Abortion policy must be completely secular. In 1797, an American treaty
with Tripoli, declared that "the government of the United States is not, in
any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was
written under Washington's presidency and approved by the Senate under John
Adams.
The U.S. statutes against abortion have a nonsectarian history. They were
put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority.
Even the Protestant clergy was not a factor in these laws. Rather, the laws
were an achievement of the American Medical Association.
From the early 19th century, Americans -- even lay people -- were exposed to
enough information about embryology to enable them to make a critical and
ethically significant distinction between contraception and abortion: the
former practice did not terminate a new human life, but the latter one did.
In 1827, Von Baer determined fertilization to be the starting point of
individual life. By the 1850s, medical communities were advocating
legislation to protect the unborn. In 1859, the American Medical Association
protested legislation which only protected the unborn after "quickening."
A rational, secular case thus exists for the rights of reborn humans.
Individual life is a continuum from fertilization until death. Zygote,
embryo, fetus, infant, adolescent, etc. are all stages of development. To
destroy that life at any stage of development is to destroy that individual.
The real question in the abortion debate is not the seemingly absurd
scenario of giving full human rights to zygotes, but rather the thorny
question of how to legally protect those rights without violating a new
mother's privacy and civil liberties. And the right to privacy is not
absolute. If parents are abusing an already born child, for example,
government "intrusion" is warranted -- children have rights.
Recognizing the rights of another class of beings limits our freedoms and
our choices and requires a change in our lifestyle -- the abolition of
(human) slavery is a good example of this. A 1964 New Jersey court ruling
required a pregnant woman to undergo blood transfusions, even if her
religion forbade it, for the sake of her unborn child. One could argue,
therefore, apart from religion, that recognizing the rights of the unborn,
like the rights of blacks, women, lesbians and gays, children, animals and
the environment, is a sign of secular social progress.
Writer and activist Jay Sykes, who once served as head of the Wisconsin
ACLU, wrote: "It is on the abortion issue that the moral bankruptcy of
contemporary liberalism is most clearly exposed," because the arguments used
in support of abortion "could, without much \refinement, be used to justify
the legalization of infanticide." The Left is divided on abortion.
In an article appearing in The Progressive, entitled, "Abortion: The Left
Has Betrayed the Sanctity of Life," Mary Meehan concluded: "It is out of
character for the Left to neglect the weak and the helpless. The traditional
mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the
poor. The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in
need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient or the
boat people on the high seas. The basic instinct of the Left is to aid those
who cannot aid themselves -- and that insti\nct is absolutely sound. It is
what keeps the human proposition going."
Writing in the Tallahassee Democrat, pro-life feminist Rosemary Bottcher,
cynically observed: "I had always thought it peculiar how the liberal and
conservative philosophies have lined up on the abortion issue. It seemed to
me that liberals traditionally have cared about others and human rights,
while conservatives have cared about themselves and property rights.
Therefore, one would expect liberals to be defending the unborn and
conservatives to be encouraging their destruction."
Rosemary Bottcher criticized the Left for its failure to take a stand
against abortion: "The same people who was hysterical at the thought of
executing, after countless appeals, a criminal convicted of some revolting
crime would have insisted on his mother's unconditional right to have him
killed while he was still innocent. The same people who organized a boycott
of the Nestle Company for its marketing of infant formula in underdeveloped
lands would have approved of the killing of those exploited infants only a
few months before. The same people who talk incessantly of human rights are
willing to deny the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings the
most important right of all.
"Apparently these people do not understand the difference between
contraception and abortion," Bottcher concluded. "Their arguments defending
abortion would be perfectly reasonable if they were taking about
contraception. When they insist upon 'reproductive freedom' and 'motherhood
by choice' they forget that 'pregnant' means 'being with child.' A pregnant
woman has already reproduced: she is already a mother."
A national poll by Wirthlin Worldwide on the evening of the 1998 elections
found that 38 percent of all Democrats (and 40 percent of Democrat women)
oppose abortion. A national poll released by the Center for Gender Equality
(a women's think tank headed by former Planned Parenthood executive director
Faye Wattleton), in January 1999, found that a majority of American women do
not support legalized abortion on demand. 53 percent of female respondents
to the poll said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest,
to save a mother's life or not at all, up from 45 percent in 1996.
A Zogby International poll in August 1999 found that the majority of
Americans recognize that abortion destroys a new human life (52 percent
versus 36 percent), oppose partial-birth abortions (56.4 percent versus 32
percent), are opposed to tax-funded partial-birth abortions (71 percent to
23 percent), and think parents should be notified if their minor child seeks
an abortion (78 percent). On secular, human rights grounds, the Left should
take a stand against abortion.
Go on to: Abortion is bad karma: Hindu
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