There are no words.
There has been much in the news about the "partial-birth" abortion ban that is soon to be made law. I found myself wondering exactly what this procedure was that was causing such an uproar. Today I read a description. Appalled doesn't begin to cover it. Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers—whose political motivations would presumably compel him to admit the contrary—has said the procedure is performed thousands of time each year and most often on healthy mothers and fetuses. (Yahoo! News)
At first I wondered how a mother could choose such a thing and thought of gruesome actions like making the mother view the corpse of her child to make sure she understood the consequences of her choice. Then I shifted to the doctor who would do such a thing. How could anyone of with any conscience perform such a gruesome and awful procedure? If no doctor would consent to perform the procedure, that would end the issue right there.
And then I calmed down.
Doctors likely opt to perform the procedure because if s/he doesn't, the woman will simply go somewhere else. If no licensed medical practitioner will perform the procedure, it wouldn't take long for some black market services to spring up and we're back to coat hangers and back alleys. While it is a decision I am glad I will never have to wrestle with, I'm sure the reasoning is something like this: "It is better to lose one life than to risk two."
And what about the mothers who opt for abortion that late in the game? From all that I have heard abortion is never an easy decision and I doubt there are many women who can be glib about getting an abortion. At this stage of the game is it very likely an act of desperation. What motivates these women to such drastic and dreadful actions? There will be much legal wrangling over this law in the next few years as each side struggles for a dogmatic toe hold to advance their position. Perhaps their efforts would be better spent finding out why a woman makes such a choice and working together to provide alternative solutions, since neither side really wants to see this kind of thing happen. Pro choice is not the same as pro abortion.
In the end it probably doesn't matter. The brutal truth very likely boils down to economics. It's much cheaper to perform an abortion than to hide a woman from an abusive boyfriend/husband/father. It's cheaper than supporting a single mother who will lose her only means of supporting her existing family if she has a baby, or one who simply doesn't have the financial resources to support another child. I am currently reading Uncle Tom's Cabin. One slave woman poisoned her two month old child rather than have him grow up a slave and suffer the abuses to which she had been subjected. I have to wonder if there aren't modern day analogies.
You can preach all day about responsibility and birth control and about the vices of extra-marital and pre-marital sex, but at this stage of the game that just doesn't matter anymore. The problem is here to stay. How are we going to deal with it?