It was conducted in 2004. So these are not new facts, just ignored ones.
The only medical situation that would endanger the life of the mother is an ectopic pregnancy (a fertilized egg that is stuck in the fallopian tube), and those are terminated very, very early. So despite the argument by abortion advocates that health risks are one of the central reasons for seeking an abortion, the Planned Parenthood study revealed something strikingly different — that women most often choose abortion because they perceive it to be the easier choice. (Source: ActionforLife.com)
Furthermore, let’s consider the perspective of an OB-GYN and former abortionist, Dr. Anthony Levatino, who has seen the light and refused to do anymore abortions. Regarding the issue of terminating pregnancies to save mothers’ lives, he states:
“During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of cases by ‘terminating’ pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.”
Why? Because he terminated the pregnancies by performing C-sections to save both the mother and the baby.
Dr. C. Evert Koop, former Surgeon General, also states that in his thirty-eight years as a pediatric surgeon, he was never aware of a single situation in which a freeborn child’s life had to be taken in order to save the life of the mother. He said the use of this argument to justify abortion in general was a “smoke screen.”
So those are the facts. But let’s deal with the common sense side of the issue.
According to the view of abortion advocates, the Government should not have a say in the matter of restricting, limiting, or banning abortions. But if life begins at the moment of conception as medical research shows, then is it really a matter of what a woman does with her own body? No, because now there is a second life to consider. If a mother gave birth to a baby girl and then immediately smothered her to death, the mother would be charged with murder. But she can pay a doctor to kill her baby daughter 60 seconds before she exits the birth canal and it’s called her “right.”
Consider this: If someone kills a pregnant mother, the killer is ALWAYS charged with two counts of murder — one for the woman, and one for the child she carried. Our society flip flops on the definition of a what a human child is depending on the situation. For example, it’s called a child as long as the mother wants it. But if the mother doesn’t want it, it’s just a hunk of flesh worth nothing more than to be dissected out and thrown away, because now it’s a “mother’s right.”
Allowing women the freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies is a terribly calloused and self-serving argument, because it ignores the rights of other people who cannot speak for themselves; namely, pre-born children who are very much alive. Our governing laws obviously do not allow people to steal, assault, or murder. Why? Because other people’s human rights are involved. We cannot do whatever we want whenever we want to do it with our own bodies just because we think we should have the freedom to do so, so long as our choices and actions affect other people. The same women who are declaring the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies regardless of the children who must die to accommodate those “rights” would obviously not accept that same argument from a rapist. But according to that misguided argument, the rapist is simply doing what the abortionist does. He is exercising his right to do as he pleases. Who cares if someone has to suffer or die, right?
As long as there is another person to consider, we cannot do whatever we want just because it’s convenient. And as long as a child has to die a gruesome death in order to accommodate the convenience of another person, then there is no other way to categorize this practice except for what it clearly is: murder.
But logic, medical facts, and human rights are ignored when the passions of a hedonistic culture take precedence over morals.
We are a very confused and hypocritical society.