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Thanks to Kim, who has some insights and observations on the abortion issue. Kim’s comments are below in Purple Text – As always, Italicized Text of any color is quoted material from previous posts.
Regarding your entry about abortion… I honestly find almost everything you said to be dead on with my own thoughts. The large question has always been in how we define life. I am not an avid supporter of abortion. I do believe that it can be (and most likely is) used as a means of contraception for some folks. That’s just plain wrong in my book. I am, however, a firm believer that there are times when aborting a child is absolutely the right thing to do. I’ve known cases where it absolutely was. But in those cases, there were most certainly countless sleepless nights in making such a choice. The quality of life must be considered as much in abortion as it is in pulling life support from a loved one… a decision, unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with. For me, having to make the decision to end the life of an unborn child that had no chance of living a quality style life (or even living any life for very long) would be as tough as it was to end my own father’s life. Yet with my Dad, he had a choice. He made his plans very well known under his circumstances. That fact made it no easier for me to sign the papers to not resuscitate him, or to tell the doctors it was time to let him go, but I did it… because it was what he wished for. An unborn baby doesn’t get to make that choice. The government, allows us to end a persons life if it is based on their wishes (as in my father’s case), why shouldn’t they allow parents to make it for their unborn child based on the same type of criteria. Granted, not all would act as responsibly with that decision as we’d all like, but I’m sure most would not take it lightly.
As for the specific law being passed… I’m as horrified as most others with the idea of the late term abortion procedure that is now in practice. And there probably should be some guidelines around it. However, I’m appalled at the idea that we as women may have such an important choice regarding our own bodies taken away from us. That’s one of the problems with the new law. But beyond that, the notion that there are no exceptions made for the fact that the mother’s and/or babies life would be in jeopardy without the procedure, is just unconscionable. I can’t believe that the law makers can’t fathom a scenario that late in term that would put the mother’s own life in jeopardy and therefore, won’t account for that in the law they want to pass.
Your point about how easy we make it in this world to purchase guns that kill innocent people every day is one that people should think more clearly about. Otherwise healthy children can be gunned down walking to school, but a fetus with potentially severe birth defects that will never live longer than a day or a week, or that will never have any chance of survival in this world, still must be born into it so that the government can control our very bodies, is a scenario I can’t live with. Not to mention that our very own G.W. can’t wait to pass this law to protect unborn children, yet didn’t bat an eye at killing as many as he has in the last 6 months to further his own agenda. Incredible.
Based on the kind of person I am, I can’t imagine having an abortion. My own children mean every thing to me. I can’t imagine even more, that the choice will be completely stripped from me because my government believes I should not be given an option of what to do with my own body… or worse yet, that I’m somehow incapable of making an informed decision about the future of my unborn children or my very own life.