There is a time for civil debate and discussion. There is a time for compromise and bipartisanship. But there is also a time for sticking up for what you know to be right and not backing down because doing so would mean bargaining away your most sacred moral values. That is why in this article I am taking a serious moral stand that, although it may offend some, it is a stand that I unabashedly take.
Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York proposed a bill that would allow abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy to protect a woman’s health. This would go further than that state’s current law, which allows these late term abortions to occur only if the woman’s life is in danger (New York Times).
Essentially, under this law, a woman could carry a baby into the third trimester and then kill it if her and her doctor decided she has “health issues.” It would add a whole new level of barbarism to an already brutal practice.
First of all, what are “health issues?” The term is so vague it could be abused to a ridiculous scale. People and their doctors often create or exaggerate health problems just to get out of going to work or school. This law would allow women to do the same to get out of a pregnancy.
If a woman did have a more serious disease or condition, chances are she would have known about it since early on during the pregnancy. Why would she carry the child around for over six months before deciding to sap its life out?
But let us suppose that a more serious health problem did exist, and that she did not know about it early on. How does any non-life-threatening health issue justify the murder of a nearly-developed baby?
By the 24th week of pregnancy, a fetus’s brain, lungs and even taste buds and eyelids are already developing. It has a very recognizable human shape, weighing around 1.3 pounds and being close to a foot in length. In fact, depending on the circumstances, the baby may be able to survive outside the womb at this point, making it viable.
Thus, it is clearly a human being, which is what makes the manner by which these abortions are done all the more disgusting. A common method is called Dilation and Evacuation (D&E). First, the cervix is dilated so that the abortionist may insert his tools into the woman’s uterus. A vacuum is placed in the uterus which dismembers and sucks out (evacuates) the child’s body. Forceps are then used to pick off any remnants of the body still stuck in the uterus. Finally, the vacuum does one final sweep to ensure that the baby has been completely extracted (WebMD).
This is butchery, and it is sickening to think that there are people who legitimately support it. I know I am going to get angry comments saying that I should not judge people who would have these late-term abortions because I am not in their shoes. However, society judges people who throw babies into dumpsters to get rid of them. Those people go to jail. What is the difference between that and late term abortions? I really don’t see one.
In 2003, the U.S. passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. This act banned the even more barbaric “partial-birth” abortions which I do not even want to describe. However, the reason the ban does not apply to other late term abortion methods, like D&E, is because in these other types, the baby is not partially removed from the body before being killed.
This is why I call for a federal ban on all late term abortions. Thousands of years ago, the Spartans used to throw babies they did not want off a cliff to eliminate them. Now, thousands of years later, we are essentially doing the same thing, only with modern technology. We are going backward instead of forward. This is not about women’s rights. It is about the right of an innocent child to live instead of die.
Tony Bara
Editor in Chief
bara.a01@mymail.sxu.edu