Abortion and Common Sense
Abortion is not black or white, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Abortion is a problem of humanity – and this era of Abortion in American will be studied by future historians. The folks looking back will recognize the futile and selfish partisan bickering that prolonged the agony of a health care disaster. Both fanatical sides of the debate are wrong. There are solutions.
First: The Problem:
This writer was working in the local Police Station in 1970. Late one night we received a call that a body was laying in an alley. There was an immediate alarm and a quick response because this alley was located in a prosperous neighborhood. The first officers to arrive called for an ambulance – but it was too late – the coroner was next on the call list. The body was that of a 25 year old woman. Blood was everywhere. The coroner’s report said she died of a botched illegal abortion.
We will never know her motive in seeking the avenue that led to her death. We do know that she was not well served. Not well served by her family, her church, her community, her government, or her health care system.
We can only imagine the emotional distress that led to her choices. We can only imagine her sense of abandonment by all who were supposed to love her and care about her. She took the road of lonely despair, and the grim reaper was waiting.
Two years later Roe V. Wade sanctioned legal and clinical abortion. People of my generation and that of my parents breathed a sigh of relief – perhaps we would no longer find dead bodies in alleys. The change in the legal status of abortion has become a health care disaster for our country. The use of abortion as a means of birth control rises to the level of insanity. Government sanctioned insanity.
No one wants government intervention into our lives. No One! Not liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, religious or atheist, no one! The Government should rightly be our last source of support – but it should be there in that last moment of despair.
The problem is not with the government – the problem sits directly on the shoulders of mean spirited families, heavy handed unforgiving churches, and local communities that refuse to take care of their own. It is truly maddening that we, as humane people, are forced to legislate health care. Even more maddening is the partisan argument that only prolongs the problem. There are compromises that would save lives and bring civility to this dilemma of holocaust proportions.
Here is the message to religious evangelical fundamentalists who are opposed to government intervention – where were you? Where were you when your parishioner was sick, was troubled, was in despair? You ran them off with your righteous indignation – your punishing judgment – your crass selfishness. You were busy building your tabernacle – your super churches – your television career. We see you ranting on Sunday Morning Television – but we don’t see you stepping up to the plate and addressing the real problems. Your bull headed idea that abortion should be illegal, regardless of the mother’s circumstances, prevents any rational solution.
And how about the conflicted liberal – the person who believes that Government can legislate social problems – but does not believe the Government should comment on the lives of the unborn?
We have to recognize that humans are fundamentally flawed as individuals. Collectively, after much debate, we generally make good reasonable decisions. But the partisan politics of contemporary America prevent reasonable debate. The my-way-or-the-highway mentality of both sides of the Abortion issue only prolongs the agony.
The presumption of the Roe V Wade court ruling was based on the premise that a woman has a right to privacy. The premise was that the woman would confer with her family physician – a physician who had the option of counseling and nurturing and caring for his patient. The physician’s hand would not be tied by law. But this is not how the years played out.
The reality is that unscrupulous physicians set up Abortion Clinics. Clinics where the physician had no emotional investment in the woman or her family. Clinics where the objective was to perform mass abortions at several hundred dollars a whack – with no concern or followup with the patient.
The solution to the abortion holocaust is Government regulation of health care – reasonable, thoughtful, commons sense regulation that shuts down the abortion clinics and truly forces the issue into legitimate physician offices and legitimate hospitals.
Comment by Jane on 2 September 2008:
Thank you!! I am seventy years old and worked in an emergency room for 30 years. I took a 16 year old girl to the morgue after she pain a taxi driver $20 to abort her with a piece of wire. Surely no one wants to go back to those days when the police would sometimes go right into the exam rooms to question a sick frightened teenager. Some of the people who are most vocal have no idea what it was like before Roe V Wade. We call these girls immoral and many other names but they were from every socio economic level. Maybe Sarah Palin’s daughter will make some people realize that it happens in many families and being judgemental and critical accomplishes nothing. No one will ever stop abortions – but they shouldn’t be done in back alleys and taxi cabs.
Comment by margie on 8 May 2009:
why isn’t having an abortion called MURDER??????????when that baby starts growing this is life. people should be ashamed of theirselves for having any part in such acts. what else would you do, that is immoral?????????there’s no one to stand up for them only people who don’t believe in abortion.and i am one who doesn’t believe in abortion.
Comment by Richard VInson on 28 April 2010:
Margie, Why isn’t killing someone convicted of a crime not called “murder” and is called “punishment”?
We can agree murder is bad. We can agree murder is ending anothers life for them. Where we seem to disagree is WHEN a life is “permissable” to be ended (murdered).
I respect – though I am not a Catholic, the Catholic church’s position. They are consitent. Abortion is murder, therefore bad- the death penalty is also murder, thereofre also bad.
That is quite fair and not at all in conflict with one antoher.
The issue I takje is that quite often those who are against abortion, are FOR the dealth penalty. Do you see how others can view that as hypocritcal? It makes others view that position as “It is ok to kill an adult for a crime they commited, but not ok to kill someone the world has never even met.”
I am not saying abortion or the death penalty is wrong. That is something each person must carefully consider and decide for themslves, and also collectively as a nation.
I am merely pointing out a glaring ommission in the “pro-life” movement. You can’t call yourself “pro-life” if you are favor if ending one by death penalty and you can’t call yourself “pro-life” if you care only about a fetus being born- but care not what happens to it afterwords. That isn’t “pro-life”, that is “pro-BIRTH”. Life is also what happens AFTER the child is born, is it not? Are we not living …life…as we speak?
Food for thought..
Comment by George Lebron on 8 May 2010:
The reason for the extremes goes to the first rule of negotiation. Always start off with the ridiculous. If you start off near the middle and the opposing party starts off at the extreme, when the time for compromise comes the one that started in the middle doesn’t feel that he/she should have to give in too much. However the one at the extreme will complain about having to give in so much while the other side only gave in a little. They will cry unfair, they will scream loudly how unfair this is and make the other side look like jerks. As the masses begin to hear of the issue many will see it as unfair that one side is being forced to give up so much more than the other and in the end the ruling will usually favor the one at the extreme. It’s like selling a house (in good economic times that is), you always start with a number higher than you want so you have room to negotiate. This way both parties feel like they one.
Comment by Lola Allen on 25 May 2010:
I am always against abortion because it is a sin to kill an innocent child.-‘:
Comment by CJV on 26 May 2010:
I only somewhat agree with you; therefore, it must also a sin to send our 18 year olds to foreign countries to either be killed before they reach the tender age of 21 or to kill innocent victims of shattered governments, in the name of democracy right?
I don’t know your personal stand on this particular issue, you may or may not agree with me. I guess I found an opening for a pet peeve of mine. I feel frustrated with so many double standards.
I think a sound arguement for anything is at least consistant. This country, and the world for that matter, is full of hypocracy. We can’t change the rules of the game when things aren’t in our favor. Consistency is missing.
My problem with the statement you made is that those who usually make it are not consistant in their beliefs. For instance, the people who feel necessary to criticize women who have abortions are the same people who complain about welfare families, single parent homes, medicare to the poor, understaffed schools, the horrors of abused neglected children, broken families, children exposed to drugs and alcohol, and so on…I don’t think that most women who have abortions are just careless & bad people. Though I don’t condone abortions, I also don’t think that I have a right to judge a womans motive, that’s between the woman, God and her doctor frankly.
One final note on the statement, these same people are often the ones complaining of intusive over reaching big government.
Comment by Samuel Hernandez on 7 October 2010:
Abortion must not be allowed and banned in all countries”‘~
Comment by Nancy Belle on 17 October 2016:
I remember Roe vs Wade and I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. My first experience with abortion was a neighbor begging me to speak with her daughter in law who lived with them. The girl was only about 17 and had been married already nearly two years and had a young son maybe a year old. Her needs were met. A roof over her head a loving family, fed and clothed well. She didn’t even have to work a stay at home Mom except for trying to complete her high school education. She and her husband were pressed into marriage ‘Old School Fashion’ because she was pregnant at 15. Not unheard of even in the early seventies.
The Grandmother/Mother in Law had reached the end of her ability to implore this young woman to not abort the new baby simply because she could. Thus she was bring others into the matter seeking to show the girl how unnecessary abortion would be and wrong. I to implored and gave options, including I would take the baby myself and adopt he or she (which the Grandmother had also done) the girl would not budge. Her reasoning was she just did not want another child. That reasoning should have had her on birth control but for some reason she wasn’t. She had the abortion and it wasn’t too many months later she was pregnant again. Having gone against the advice of everyone and having the abortion anyway, she soon became despondent and was very regretful of her deed. The new baby was some relief for the family, but would not change the fact that another had died simply because the law was changed and it became legal to kill him. I have know several others who contemplated but after counseling with family, friends or whoever did not and are not regretful they were counseled from it. Some partisan and liberal fanatics would have the practice forbidden, claiming it infringed on a woman’s rights.
I have also known a couple of others who used the practice of abortion as their birth control. If their object is to not have children wouldn’t sterilization be a preferable answer? We live in an enlightened age with many options to prevent pregnancy for abortion to be the hot topic it remains still.