Late-term abortions are a touchy subject, even among many of the pro-choice point of view. Even the majority in Roe v. Wade recognized that there’s a big difference, scientifically and morally, between ending a new life a couple of weeks after conception and depriving an otherwise viable infant of his or her first breath. The fact that the bright line blurred in so many states over the years is just another regretful chapter in the horror story that Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun et al. began 50 years ago.
Some who support a woman’s “right” to abortion dismiss the importance of late-term abortions, not because they don’t happen, but because they don’t happen much. Committed pro-lifers find abortion at any stage a morally criminal act involving an innocent human being whose life potential is every bit as valuable as a life in progress. We understand that most pro-choice folks find that argument less than compelling. Message received.
Still, there are degrees. Many an abortion rights champion finds it easy to dismiss the idea that abortion is murder when the potential life is a blob of cells forging their way to the future, unrecognizable for a while as a human being. As the embryo develops into a fetus and then into an infant whose viability doesn’t depend on which side of the birth canal this new person happens to occupy, the difference between perceived potential life and demonstrable actual life increasingly blurs. Unless one’s heart is made of stone, there’s a big emotional difference between disposing of an amorphous blob of cells and snapping the spine of a vibrant new child about to enter into the world.
So there’s no misunderstanding, I and the vast majority of my pro-life comrades whose beliefs extend far beyond my country, culture, and faith believe that the amorphous blob is every bit as much a miracle and thus every bit as much deserving of protection as the fully formed fetus about to enter the “real” world. On the other side, there are many pro-choice advocates who don’t have a problem with early-term abortions but who are very much disturbed by late-term and partial-birth abortions.
If one happens to be pro-choice, there may be some perceived comfort in the fact that most abortions aren’t late-term. If the body count is relatively low, that sort of thinking rationalizes, what’s the big deal?
That’s the thing about the culture of death we live in today: It’s not that life never matters on the left; it only matters sometimes. The death of a single career criminal and drug abuser at the hands of police officers can be framed as a tragedy worthy of diminishing the entire idea of law enforcement, so long as the appropriate boxes are checked when the players are examined. The murder of a single infant ready and able to enter the world? Not a big deal.
So are we to consider those 5,000 lives barely a blip on the radar? No campaign manager worth his or her salt is going to advise a candidate to spend time harping on a perceived injustice that doesn’t happen 99 percent of the time. Why bother?!
One could make the same sort of argument about serial killers. Why make a big deal out of the Richard Ramirezes, John Wayne Gacys, and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world? The percentage of murders committed by serial killers is incredibly small in the scheme of things. Why make noise about them when they matter so little?
Because lives always matter. They matter if the lives in question are just beginning, in development, about to emerge, living with challenges, suffering, or near the end of temporal existence. The culture of death that the abortion rights movement embraces desperately attempts to carve out categories for whom the defense and importance of life shouldn’t matter, devaluing the troublesome so that the privileged may thrive.
