Abortion: Why Can't We All Work Together?

Regarding my recent posts on Dr. Gosnell's hideous abortion mill uncovered in Pennsylvania, an anonymous comment has left a couple of comments to which I wanted to reply (here andhere).  However, my reply has become so long it is a series of posts, so that's what I am doing with it.  I've posted parts one and two,   three, and four. This is part five. (and I edited part five as of 8:40 a.m. Central time)

In my reply to anonymous's first comment, I wrote: “The only reason to suppose that more abortions is the answer is if you care more about abortion as a political football than you do about actual human lives, of both mothers and babies.”

 Anonymous clarified: Again, nothing in what I have said is suggesting that I believe more abortions or more clinics is the solution. 

This is what you said that makes it sound to me like you believe more clinics is the solution (and more clinics naturally would mean more abortions):

 Anonymous: this underscores the need for safe conditions under which women can obtain late-term abortions. As of right now, there are only a few (if that many) providers in the entire country. That leaves a void for a monster like this to set up shop and prey on women who cannot afford to travel long distances. If there were safe providers closer, women would not turn to a place that was clearly so unsafe.

You don't get more abortion providers and closer clinics/providers without more clinics and more abortions.    They go together. 

I answered the other part of your comment (that there only a few abortion providers in the entire country) in part three- that's a pro-choice talking point, but it's not actually true.  I appreciated your acknowledgment of that.  The abortions being performed by Gosnell were largely late term, generally illegal, and nearly all elective abortions.  Therefore it is difficult to see why the Gosnell butchery is 'proof' that we need more of the same, only cleaner, tidier, and in more neighborhoods. 

Anonymous: I am suggesting that existing providers, such as Planned Parenthood, expand their scope so that women can receive legal later-term abortions when necessary. In my ideal world, there would be birth control easily and inexpensively available to those who wanted it, so they do not end up in a situation where they even have to contemplate abortion. 

Women can already receive legal later term abortions when their lives are truly at stake.  the truth is, however, that late term abortions are almost never 'necessary.'  As somebody pointed out in the comments, since a woman must be pretty much fully dialated anyway at that stage, she can have labor induced and the baby taken to the NICU, or she can have a c-section.  The babies can be adopted- there is a long, long waiting list of parents longing to adopt those babies straight out of the NICU.  I know many adoptive parents who met their babies in the NICU and stayed with them 24 and 7 until the babies could come home.

How is Planned Parenthood expanding their scope in order to provide more later term abortions not expanding the number of clinics and abortions?

And why do you imagine birth control is not readily and inexpensively available? 

 Women do not end up in this situation because they lack access or funding for birth control.  It's because neither they nor their partners exercise self discipline and self-denial, because they did not take advantage of the free birth control offered through schools, free clinics, Planned Parenthood offices, and medicaid, or they had it, but used it improperly (the biggest two causes of birth control failure with teens are simply not using it or using it improperly).  There are a few cases where they did use birth control and it failed, and in about two percent of tragic cases they did not have the power to say no, since they were victims of rape or rape/incest- both crimes I believe should be punished much more harshly than they are.

Personally, like most pro-lifers, I believe the babies conceived in rape are still human beings and we do not murder the innocent because of the crimes of the fathers.  Unlike most pro-lifers, I am willing to be pragmatic and leave 'rape, incest, and the life of the mother' as a legal exception to abortion because that would immediately save the lives of at least 95% of the babies being murdered now.  I also will say I am willing to accept this compromise because it calls the bluff of the pro-aborts, who use those hard cases as an emotional bludgeon, but actually, they know how rare those hard cases are.  They know that their stance is calculated to protect abortion as a birth control option.

I know a woman with three children by three fathers.  She got pregnant the first time in her twenties.  She never lacked birth control, she just didn't take advantage of it.  After the third baby she elected to have her tubes tied- which the taxpayer paid for, courtesy of her government provided health care.  She could have had free birth control at any time if she had chosen, or at best paid three dollars for it.  she just couldn't be bothered.

When my grandson was in the NICU I listened to one teen mother telling an older mother that she was glad she had her baby so prematurely (which was why they were in the NICU), because now she would be able to find a dress to wear with the prom, and the previous year almost all her classmates couldn't go to the prom because of their big bellies and the inability to find a lovely maternity dress to wear to the Prom.  Birth control is freely available at her school.  There's a Planned Parenthood up the road from her clinic.  There is even at least one late-term abortion clinic in her town. 

In the real world, almost all the reasons you imagine for late-term abortions, indeed almost all abortions, are myths perpetrated by the pro-aborts at NARAL, NOW, NAF, Planned Parenthood, and the like.  The media repeats them like the mouthpieces they are, and the myth is perpetuated.

Anonymous: There would also be the adequate support system that you spoke of (more information about adoption, job counseling, mental health counseling, and ongoing assistance) in place for women who found themselves pregnant unintentionally and did not wish to have an abortion. I had a friend who worked with a crisis pregnancy center, and one time when trying to get support, told me to “bring a box of pampers by.” The way in which she said it suggested that one of their only functions was to provide women with diapers (maybe I misinterpreted it), but that was about it. There is SO much more to raising a child than diapers. That won’t cut it, and from my viewpoint into the world, the support system is not adequate at this time. Perhaps that is an area in which pro-life and pro-choice people could work together to strengthen.

Yes, I would guess that you definitely misinterpreted.  I have worked with crisis pregnancy centers.  We adopted two of our children from one.  They do provide adoption and job counseling, job training assistance, assistance with finding places to live.   They do not consider themselves primarily an adoption placement center- they prefer to help mothers keep their babies.   We adopted two of children in 1992, and I happen to know that the agency we adopted from is STILL helping the birth mother from time to time, even though she has moved away and she placed the children when they were older, not as infants.  The help is out there for those who want it. 

Not all help and assistance need come from formally organized programs, either.  If you've read our blog for very long you know that we met a single woman, pregnant and alone, several years ago.  The day after I met her (one of my girls had known her a little longer), her son was staying at my house and I was at the hospital with her while she had her baby.  She came home to our house after she and the baby left the hospital.  We have been working with her for over four years, now.  Those boys spend most weekends and holidays at our house, and sometimes live with us more than with their mother.  There is another couple at our church who have done the same thing, only more so.  They have two children who call them Grandma and Grandpa.  The children lived with them for years while their single mother tried to get her act together, and they just recently moved back with their mother, but still stay with their 'grandparents' on weekends. I could tell you at least five more similar stories from my congregation alone, and those are just the ones I know about- I just recently learned of another family who have a similar story, but the children they helped raise are now grown and living in another state. 


Here's the thing, though- while I can tell you countless stories of people ready, willing, able to help single moms keep their babies or to adopt them, I can also tell you stories of women who rebuffed that help and chose abortion anyway.  And none of that matters if the babies are, as I believe, as you cannot disprove, human beings with a right to life.  You shouldn't get to murder your baby because you find life as a single mom too big of a burden and you can't find enough other people to do your job for you.  And adoption is ALWAYS an option- there are thousands more parents wanting to adopt than there are babies the state permits to be adopted.

There is also no chance that the two sides can work together on these issues, because the pro-abortion agencies such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW, NAF, etc, are actively working on shutting down Crisis Pregnancy Centers,  because it's not an area the pro-aborts care to strengthen.    They complain that CPCs exist to stop abortions- well, duh.  Those pro-abortion agencies do not wish to see women keep their babies, nor do they wish to see the babies adopted out.  Abortion is a lucrative industry for them, and it's a source of political power  They do not wish to see them placed for adoption.  They want to see more abortions, not fewer.  We can know this by their actions.

And to be honest, it is hard for me to stomach working alongside people who think it should have been acceptable for the birth mother of my children to butcher them in the womb.  It's very personal, and it sickens me.  It is like you are asking an abolitionist or a former slave to work together peaceably with a slave owner who wishes to improve conditions for other slave owners so that the slaves will find slavery a more pleasant form of bondage.

Except it's worse, because at least the slaves would get to live.  

The pro-choice view of compromise requires of me the acceptance of murder.  You may not believe killing babies in the womb is murder or even killing children, but I do, and the science is, frankly, entirely on my side.  In fact, a growing number of 'pro-choicers' are admitting that abortion is, of course, about killing a child, yet they still support it.  I find that heinous, not one jot less repugnant that Dr. Gosnell.

Dr. Gosnell, btw, is confused about why he is being charged with so many counts of murder.  He understands why he's being charged with the death of an adult woman who died in his care, but he does not know why he's being charged with murder when all he did was perform abortions and 'insure fetal demise.'  After all, his viewpoint is perfectly compatible with what the President of this country stands for and has voted to permit.

The takeaway from Dr. Gosnell's hack house is not that we need more clean, sanitized abortion clinics, not that the pro-aborts and pro-lifers should work together.  It's that abortion kills children and harms women, sometimes killing them, too.  It can never be safe, it shouldn't be legal, and it definitely needs to be more rare.