A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
Choices
We�re all familiar with the arguments. They�re defined by the slogans. If you are �pro-life�, the implication is that abortion is murder. If you�re �pro-choice�, then murder is a societal judgment that can not have any meaning in the context of what a woman does with her own body.
We all surely agree that murder can occur outside of a woman�s body. Once a child exits the womb, whether the child is full-term or month�s premature, no one would sanction ending that young life, no matter what the mother might think.
So it�s not really about the age of the fetus, since a fetus can turn into a baby months before full term. It�s not about the viability of a fetus either, since medical science has turned that definition into a moving target. It�s simply about where the fetus happens to be. The vaginal wall has come to have much in common with the old Berlin wall. Once you cross it, you have rights and protections. Unless and until you escape, your fate is in the hands of others.
�It�s a woman�s decision,� pro-choice advocates say. �Society has no right to impose its values on what goes on inside someone�s body.� If we are to consider that argument, can we not also acknowledge that �inside� and �outside� are terms that are � increasingly � a matter of circumstance, rather than destiny?
More importantly, when we say that a woman gets to choose what happens on the inside, for whatever period of time that covers, we also say that her choice can be based on any reason what-so-ever. People are �pro-choice�. No one is �pro-choice, except for choices that are made for ugly reasons.�
As science marches on, we are able to identify fetuses who have genetic defects. Some parents choose not to have such children. It�s quite a common choice these days actually, one that�s not based on whether the fetus could cross the wall, but is rather based on how welcome that particular child is to his or her parents.
The parents of many, well-loved Down�s Syndrome children, for example, would find this kind of choice horrifying. Your humble correspondent has yet to find parents of a Down�s Syndrome child who do not describe their son or daughter as a wonderful gift. Still, an untold number of potential mothers eliminate such lives from existence, not because they don�t want a child, but because they don�t want this particular child. That too is a choice.
In some parts of the world, the life of a male child is more prized than that of a female. Given the choice, parents will often choose to let the males cross the wall, while they eliminate any possibility of a female doing the same. That�s a choice as well.
The point being that, if you are �pro-choice�, you are not only supporting the right (if a right there be) of a woman to control what happens in her body, you�re also supporting the �right� of that woman to make such a decision for reasons that most of us would find abhorrent. When Hitler executed the mentally disabled, the world shuddered. We called it genocide. When a pregnant woman makes the same choice, we�re told that it�s her right to do so.
One can not possibly separate the ethics. Many pro-choice advocates may be appalled by the fact that the choice they so dearly protect often depends on gender or intellect in practice. But, because they have placed the choice completely in each individual�s hands, their own ethics don�t matter. Their ethics can not, by definition, matter.
And thus we head down a very slippery slope. Once we say that it�s all right to end a life (or potential life, depending on your point of view) based on a mother�s perception of quality of life, we open a dark door and introduce personal perceptions into every life or death decision.
No one has proposed killing Down�s Syndrome children after they�ve crossed the wall, at least not yet, but quality of life decisions are all around us. �Life� used to be defined by society as a whole. Increasingly, we�re surrendering that power, in lieu of something called �choice�.
When we consider disconnecting life support for an elderly patient, for example, the abortion debate inevitably comes into play, albeit in a subtle way. The family gets to choose the level of consciousness that�s acceptable to them, just a mother gets to chose the quality of child she�s willing to welcome into the world.
Is every life or death, abort or not, decision made on this sort of qualitative basis? No. Many are surely made strictly on the idealistic basis that fueled Roe vs. Wade � by the young, frightened unwed mother, or the poor mother of six who can not bear the thought of another mouth to feed. That happens too.
But we must recognize that those sympathetic profiles, which pro-choice advocates use time and again, are not the only profiles that apply. There are many � many � fetuses who are aborted for reasons much more sinister. We�ve given mothers that �choice� as well, and, as a society, we must live with the culture of death and selective, genetic engineering that we have wrought.