The Obfuscation Report

What follows is an editorial printed in the Murray State (KY) News, a student newspaper run by the students of Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky on Friday, November 4th, 2005. Bolds are mine, obviously.

Woman’s Right to Choose Abortion Goes Too Far

I am a man who has never had to deal with this issue in my life. However, for most of my life, I have been for the woman’s right to choose. Now, as I have grown older and more experienced in women’s issues, I have changed my mind and am now completely against abortion of any type or time frame.

For example, over the past couple of years, I had decided that I would be against abortion past the first trimester of pregnancy. I did believe that during the first trimester, the fetus was nothing more than a lump of organisms, atoms, molecules, tissues, etc.

Then, this summer, a very close friend of mine became pregnant. For the first time in my life, I was friends with a pregnant woman. About a month into her pregnancy, she received a gift from another friend explaining the cycle a fetus went through during pregnancy.

According to this book, a one-month old fetus has stubby arms and legs, a nominally developed head and brain tissue and, essentially, the look of a baby.

This started to change my mind about when a life becomes a life. I started to realize that even at one month past fertilization, a fetus was already becoming a baby. When my friend reached three months into her pregnancy, she had a picture of the fetus taken, and it amazed me how much the fetus was like a living baby.

The fetus moved around, started to grow fingers and toes and had clearly formed eyes and a mouth. This is when I decided that I was against abortion. I now believe conception is the time life begins.

As far as a woman’s legal right to choose, I have to disagree with the Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

The court decision allows women to choose abortion, but parameters on when to do so are set in the case and specified in subsequent legislation. Though there have been attempts to overturn the controversial legislation, it still stands as the precedent today.

What does the legal right to choose entail? Does it include the right to murder a baby if the baby inconveniences the mother? Or does it allow the mother to choose if she might die if she carries to full term?

Obviously, I have no problem saying the first question is a no-brainer. Today women have the option of adoption centers and foster homes, if they believe the baby will burden the mother too much.

However, the second question is a moral judgment. I believe if a woman has a likely chance of dying if she carries the baby full term, then she should die for her baby to survive.

Every parent would die for their 10 year old child, so why would a woman not die for her baby to be born? I think this whole idea of a woman’s right to choose has gone too far.

A woman should not have the legal right to choose to murder an innocent, unborn fetus, even if its birth causes her immediate death.

Any woman would be proud to die for her baby. After all, men and women alike die for their country during war. A more rightful death would be the dying of a woman to allow her baby to survive.

editorial by James Wiles

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