The abortion side of the “war on women” is full of difficult vocabulary.
Some women say a woman isn’t a mother until a baby is born. They say a baby isn’t a baby until it reaches the amount of time the Supreme Court is said to have said it’s kind of like a person. Other women say, “If that’s not a baby, you’re not pregnant.”
Women v. women. I’m listening. I get confused. Some women tell me it’s because I’m a man. Others say anyone can understand. Well, I’ve tried. And I notice that a woman who wants to keep the thing growing inside her will call it her baby. If she doesn’t want it, she might call it a fetus.
The daughter of a prominent pro-choice activist said she had to be honest and admit that her decision to abort her “son” was a choice to put him to death. She said there was no fooling around with words, that it was a clear choice to end his life. She even named him. I don’t think she ever got any air time after that.
When I’ve listened to doctors who perform abortions explain how they remove the “products of pregnancy,” I am unnerved by a doctor’s graphic description of what is sometimes necessary to complete the process. I mentioned this to another mere man and asked if it sounded brutal. He said, “Well, it depends how you look at it.”
He doesn’t need to worry about me. I’m not trying to make abortion illegal. I like the approach of Amber Lehman, CEO of First Choice Pregnancy Solutions in North Carolina. She told me she sticks to what she calls “life-affirming” outreach. You can call her pro-life, but she doesn’t use that lingo.
Most pro-lifers are just anti-abortion. Amber and her team go deep into her community’s needs, where the people live with day-to-day realities that anti-abortion efforts usually don’t even scratch.
Amber’s approach is collaborative and thoroughly realistic. She cares about women whose worlds seem to have no room for “products of conception.” If those women want to keep their babies, she marshals a complex set of resources to help the mothers bring the babies to term and choose among options for the children’s continued existence.
Is pregnancy a woman’s private business? People who like the Roe v. Wade decision say it is, and they repeatedly say the court has settled the issue. But when the court rules unfavorably in their eyes on other issues, they say it’s a sad day for justice in America.
The Supreme Court is an authority on law — not morality. People selectively use the court to build their own morality.
Is the little being inside the woman’s pregnant belly a person? If not yet, when? These questions shouldn’t be assigned to any court.
However, I do understand that a court can be put in the position of deciding whether government can prevent a woman from aborting. If government tries to prevent, where does it get the authority to do that?
Someone will say, “But abortion is murder. The government forbids murder.”
And then the conversation rewinds, and the war between women continues.
Some women call it a war on babies. I’m not fighting that war. I’m for letting the babies live and helping mothers and fathers navigate the challenges of raising products of conception.
One activist proudly stated, “I got an abortion, and I got my life back.” I understand what she’s saying, but, because I’m merely a man, I cannot understand what she is saying.
Max T. Russell writes for the international business intelligence community. You can contact him via his website, maxtrussell.com.
