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Our Position on Abortion

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 5/18/2005 11:47:49 AM

Ever since the technology has existed to kill an unborn baby, some people have sought to kill their babies rather than face the responsibility of nurturing a new person.  The only barriers have been the laws.  As time changes, so do the morals of society.  A century ago, someone who killed an unborn baby was thought a murderer, now abortion is a relatively-respectable profession.  Conservativity now issues its position paper on Abortion on Demand.

When does Life begin?

From a purely scientific standpoint, there is life in the sperm and the egg before conception.  That life alters, but continues, with conception.  Following a DNA program, the blastocyst matures and grows into a zygote, then an embryo, then a fetus.  Birth occurs, but certainly the unborn child is alive long before birth.  For this we do not need to conduct intense research; the heart beat and brain waves of an unborn child can be measured, and recognized as virtually identical to those of a born child, mere weeks into a pregnancy.

So why does the Supreme Court recognize three "trimesters" of pregnancy?  Legal convenience.  It is a device to allow people to morally justify their actions based on a legal contrivance.  If an unborn child can be shown to be a person, that person has Constitutional rights, and the intentional termination of such a person’s life is defined, morally and legally, as a murder.  Therefore, in order to foster their agenda of licentiousness in lieu of true liberty, the left-wing Supreme Court, in a sharply divided 1973 decision, denied the personhood of unborn children.  The result is abortion on demand, where a person can have a baby killed without legal consequence.

Humanae Vitae, the encyclical of the Catholic Church drafted in the 1960’s by Pope Paul VI, recognized the danger and spoke forcefully against abortions on demand.  The Church was merely reflecting that contained in the Scripture and the Natural Law: life is precious; you don’t end it for convenience.  Subsequently, the opponents of the sanctity of life attempt to exalt the "right to choose" over the life of the baby.

Conservativity recognizes the beginning of life as the moment of conception.  To do anything else would be to fly in the face of God, the Natural Law, and simple science.

When is the unborn baby a Human Being?

Here the question gets harder.  Mere weeks after conception, the baby has brain waves, can feel pain, and has a heartbeat.  Most abortions are performed after this point.  Again, simple science proves the humanity of the unborn baby as early as the embryo stage.

Viability:  Some argue that to grant human rights to an unborn child before it could survive outside the womb is incorrect.  However that argument fails.  Should we have put Christopher Reeve to death after his horse accident?  Did he lose his right to life because he became a quadriplegic who needed assistance for every single thing he did from that point forward?  No.  In the same way, should we be able to establish that an unborn child is a human being, that child has the right to life.

Rights of the Mother:  Yes, the mother has rights.  We will address this issue in detail further on in this position paper. 
However, unless the mother was raped or was the victim of incest, that mother had a voluntary hand in creating the child.  At the point that child is a human being, there is a tension of rights between mother and child, when looking from the legal perspective.  From the moral perspective, even if the child is the product of rape or incest, the child has a right to life.  On what principle do we permit one person to kill another?  The law against murder is the oldest of our laws.

Conservativity recognizes that an unborn child is a human being, for legal and moral purposes, from the moment that he or she has detectable brain waves or heart activity.  Conservativity also recognizes that the viability of an unborn child outside the womb, or the lack thereof, is not relevant to that child’s humanity.

Choices

The right to choose whether to be pregnant is sacrosanct in our present set of laws.  However, the mother and father have choices as to birth control, which is lawful and freely available.  If rape or incest is involved, then obviously the mother was deprived of her choice.  This presents a dilemma.

So, in fact, does choice, regardless.  If we grant the unborn baby human rights, we take away the mother’s preesent lawfully-enshrined choice to refuse to be pregnant.  The Supreme Court stifled the baby’s right to life in favor of the mother’s right to choose.

We disagree with this decision.  The right to life seems to us to be the most fundamental right of all persons.  The right to choose not to be pregnant ex post facto seems to be one of convenience in most cases.  Inconvenience has, however, always been accepted as the cost of providing fundamental rights to all.  The Supreme Court skirted this issue by invoking a fundamental right to privacy.  However, privacy, while Conservativity agrees that this is a fundamental right, cannot be used as a shield to deny another his or her more fundamental right, in this case the most fundamental right to life itself.

Should we be talking inconvenience to a person to carry a baby to term versus killing an objectively-identifiable actual person, the right to life trumps inconvenience.  Were you to kill a jaywalker to accelerate your commute to work, you would be guilty of murder.  Were you to kill a McDonalds executive for making you fat, you would be guilty of murder.  There is no actual difference between murdering a person who inconveniences you and murdering an unborn person who inconveniences you.

Should we be talking of your fundamental right to privacy, would you escape liability for murder by killing the victim in private?  We think not; most murders are not carried out in full view of the public, for the obvious reason that the murderer usually does not wish to be prosecuted and punished for his or her murder.  If we are talking medical privacy, were your doctor to accost a homeless person, sedate that person, cut out that person’s heart and use it for your transplant, it would be murder.

Conservativity recognizes that privacy and convenience issues cannot trump the unborn child’s most fundamental right to life.

Rape, Incest and the Life of the Mother

Many GOP office candidates for office say that they oppose all abortions except "rape, incest or the life of the mother."  We now examine these extreme circumstances.

Rape and Incest:  In the case of rape, a horrible, evil, violent crime perpetrated upon a woman, nowadays, rape treatment includes a massive dose of birth-control hormones, which very reliably prevents pregnancy.  In the case of incest, it is possible that the crime is not discovered until the pregnancy is discovered.  Both of these horrible things are extremely rare.  In both situations, the mother has been deprived of her pre-conception choices to prevent pregnancy, including her fundamental right to refuse sexual contact.

The question still remains:  What did the baby do to deserve to die?  We lack the wisdom to answer this definitively for all situations.

With reluctance, Conservativity supports a limited right to an abortion, as early in the pregnancy as possible, in the cases of rape or incest.

Life of the Mother:  Here is a tough, an extremely tough, issue.  Recently, the ABC television program, Grey’s Anatomy, featured this very situation.  Pregnant woman diagnosed with breast cancer.  Chemotherapy and other treatments indicated.  The treatment requires an abortion because the baby may be deformed by the treatment.  On the TV show, the mom and dad decided together to carry the baby to term, so that her legacy may live on, even if she dies from the cancer.

Again, this is a tough question with a tougher issue:  What did the baby do to deserve to die?  Is the baby trying to murder his or her mother?  Obviously not.  Morality would require the tension to resolve in favor of the more helpless party -- the baby.  This is tough because the rights in tension on both sides are the persons’ most fundamental right to life.  The Supreme Court dodged this issue by denying legal personhood to an unborn child.  Ever since then, the natural law and morality have fought against the bit and pushed toward new laws recognizing the rights of the unborn.

Resolving the tension between the life rights of mother and baby is a horrible decision that I pray that no person should ever face again.  We do not feel competent endorsing a ban on this option; the mother and hopefully the father must confer together and see how they may resolve the situation.

With reluctance, Conservativity supports a limited right to an abortion, as early in the pregnancy as possible, in the cases of the life of the mother.

"Health" of the Mother:  The left defines "health" as physical or mental well-being.  If a mother would be physically disabled or seriously damaged, we would treat it as a danger to the life of the mother.  Risk of mental consequences such as depression or anxiety do not qualify as the same sort of dangers, especially in this day of high-powered mood-altering medications that can help a person out of depression or anxiety.

"They’ll do it anyway!"

The militant feminist movement defends legal abortion on demand with the argument that, should it be outlawed, people would be harmed by illegally seeking the procedure.  This is no defense.  Should murder be lawful because people will still murder others notwithstanding the law?  Of course not.  This argument is illogical.

Conclusion

Conservativity supports the outlaw of abortion for convenience as of the moment that measurable brain waves or heart activity may be detected.

Conservativity reluctantly supports a limited right to abortion in the case of rape, incest or the life (or serious health risk) of the mother.