Abortion proponents like to hide their advocacy behind smart-sounding medical terminology and appeals to individualism. But when you strip away all the talk of fetuses and conception and the so-called right to choose, what you’re left with is a few inconvenient facts.
The first and most important fact is that the child inside the mother’s womb is alive. It doesn’t matter what you call it — a fetus, zygote, unformed tissue, whatever — no one questions that a child in the womb begins to grow from the moment of conception, that his heartbeat is discernible after only a few weeks, that he will kick and move as he develops. And no one disputes that the inevitable result of pregnancy, with the exception of rare but tragic complications, is that a child will be born alive, breathing and crying. What this means, of course, is that the child born was always alive. He could not have been dead in the womb before, or he would not have been born alive. He always had life, as his heartbeat and movements so clearly proved.
This brings us to the second inconvenient truth: A living and breathing human being is a person. Shocking, I know. But it must be said, for the pro-abortion movement tries to deny the personhood of unborn children to make them seem less human and the abortion procedure, in turn, less graphic. But the unborn child, who we have already established is alive, is, just as any other human being, his own person, who will one day have his own personality and talents and hobbies. Abortion deprives him of that.
Some abortion advocates will concede both of these points but argue that neither the life nor personhood of the unborn child is greater than his mother’s right to choose what to do with her own body. But here’s where the third inconvenient truth about abortion comes in: The moment you conceive a child, your body is no longer yours. It belongs to your child just as much as it belongs to you. That’s why in some states, a mother can be held criminally responsible for abusing drugs and other substances while she is pregnant — the law recognizes that she is responsible not just for herself but for the life she is carrying as well.
Like so much else in the abortion movement, “my body, my choice” is a lie — one that abortion advocates gladly tell themselves to justify choosing personal convenience over personal responsibility and self-sacrifice. That’s the real choice facing women at the heart of the abortion debate: It is a choice between yourself and your interests and the unborn person to and for whom you are responsible. Too often, the cost of this choice is a human life.
