Anti-abortion proponents often justify their arguments on the “sacredness” of life, its connection to God. Considering that the 8 billion people on the planet have roughly 8 billion concepts of God, varying from He Quotes Leviticus in Hebrew to Me when I’m Stuck in Rush-Hour Traffic to He Kicked Off the Big Bang and Hasn’t Been Heard From Since, I submit that sacredness is a poor criteria to evaluate the morality of abortion.
Other proponents argue the “sanctity” of life, its ultimate importance and inviolability, without necessarily a religious connection. But there are morally acceptable situations when we take someone’s life: capital punishment, a soldier killing an enemy soldier, a policeman killing an unarmed man believed to be a mere threat to safety, euthanasia, sacrificing one individual to save others and any threat in general to our survival — for example, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.
The act of conceiving is remarkably easy (with apologies to couples who do have trouble doing so). Sanctity, frankly, just isn’t on our minds at the time. We’re not thinking ahead to potential unintended consequences. Heck, we’re not thinking at all. It’s pleasurable. We’re wired to do it. No credit card, permission, driver license or smart phone required. All you need is a partner.
For countless millennia Homo sapiens was just another species on the planet, struggling to forage and survive. Nowadays we’re adept at overpopulating the planet, a veritable poster child for an invasive species. What was historically sacrosanct is now much less so.
If you really want to honor sanctity, quit focusing on the first weeks and instead focus on what really matters — the next five or 15 years. That’s where a child needs support on so many fronts. That child’s mother is by far the best equipped to decide if she can or will make that child’s life what life should be. No one else can make that decision.
Mike Duncan, Moab