Defining Abortion

This is the hot button issue among western faithfuls. People who are pro choice are called murderers, and people who are pro life are called dictators, while the people caught in the middle are women facing serious choices based upon serious considerations, and they are the ones who have to cope with their ultimate decision whatever it will be. I do notice how many men think it is their right (they call it duty) to tell women what to do with their bodies. As a white Anglo Saxon male myself, I would like to divorce myself from that hubris, if I can. Let us define our term, “Abortion.” Abortion is the premature termination of a life. It is, however, not confined to a fetus; it applies to any life prematurely terminated by war, poverty, disease, accident or willful acts of violence. Anyone killed by a radical extremist or by a wayward bomb in battle, felled by a preventable disease or by a lack of food to eat, killed in a car crash or slipping in a bathtub has been aborted. This means, to me, that anyone who opposes abortion must also oppose poverty and war, and is a hypocrite if he or she does not do so. That’s harsh, I know, but appropriate. The converse is also probably true: someone like me, who is also anti-war, -poverty, and –disease, ought also to be anti-abortion. But that’s where I break down in my logic. I am pro-life, but I am also pro-choice. I would advise someone considering abortion on all the possible alternatives and consequences of that choice, but I would respect their choice regardless. It is not my place to judge that decision. It is not my body, and it never will be. I cannot in good conscience dictate to any woman what she must or must not do with her own body or in response to her own circumstances. That is not my call. I do know this: somewhere in the world, every three seconds a child born into poverty dies. If you really want to stop abortion, start there.