A Woman's Right To Choose 2

Responding to my essay, “A Woman’s Right To Choose”, a friend recommended the documentary, "Lake of Fire", which seems not to be streaming anywhere so you have to buy the DVD.  I bought the DVD.

“Lake of Fire” is a pretty good documentary on some of the issues of abortion, so it is beside the point of my first essay.  I was not exploring issues of abortion.

Abortion is a major front in the Culture War we have been fighting most of my life.  There is an ancient sentiment that “Truth is the first casualty of war”.  The Left frames this battle as one of “reproductive choice”, I have long felt there is something insincere about this framing, and I wanted to think about it.  Writing is how I think about a subject, hence the essay.

“Framing” is a synonym for “spin” is a synonym for propaganda.  My only purpose was to deconstruct one element of the Left’s propaganda on abortion.  I.e., I was examining the propaganda about abortion, not the issue of abortion.  It was, for me, a very useful exercise.

Unless someone can punch holes through my argument (I welcome the effort), I was amazed to realize (it seems so obvious, now) that modern American women have a veritable blizzard of reproductive choices.  And not trivial choices, but choices that are astonishing in scope and consequence.  Choices that are personally and civilizationally consequential. 

So, whatever else the issue of abortion is about, it is not about the spectrum of women's reproductive choices.  It is about something much narrower.

This thought exercise also enabled me, for the first time, to think about abortion in its pristine nature, free from the encumbrances and obscurities of social, legal, and moral issues.  I.e., never mind all that other stuff, what, exactly, does abortion accomplish?

Abortion, per se, does one thing only:  it ends a pregnancy.  But, every pregnancy ends.  To put it more precisely, therefore, abortion shortens the term of a pregnancy.

Most women discover their pregnancy around 5 or 6 weeks into it, sometimes later.  Some obese women may not know they are pregnant until they give birth.

The CDC reports that 91.1% of abortions are performed in the first trimester.  In the second trimester, 7.6%.  And 1.3% in the third trimester.  Since 24.6% of all abortions are performed within the first eight weeks, it follows that 66.5% of all abortions are done in the third month of the pregnancy.

I think it is fair to say that a large majority of women save, at most, six months of pregnancy by getting an abortion.  Abortions in the second trimester might save a woman three months or so.  And third trimester abortions will save---days?

Six months is not a trivial amount of time to put one’s life on hold, if that is necessary.  But, the exact consequences of such a delay must vary widely, from woman to woman.  In some cases, a six month delay might be onerous, in others, hardly at all.

Some might argue that abortion is not about a six month delay in getting on with your life.  Once the baby comes, the woman is committed for some eighteen years.  But this raises the obvious question:  why is a woman more willing to kill her baby than give it up for adoption?

Thus, the objective observations end and the moral questions begin:

• Is a human life worth six months of your time?
• Why is a baby easier to kill than to give up for adoption?

 I leave these questions to the reader.