I am re-posting (revised) the following: The Law of Unwanted Consequences. By Gene W. Edwards. Re-posted 7/12/2023.
I wrote this a year ago (6/10/2022) and first posted it then. As follows:
I received the following FB Comment from Christine T., one of my FB Friends and friends. Here goes. She said, “In principle I am against abortion. There is a birth control pill and the pill after. Abortion should be allowed in cases of rape, incest, health of the mother, and fetal abnormality.”
I responded to Christine as follows: Well put. Most abortions are simply inconvenient pregnancies, unwanted children — that came about from a dearth of birth control information, and of “control” itself, of the willingness to postpone gratification. How is our epidemic of gun violence any worse or different than putting a late-term fetus under the knife and then discarding it like a used rubber?
The law of unwanted consequences enters into this, sometimes, in the emotion of horrible and lifelong guilt. I knew, from observation, an attractive young lady — a redhead — who was carelessly self-indulgent in her physical life. Her ingrained sense of compassion afterwards overruled her equally careless (pragmatic) decision to abort. She looked like living death after the abortion and during all of the last months I saw her at the University of Missouri’s library, where she worked, and in the apartment building where I lived, where she had been having noisy sex with her boyfriend in an apartment near mine. Her decision to abort turned her whole life upside down!
There is a TV show about babies given up for adoption and then the stories afterwards of parent/child or siblings trying to find one another for decades (one or more of them often dead by then). This subject is inexhaustible. It all starts with education, and moral grounding — and self-control.
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All this brings us back to Roe v. Wade (Roe always sounds to me like fish eggs). According to that 1973 Supreme Court ruling, a fetus is viable (certifiably human) at (legally) 28 weeks, a pregnancy lasting nine months, 39 weeks. That court ruled states cannot interfere (outlaw an abortion) until after a fetus is viable, which the court adjudged to be after a woman’s second of three trimesters.
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The Catholics and evangelicals would you believe pregnancy begins at the moment of conception. At least the evangelicals don’t prohibit birth control. The anti-abortionists want the Supreme Court to allow states to rule out (prohibit) almost all forms of abortions for all reasons.
I have facetiously pointed out that the abortionists and anti-abortionists today are like the Hatfield-McCoy feud of yesteryear. Compromise, and sanity, never entered into it!
In any case, in one-third of our states we’ve reverted to back-room, back-alley abortions. If you knew the real stories behind your family tree, you’d note the deaths of a number of mothers who made a mistake (got pregnant) and died from attempting to abort their baby themselves or have someone else do it. A comedienne I knew when I was an amateur stand-up comedian, Susan Bublitz, used to joke on stage that “This is Nancy Reagan’s idea of an abortion” — and she’d hold up a coat hanger!
“Ontogeny begats [recapitulates] phylogeny.” I remember that phrase from my science classes in college. Science observes/suggests the fetus, in its evolution in the womb, recapitulates all of the life forms progressively that came before it, from sperm and egg union — through fish . . . to monkey, to human. Animal-like features gradually coalesce in the womb into a “viable” human.
Until then, the abortionists would have us believe we’re just a “tadpole” until you can see a certifiable human in there, a date in gestational progression the 1973 Supreme Court pegged at as 28 weeks, which is two weeks into the third trimester of pregnancy — that ruling to protect a woman’s rights — until June of 2023 when the “Trump court” (Supreme Court) threw Roe v. Wade out, leaving all such pregnancy and its viability matters to the individual states, “States rights.”
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If you’re like me, you don’t quite know what to do with this issue. Is it okay, legal or not, to abort up to a certain “fetus viability” date (arbitrarily set at a particular number of weeks after conception)? Should federal or state law get involved in these private matters at all, thus aborting women’s rights? What is the spiritual import of abortion? What’s right, what’s just wrong? The most humane among us hate abortion, including the first cousin I am closest to of all my living relatives. He doesn’t care how you got pregnant; he cares that you would kill a human soul God gave you.
Here are my intuitive findings:
• A developing embryo is certifiably human after 13 weeks (three and one-half months).
• Abortion has consequences.
• Every unwanted child goes missing, whether born or unborn.
• Is abortion okay in the case of rape or incest? Answer: If taken early.
• Is abortion okay to save the mother or save the child? Answer: To preserve life, sometimes one must choose.
• Is it okay to abort a handicapped or deformed child? Answer: abort early before viable. Pray that the mother will miscarry instead.
What else should we know about this subject? Answer: Be careful what you say and do. Why cause an unwanted pregnancy, a child? Have compassion for a developing life; respect is as if it were your own. Develop a thirst for life in all of its abundance and freedom. God is not mocked. “Whatsoever a man soweth [whom he impregnateth], that shall he also reap.” Impregnation has consequences. Be prepared to pay the price.
Children be God.
I’m going to add the following, also from intuition:
Q. What should be the federal or state law, if any, regarding abortions?
A. State (federal and states) should stay out of it.
Q. What about late-term abortions in which neither mother nor child are in danger? Just, “I don’t want ‘it’.” (Convenience.) This describes many of the previous times’ “back alley” abortions.
A. Moral law supersedes criminal and civil law in regard to such circumstances and karma. It all starts with education, Laws written on the heart do fine. Moses and Jesus relaxed some laws (divorce, etc.) because enforcing them, groupwide, was almost an impossibility. In any case, the abortionist must be a licensed physician meeting regulatory oversight within his profession.
Q. Sometimes the baby must die to save the mother, and vice versa. If the baby is aborted, and it’s obviously viable, but perhaps way preemie, what should be the law or practice regarding aborting that fetus before 28 weeks, etc.?
A. See the above.
Q. Evaluate Roe. v. Wade, fetus viable at 28 weeks.
A. Roe: an attempt to legislate morals. Roe ruling inadequate to meet the situation.
Final comment: There is a failure in our society to address moral issues involving sex. An abortion is the easy way out for many. Portions of a society in crisis — ours! — finds hot button issues and exploits them, pretending moral indignation. Understand the better way is for each individual to avoid siring unwanted children.
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