Abortion As a Blessing, Grace, or Gift - A Renewed Conversation on Reproductive Rights

[SecularMotion]

Can we reclaim the moral high ground in the debate about abortion as a part of thoughtful, wise loving and living? We won’t know until we try.Most Americans think of childbearing as a deeply personal or even sacred decision. So do most reproductive rights advocates. That is why we don’t think anybody’s boss or any institution should have a say in it. But for almost three decades, those of us who hold this view have failed to create a resonant conversation about why, sometimes, it is morally or spiritually imperative that a woman can stop a pregnancy that is underway.

My friend Patricia offers a single reason for her passionate defense of reproductive care that includes abortion: Every baby should have its toes kissed. If life is precious and helping our children to flourish is one of the most precious obligations we take on in life, then being able to stop an ill-conceived gestation is a sacred gift. Whether or not we are religious, deciding whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy is a process steeped in spiritual values: responsibility, stewardship, love, honesty, compassion, freedom, balance, discernment. But how often do we hear words like these coming from pro-choice advocates?

Our inability to talk in morally resonant terms about abortion has clouded the broader conversation about mindful childbearing. The cost in recent decades has been devastating. In developing countries millions of real women and children have died because abortion-obsessed American Christians banned family planning conversations as a part of HIV prevention efforts. Those lost lives reveal the callous immorality of the anti-choice movement.

Back home, here in the U.S., our inability to claim the moral high ground about abortion has brought us one of the most regressive culture shifts of a generation. We are, incredibly, faced with “personhood rights” for fertilized eggs, pregnancies that begin legally before we even have sex, politicians with “Rape Tourette’s,” and a stunningly antagonistic debate about contraceptive technologies that could make as many as ninety percent of unintended pregnancies along with consequent suffering and abortions simply obsolete.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/tarico20131212a

[Squinch]

1. Kick.

[PeaceNikki]

2. Thanks for the cross-post.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Kick x2 - My neighbors are anti-abortion, yet complain about the school taxes ($180K per child).

They are an odd lot.

A 20 & Out Navy man, collecting his 50% pension since he was 42. Going to the PX because it's tax free. Going to the Commissary because it's taxpayer subsidized, getting a veteran property tax discount, getting discounts in every store, and working a government subsidized defense contractor job making six figures...

all the while: He's against socialists!


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Now that the tone has been set:

He's a Tea Party guy who complains about the poor city children and why so many of them are being born.

He complains about paying for Food Stamps, SNAP, WIC, housing, and any other federal assistance program.

He's an anti-abortion Catholic who complains when the school taxes go up because people in the neighborhood have children.

He is also against funding for birth control, though he and his wife apparently use it as she doesn't want more kids.


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Each child that is born, not only incurs medical costs that insurance companies pick up part of, but they also incur around $15K a year in school taxes, for at least 12-13 years or roughly $180K in current dollars. Over the next 12 years, that might equate to $250K in total educational costs.

Each family on assistance might drive that cost up to $250K in current dollars to over $320K in future funding.


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These types fail to see that when a child is born before the family is in a position to care for it, that family's chance of thriving is dramatically cut. Many young guys skip off on child support and abandon the mother and child to a live of destitution. And, even though these types say that the woman should have kept her legs closed, they fail to admit the male's role or the fact that these pregnancies are going to full term and the financial costs on the community will occur.

Instead of acknowledging the human condition, that sex will occur, he maintains a stance they should be abstinent if they cannot afford birth control. The lack of birth control is one of the major drivers of early-term abortions. Yet, when this 'precious zygote' becomes a human life, they turn their back on the mother and child and let them fight for their existance.