Of all the fiery debates in today’s political environment, my least favorite to write about is abortion. I’m having a flashback to the sad intensity of 1973 when the Supreme Court issued the Roe decision giving women the fundamental right to choose whether to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. I was torn then, and my aversion remains.
Several years after I was born, my mother had a baby who died two days after birth of malformed lungs. He had no chance of survival and it was before the development of high-tech scans and MRIs that would have shown that. As a teenager, I found a newborn sweater that she’d knitted and tucked away in a dresser drawer. I asked her if she regretted giving birth. “Absolutely not!” she replied.
I wasn’t so sure I’d have the same emotion if it were me, especially if I knew about that fatal flaw while the baby was in my womb. These are difficult choices, and technology makes them even more complex. We know and we see what’s coming. The current debate throws out concern over fetal viability. It puts the decision in the hands of the state rather than the mother. Where is the individual liberty in that? Or the morality in forcing a woman to watch a newborn die in her arms?
The complexity of abortion came up again when my mother advised a young girl who had been raped by a relative to have an abortion. Yes, the girl could have put the baby up for adoption. But it’s also likely that the girl’s impoverished mother would be stuck raising both the girl and her baby. Are we as apt to vote to financially support this family as we are to vote to outlaw abortions? I doubt it, given an often voiced opinion that family members can help out and federal help paying for child care is unnecessary.
Back in the early 1970s when the debate was raging, the issue of rape and incest was highlighted along with legislation that mandated rape victims bear these children. The Roe decision gave those victims freedom to decide what to do. Yet, a recent comment by one lawmaker claimed that a 10-year old could surely survive giving birth, so what’s the big deal. That made my blood run cold.