Blog for Choice

I missed the Blog for Choice day. But the question of why I am pro-choice is simple. It is a decision that I think only the people involved directly can or should make. It is a decision with grave moral consequences especially as the end of the pregnancy approaches, yet those consequences cannot be made in a one size fits all equation. So I leave it up to the doctor and the woman and pray for all those involved.

Spontaneous and induced

Someone in response to one of my earlier posts commented that, "When a doctor does late term abotions it is NOT I repeat NOT a normal process!" and that is correct. It is equally correct to say that a late term abortion - induced or spontaneous - is not natural. The problem is not whether it is a medical procedure but how long the pregnancy has continued. Medical procedures during late-term pregnancy are always difficult and abnbormal. They are not thereby wrong. Yes, ethical questions should be raised. But flip answers should not forbid all such procedures. The women I know who have considered inducing abortion in the third trimester have all wrestled with a variety of questions and the decision should, I believe, be left to those women and their doctors rather than some rule set by those who are not personally involved.

And abortion is forbidden in Scripture?

A recent comment on one of my posts reminded me of a passage from Nubers 5:11-31 about what to do if a man thinks his wife is unfaithful -

"if a spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous of his wife who
has defiled herselff; or if a spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous
of his wife, though she has not defiled herself;"
Numbers 5:14

- goes on to say something about if the woman has been unfaithful then her womb will discharge and her organs drop. (Numbers 5:28) This sure sounds like an induced abortion to me. And I use 'induced' with all due deliberation.

What many on the pro-life side forget is that abortion is a natural process. There are many more spontaneous abortions than people notice. My mother was unfortunate enough to have several spontaneous abortions late in the birth process. Yet those were a part of the natural world. To just say abortions are wrong is to ignore the several like and unlike scriptures taht speak to abortion and the many necessary choices where it is not between good and bad, but the best we can do right now in this situation.

Abortion - no simple answers

One reason I keep going back to letting the woman and her doctor make the decision on abortion is the wide variety of what nature does. I first heard of this in The Frontal Cortex, but went to the original article to double-check. A child was born with a fetus in his stomach. This is nature at work. I don't like the possibility of a human being aborted, but.... in this case the parents, the person involved and th doctor should make the decision. Don't talk to me of the fetus being human - there's a lot of disagreement about that. Don't talk to me about living - the difference between living and non-living starts at the viral level. Don't talk to me about scripture - there are clear evidences of different treatments depending upon how advanced the pregnancy. Let the people directly involved make the decision.

Why I am pro-choice

I came across this story at Scienceblogs.com, but went to the original citation at ABC news. I don't like induced abortions. I think they're always a bad choice, even though sometimes they're the best among bad choices. I believe that the woman involved will have mixed feelings down the years. But a woman shouldn't have to feel that her only option is to shoot herself in the stomach. That's worse than any abortion ever chosen by the woman who is pregnant.

When does life begin?

For me that answer lies somewhere between a virus and a bacterium. When does human life begin is a trickier question. The questionable authority has a post from a more scientific standpoint, but though I wanted to be a scientist when I went off to college (started out double majoring in biology and chemistry to become a geneticist) I ended up in religious studies by the end of my undergraduate career.

And in religious studies (my B.A) or my Masters of Divinity the question of when does human life begin is one fraught with ambiguity. Even answering the question doesn't solve the question of whether abortion is right. Christians have answered the question is it right to take a human life in the affirmative many times. The theory of just war is one example. Allowing executions of criminals is another.

Then there are other questions. It's been said that abortion is unnatural, yet there are many women who have spontaneous abortions (to use the term the doctors gave when my mother miscarried). So abortion isn't as unnatural as all that. It's certainly much less complicated than a heart repair.

Is abortion good? I'd say 'no,' but that doesn't mean I think it should be illegal. It is a moral choice and not something about which society has any sort of agreement. Induced abortions are perhaps the best choice out of several bad choices.