I considered an alternative title to this post, which was "Pro-choice Advocates: Eternally Obscuring the Issue." But somehow "Perpetually Missing the Point" sounded a little more natural to my ear.
To get to classes at the University of
Alaska Fairbanks, I park on the far side of a university parking lot
and then walk for about five minutes across the parking lot and up a
hill. During one walk last week I noticed a small car (liberals seem to like small
cars) with a sticker on the right side of the bumper stating boldly:
FREEDOM
MEANS
CHOICE
Under this declaration was the address of some abortion-promoting organization, and of course on the opposite side of the bumper was the customary Obama '08 memorabilia.
Liberals are fond of borrowing conservative and religious terminology, beating them over peoples' heads in quick political statements, and then tossing away or completely ignoring the ideology behind the words. This would be a classic example.
Anyone who really cares about the idea called freedom understands what it means to live in a free society. In a free society, we strive to allow people to exercise freely certain fundamental rights that belong to each of us as human beings. However, we understand that we can not allow one person exercising his rights to trample over the rights of another person. From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The fundamental reason that conservatives are opposed to abortion is that they believe the fetus or embryo in a mother's womb is a living human being, and as such, that being's most fundamental right - the right to Life - must be protected. In contrast, pro-choice advocates represent themselves as protecting a woman's right to exercise control over her own body, implying (when it is not stated outright) that the organism growing inside of her is not really human nor truly a distinct individual.
This is the heart of the debate. The "Freedom Means Choice" message, on the contrary, is a deceptive trick - a sleight of hand, if you will - meant to distract from the real issue.
The pro-choice movement needs to keep people distracted if legalized abortion is going to survive in the United States. It is a bit speculative of course, but I suspect that if every mother considering having an abortion took a serious, deep look at the question of whether or not her child is a human being, the periodic number of abortions in the country would drop to a small fraction of the original. I think that the average woman, after looking at reconstructions of the child in the womb, reading about the intricacies of each stage of development, listening to a young heartbeat, and pondering the philosophical implications of the decision, would not have the willpower needed to have her child crushed to pieces and sucked out of her womb with a vacuum pump.
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