President Obama and the Abortion Issue
I sit here with multiple headlines on my computer screen. “Obama calls for understanding in Notre Dame speech” (Yahoo). “Obama calls for ‘fair-minded’ abortion debate” (MSNBC). However, the most surprising headline, which happened just before this debate surfaced, is summed up in this headline: “More Americans Pro-Life Than Pro-Choice for First Time” (Gallup). This year’s Gallup poll shows that roughly 8% of America changed their minds in the last year to have a 51% majority that consider themselves Pro-Life.
I believe that the fact that abortion is less supported now than it has been in the past is a fairly big wake-up call. If it was found that abortion didn’t really hurt anyone, you would think over the years of it being legal, that you would start to see a broader and broader acceptance of the issue. For example, even though the use of Alcohol is behind many fatalities, etc., alcohol has become an accepted part of American society. The protests against alcohol are all but non-existent, because it is the people who abuse alcohol and not the alcohol itself that does the damage. However, that isn’t what has happened here.
Instead of seeing the slow dulling of protests against abortion like with the legalization of alcohol we, instead, see people leaving the pro-choice camp to become part of the pro-life camp. In particular the, admittedly very few, people that I’ve known that have changed camps were ones who had had abortions. If it wasn’t harmful, why did they change camps? Point in fact, at the President’s speech at Notre Dame, “Roe” (the plaintiff who got it legalized in the first place) was one of the protestors that were arrested:
Ahead of Obama’s address, at least 27 people were arrested on trespassing charges. They included Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as “Roe” in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. She now opposes abortion and joined more than 300 anti-abortion demonstrators at the school’s front gate. (Yahoo)
Why would “Roe” fight so hard for a “woman’s choice” and then change her mind? Did she perhaps realize that it wasn’t just a blob of fetal tissue that she discarded, but was in fact, a little, living baby?
The Heart of the Matter
At the heart of the matter is: when does life begin and end? “A Woman’s Right to Choose,” “A Woman’s Right to a Safe Abortion,” and other such nonsense are what we call Straw Man arguments. These Straw Man arguments are created to dodge the real issue. Which means that I can only suppose that people know that life begins before the baby is born, but want to be allowed to do it anyway, so they construct these straw men and attack those…???
The only question that really matters is: Are we aborting blobs of fetal tissue, or are we killing babies? If it’s just blobs of tissue, then abort at will, who cares…it would be no more of a big deal than removing a mole from your skin. However, if there is something more there than just fetal tissue…if it is perhaps, in fact, a baby with a life of its own. In that case, we have no right to kill that child. If it is not just fetal tissue, then it is in fact murder. If it is in fact murder, then their straw man arguments become “A Woman’s Right to Murder” and “A Woman’s Right to Safely Murder”. That sounds crass, but that is exactly why those are straw man arguments, because they don’t deal with the underlying issue…it’s either a life or it’s not. Any argument that doesn’t deal with that core issue is a straw man.
Can I Get a Little Consistency Please?
If someone tells me that they think a baby is just fetal tissue until the moment it’s born, and it’s just the removal of superfluous tissue up until that point, and it definitely is NOT life. I don’t like it much, but I can’t really argue with them. They are, at least, consistent in their philosophy, and nothing that I could tell them could ever prove to them otherwise because I can’t “prove” life. However, based on the Gallup polls only 22% of Americans are possibly this consistent with their belief on allowing abortion, because only 22% of people in 2009 think that abortion should be allowed in any circumstances. On the flip side, there are 23% of Americans who believe that abortion should never be allowed. This 45% of Americans are the only ones, in my opinion, who understand the issue and are consistent in their beliefs.
However, that leaves us with the other 55% of America who I surmise don’t have a clue what they are saying. The poll shows that 37% of Americans believe that abortion should only be legal in a few circumstances, and 15% believe that it should be legal in most circumstances. That’s absurd. This means that they either believe that there are some cases where a person shouldn’t be allowed to remove superfluous tissue from their body, or they think that murder is sometimes okay. Neither of those makes sense, unless you actually believe murder is sometimes okay.
Now, I do believe that when a doctor has to make a choice to save the baby or save the mother, that it is entirely right for the doctor to save the mother. However, I do not consider this abortion, as it is choosing which life to save rather than choosing to destroy a life. If two people are drowning and you have to choose which one to save, the choice is never immoral. So, I don’t consider this to be inconsistent with believing that abortion is always wrong. However, it may be that the 37% that think abortion should be allowed in a few circumstances are thinking of cases like this and are, thus, more consistent than I’m giving them credit for, but I doubt it, as there seems to be a lot of double-speak around this issue with most people I’ve spoken to. For instance, I’ve heard many times from people that they disagree with abortion being used as birth control, but think it should be legal. It should only be legal if it’s not a life, and if it’s not a life, then there is no bad reason to have an abortion, just like there is no bad reason to have a mole removed from your face.
So, this brings me full-circle back to our president. President Obama admitted that “the two camps are irreconcilable”, but this was also written: “[Obama] supports abortion rights but says the procedure should be rare” (Yahoo). I simply don’t get this. I would be much happier with our president if he just said that he doesn’t believe it’s a living person and so he supports abortion than with the double-speak we get from so many politicians.
When President Obama was asked, “When does a baby get human rights”, he said that it’s “above [his] pay grade” (MSNBC). Seriously? He doesn’t know whether it’s removal of tissue or murder because it’s above his pay grade, but he’s going to pass laws to allow it anyway??? Please President Obama, figure out what you believe and make consistent decisions accordingly.
This has left me wondering: When will we learn that we can’t make everything a gray issue? Doing so compromises our integrity and makes all of our beliefs utterly worthless. I’ll take integrity over someone who tickles my ears with what I want to hear any day of the week. To find integrity, we have a choice to make. We must choose that it’s either a baby that has the same inalienable rights as all Americans, or it’s just a blob of fetal tissue that has no rights. Be hot or be cold, but be consistent in what you believe.