With HB480, Karianne Lisonbee seeks to lessen the social stigma of terminating a pregnancy by distinguishing between an elective and medically necessary abortion and allowing individuals to request that their abortion is marked medically necessary.
Yet as an inquisitor leading the charge for abortion bans in our state, she has created the social stigma she seeks to ameliorate. How did the majority religion in Utah forget its fundamental tenet of free agency by seeking to play God in pre-limiting individual choices when it comes to a private decision between the patient and her doctor?
There are conservatively 23 million miscarriages every year in the world (20% happen after 12 weeks). If God has a method of correcting some pregnancy mistakes, why shouldn’t human mistakes realized in the morning’s light be allowed the same privilege as God?
No religious person has ever claimed that God appeared to them face to face and declared that abortion or contraception is wrong. There are real psychological burdens, emotional stress and risk of life that come with every pregnancy. Millions of women and babies have died in childbirth over the history of mankind.
Take for example the story of Dina Zirlott who was forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby. For Dina, the end of Roe means more will suffer her severe trauma and hell. She wrote: “It has been 16 years, but I can still hear myself begging my mother, my doctor, not to make me do this ― please don’t make me do this.”
I knew a wonderful woman who committed suicide because she could not handle taking care of her child with extreme special needs.
Abortion bans lack charity and Christian kindness. Removal of its scarlet letter requires a change to a compassionate attitude by society and the law.
Scot Morgan, Salt Lake City