American abortion law

Steven Brigham

When pro-life and pro-choice forces stood nose to nose, the PL'ers pleaded for the life of the child and the PC'ers called for the autonomy of the mother.  The horrifying practice of Kermit Gosnell has forced the grisly reality of abortion into the limelight.

Many want to believe that Gosnell is an aberration.  He is not.  Back in September, when I first heard of Gosnell, I couldn't believe my ears.  Babies in jars?!  He wasn't the only one.  Steven Chase Brigham had a similar nightmare going on in his clinic.  His chastisement?  He should not have been transporting patients across state lines.  Ah.  Shame, shame.

When you and I can simply banter pro-life and pro-choice over coffee, we banter words.  The conversation may grow as heated as a Steelers-Packers argument, but when we leave the coffee shop, nothing in our lives has changed.  The idea of babies in jars changes the discussion because it is not just an idea.  It is a reality.  Babies delivered live only to have their spinal cord clipped at the base of the skull.  No, it's not just discussion.  Men and women are doing this around the country, most quite comfortable under the blanket of the law.

We stand at a crossroads.  Matthew J. Franck argues,

Kermit Gosnell

It is difficult to locate the moral difference between the deaths Gosnell brought about in utero and those he accomplished post-natally. Does an unborn child at 26 weeks of fetal development have less moral standing than a born child at 25 weeks of fetal development? Does the latter’s living and breathing outside the womb for ten minutes, or ten seconds, confer a status that the former lacks? How can that be?

Most of those who are pro-life have never wavered on this point.  Life begins at conception and thereby has the same right to life that any have outside the womb.

The evils perpetrated by Gosnell and Brigham put the pro-choice advocates in a difficult corner.  Franck continues,

Do (abortion rights advocates) continue to agitate for the regime of abortion on demand that they’ve been defending for 38 years? Do they fold this particular hand, and concede that some abortions occur too late to be permitted at all? There is danger for them in this. If a viable unborn child has a right to life, what about the one just a week or a day shy of viability? And the one just a bit younger than that?

A child is a child, within or without.  Perhaps a better argument for the coffee shops would be how can we best care for those who find themselves "unexpectedly pregnant?"  Better still, how can we slow the rate of "unexpected pregnancies?" A comical question because any child with a modicum of biological studies under his belt could answer that question.

For us to concede that would be to concede a position long advocated by God in his word.  Now we can't be guided by so antiquated a book as that, can we?  Pass the cream.