Things Left Unsaid in the Abortion Debate

 Dustin Ashe says What Must Be Said on Abortion in an article at the American Thinker today. Spoiler alert, the thing that must be said about abortion is that it kills a human life.

For over a week now, our country has been tossed asunder once again by the abortion issue because Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health was leaked and published in Politico. We knew the day was coming when the Supreme Court would issue its decision, but the leak has hastened the debate, as well as being a surprise attack on the integrity of the Court and the sanctity of our nation’s constitutional rule of law. We still don’t know whether riots, protests, and doxing conservative justices can alter the Court’s tentative decision.

We have been subjected to yet another unsolicited primer in the abortion debate from both sides. However, much has been left unsaid or deftly side-stepped. That’s because too much of the abortion question addresses the end of a baby’s life, not the beginning. Addressing those topics is critical to having a fully informed position.

But before Ashe gets to the bottom line, he explains that the problem starts with the hook up culture, and casual sex. As he writes, abstinence has proven to be 100% effective in preventing pregnancy and thus avoiding abortion. But especially in the 1960s, the issue of casual sex became a personal choice, but the solution for an unwanted pregnancy became a social responsibility. But in reality, the choice to have sex is a personal choice, demanding a personal responsibility for the consequences of it.

If a woman does not want to get pregnant, or if a man does not want his hookup, lover, or girlfriend to get pregnant, then that person can choose not to have sex in the first place or choose adequate preventative measures. The pro-choice argument ignores prevention and kicks in only when prevention fails. It then relies solely on abortion as the only viable alternative. The argument goes this way: Society must accept whatever flows from an individual exercising his/her freedom, sexual intercourse must be allowed to occur between consenting adults and, if conception and an unwanted pregnancy result, it is a societal problem and not one of personal responsibility. Those pro-choice voices demand that their birth control, abortion, or pregnancy and delivery must come free of charge because, while it’s their choice and their pregnancy, it’s still our responsibility.

Finally, Ashe gets to the horror of abortion, that it is the taking of a human life, and without dure process. A child is a gift from God, as any childless couple can tell you. Childless couples have always suffered from childlessness. See Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis. God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply for our own good. But he also commanded us not to kill our progeny.

There was once a fundamental understanding among people of goodwill that one’s rights extended only as far as and up to the point at which another’s rights extended. Are we no longer committed to the God-given and inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans? How can we, as free people claim that these are our national and individual rights while denying these same rights to those who do not have the power to speak for themselves?

Americans are rightly jealous guardians of the freedoms that were set forth in our Declaration of Independence as “inalienable” and “self-evident.” But what about the right to life? In the abortion debate, the rights of the individual human life in the mother’s womb are completely denied. So, who among us can honestly stand, proclaim, and affirm our “separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them,” while denying those same rights to another human life as if their personal choice and personal freedom supersede another’s right to life?