I Wrote This a Year Ago. On Abortion. By Gene W. Edwards.
The law of unwanted consequences.
I received the following FB Comment from Christine T., one of my FB Friends and friends. Here goes: “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 later-term fetus under the knife, 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. It turned her whole life upside down.
There is also 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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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 about 28 weeks, a pregnancy lasting nine months, 39 weeks. That court ruled states cannot interfere until 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 Hatfields and McCoys 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 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, 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. It means that some believe the fetus, in its evolution in the womb, recapitulates all of the life forms progressively that came before it, from one-cell through fish . . . to monkey, to human. Animal-like features gradually coalesce in the womb into a 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 — that ruling to protect a woman’s rights — until the 6/3 “Trump court” threw Roe v. Wade out on 6/24/2022, leaving all such matters to the states.
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If you’re like me, you don’t quite know what to do with this issue. Is it okay to abort up to a certain “fetus viability” date (in weeks after conception)? What is the spiritual import of abortion? Whar’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 human after 13 weeks.
• 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 [impregnateth], that shall he also reap.” Impregnation has consequences. Be prepared to pay the price.
Children be God.
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