Abortion is much in the news lately as Judge Brett Kavanaugh—who many abortion-cheerleaders fear will overturn Roe v. Wade—stands poised to become the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their protestations to the contrary, abortion supporters—who call themselves euphemistically “pro-choice”—are, in reality, pro-death. Women who seek abortions do not seek centrally to terminate a pregnancy. They seek to terminate a human life.

Here’s a thought experiment that might help reveal the ugly truth hiding behind euphemisms: Imagine if all these past 45 bloody years, it had been technologically possible to extract tiny humans from the wombs of their mothers at the earliest stages of pregnancy and incubate and nourish them until they reached full development at which point they could have been placed for adoption. The pregnancy would have been terminated but the lives of babies spared. Does anyone really believe many women would have chosen to terminate their unwanted pregnancies without terminating the lives of their children whom they didn’t want?

Even without such technology, women could have chosen to allow the termination of their pregnancies to occur naturally and without killing their human offspring. All they had to do was wait 1-8 months and voilà, pregnancy terminated, babies’ lives spared. But the termination of a pregnancy was not the ultimate goal. Death of a new human life—the product of conception between two humans and one with unique DNA—was the ultimate goal. The incomprehensible truth is that women who choose to “terminate their pregnancies” prefer the ignoble choice of death for their children over the noble choice to give their children life in the arms of women and men who want them.

Defending abortion in such a way as to mask the barbarism of the act requires recasting incipient human life as either non-life or life unworthy of any rights (The non-life argument is challenging because of, well, science). Since ideas have consequences, we’re seeing that what was once considered shameful and tragic—that is, killing one’s own offspring—is now celebrated by the rich and famous. Actress Martha Plimpton encourages women to “shout their abortions,” Hollywood made a romantic comedy about abortion, and comedienne-manqué Michelle Wolf performed an abortion-celebrating comedy sketch titled “Salute to Abortion” for her now-canceled show.

The idea that because tiny womb-inhabiting humans are not fully developed, lack self-awareness, depend on others for survival, have physical anomalies that will cause suffering, are afflicted with conditions “incompatible with life,” or are inconvenient to their mothers, those mothers have the right to have them killed has far-reaching, tragic, and predictable consequences.

As I wrote prior to HB 40 being signed into law, there are no criteria that Leftists can manufacture to defend the right of some humans to snuff out the lives of other humans that apply only to incipient human lives. Whether those criteria are intrinsic or extrinsic to humans in the womb, they can be applied to humans who escaped the torture chamber that the womb has become.

Intrinsic criteria such as immature development, dependency status, lack of sentience, or lack of perfection apply to humans outside the womb as well. Extrinsic criteria such as being considered a financial or emotional burden also apply to humans outside the womb. And so, we’re seeing the mission creep of death supporters.

Unethical Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer wants to extend killing “rights” 30 days post-natally to allow parents to ascertain the health status of their conditionally wanted children. After all, some imperfect humans may have escaped all the currently available tests for determining human perfection and, therefore, “wantedness.”

As I wrote earlier, Leftists who believe that more developed, self-aware, able-bodied, and cognitively superior humans have the right to exterminate less-developed, or cognitively or physically impaired humans whose self-awareness is diminished or absent are kindred spirits with Singer.

The infamous Singer himself acknowledges in his book Practical Ethics that we have already started down the unctuous slope:

I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings, in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show… this is not something to be regarded with horror…. [O]nce we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that… collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.

Then in 2011, two philosophers at the University of Melbourne, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, published a paper in which they advocated for “after-birth abortion”:

[W]e argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

One of the many grotesque arguments “progressives” use to rationalize human slaughter is to suggest that in order to prevent adult women from choosing to have back-alley abortions, we must keep the slaughter of humans in the womb legal.

Let’s add some perspective. Here’s from the liberal pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women…. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200.

Compare those numbers of accidental deaths to the 647,000  intentional killings of humans in the womb just this year.

Someone recently asked me who would care for and how we could afford all the “unwanted children” that would result from the abolition of legalized human slaughter (well, that’s not exactly what he called it). It’s important to note that not all of the babies who are currently in the death chute, destined by their mothers to be killed would become wards of the state or dependent on social services. Moreover, the $500 million dollars that we currently give to Planned Parenthood for their bloody business could be re-allocated to organizations that help needy families—including faith-based organizations.

If legalized feticide were abolished, the very real possibility exists that some—perhaps many—women would use their “reproductive rights”—rights that don’t include killing other humans—more responsibly. There are reasons we have a million abortions every year, and one of those reasons is we’ve made it cheap and easy.

Some women would use birth control more consistently. Some would become less promiscuous. More would allow their offspring to live and place them up for adoption. More would allow their children to live and would raise them themselves.

And some would freely choose to have back-alley abortions. If infections followed, they would be treated with antibiotics. None of these women would have their hearts injected with digoxin, their skin burned off, their brains scrambled and sucked out, or their limbs torn off. Let’s remember that none of the over 60 million humans slaughtered in the womb since 1973 chose her or his own slaughter.

But most important, no amount of public expense can ever justify the deliberate killing of innocent humans.

Once humans arrogate the right to determine the value of the lives of others or, as with abortion, when humans predict the future value or experiences of the lives of others or the costs to others of the lives of weaker humans, we have launched ourselves down a slippery slope that will end in involuntary euthanasia (also known as murder) of those who are deemed unworthy. Once we say that a person’s unwantedness or presumed unwantedness or physical imperfections rob her of her right to exist and justifies her killing, how is it possible to prevent the killings of others whom the powerful deem unworthy? Once we rid ourselves of that pesky notion about the “sanctity of life,” who among us is safe?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Life-Terminators.mp3

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Most Americans have seen footage of the obscene cheers of women and men in Ireland over the vote to repeal the 8^th Amendment to the Irish Constitution which protected the right of the unborn simply to exist. Yes, they cheered for the legal right of women to have their own children exterminated. Mairead Enright of the Irish organization Lawyers for Choice perfectly captured the unholy essence of their response: “It’s feminist Christmas.”

This display of pagan jubilation over child sacrifice reveals the same view of incipient human life that American feminist and columnist for The Nation Katha Pollitt holds. Pollitt criticizes abortion fans for portraying abortion as a “difficult, agonizing decision.” She wants to train people to view human slaughter as a “positive choice” by de-stigmatizing feticide. She wants feticide-choicers to show that they don’t “agonize,” that they “just forgot” their pills,” and that they “just didn’t want to have a baby now”:

Most women who have abortions are having them for socioeconomic and personal reasons, and it’s important to defend that. It’s important to say that women have had an abortion because they want to finish their education, because they’re not in a relationship that would make for good parenting or they don’t want to be a single mother. They want to focus on their work life, they feel they’re too young, they’re not in a good place themselves, they have all the children they want.

Yep, along with the living blob of human DNA, ya gotta get rid of the pesky stigma that produces those icky feelings—otherwise known as “conscience.”

In a Naral Pro-Choice Colorado event, Pollitt trotted out the back-alley-coat-hanger trope, arguing that “To criminalize abortion is to go back to where we were in the ’50s, and what you had then was a tremendous amount of illegal abortion, which was often quite dangerous.”

Well let’s take a glimpse at abortion and danger in the 1950s. Here’s what the liberal Guttmacher Institute says:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women…. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200…. ”

Let’s compare this tremendous number of deaths of women in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s to the number of abortion-related deaths since 1973. As of today, there have been approximately 60,500,000 humans killed in the womb since 1973—and that number includes thousands of late-term abortions performed on tiny humans who experience pain.

Pollitt isn’t alone in her frighteningly callous attitude toward human slaughter. Remember what actress Martha Plimpton said during her interview with late-term abortionist and human slaughter profiteer Dr. Willie Parker at a #ShoutYourAbortion event:

“Seattle has some particular significance for me for lots of reasons. I’ve got a lot of family here, some of whom are here in the audience tonight. I also had my first abortion here at the Seattle Planned Parenthood. YAAAYYY!

Notice I said ‘first.’ I said ‘first.’ And I don’t want Seattle — I don’t want you guys to feel insecure, it was my best one. Heads and tails above the rest! If I could Yelp review it, I totally would.”

Then there’s the 2014 “indie rom-com” movie Obvious Child in which former Saturday Night Live cast member and Parks and Rec actress Jenny Slate has an abortion after a one-night stand. In that movie, one character utters this loathsome and inane line:

“We already live in a patriarchal society where a group of weird old white men in robes get to legislate our c*#ts.”

Setting aside the fact that it was weird old white men who arrived at the extra-constitutional conclusion that there exists a constitutional right for women to have their offspring exterminated, abortion has nothing to do with legislating genitalia, and everything to do with legislating what one human may do to the body of another.

One can assert the absolute right of the mother to choose only if one has settled the other question regarding when life begins and when incipient life deserves protection. If indeed life begins at conception or if there is even a possibility that life begins at conception, should women have the choice to terminate that life? No rights are absolute and without limit. If a woman’s right to choose comes into direct conflict with a fetus’ competing right merely to exist, which right—existence or reproductive choice—should be preeminent? I would argue that existence is a right of a higher moral order. It is, in fact, the right from which all others derive and depend. 

Abortion proponents describe the unborn as “potential” human life, thus excluding them from state protection. As Hadley Arkes, Amherst professor of jurisprudence, wrote in First Things, “The fetus may be a potential doctor, a potential lawyer, or a potential cab driver; but he cannot be considered merely a potential human being, for at no stage of his existence could he have been anything else.”

Scientists tell us that the fetus is life, it is human, and it is distinct from its mother. In 1990 physician Dr. Joel Hylton wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Who can say that the fetus is not alive and is not a separate genetic entity? Its humanity… also cannot be questioned scientifically. It is certainly of no other species.”

If we’re willing to allow pre-natal humans to be killed because they’re not fully developed, or dependent on others for survival, or inconvenient, or unwanted by their mothers, or imperfect, we shouldn’t be surprised that we deny post-natal children either mothers or fathers, or that we place them in homes to be raised by people in profoundly immoral relationships, or that we allow minors to be surgically mutilated and chemically sterilized. We don’t value human lives—particularly voiceless human lives. And we’re not civilized. When we dehumanize humans in the womb, we dehumanize ourselves. Every year, thousands upon thousands of women choose to have their babies killed, claiming they could never give a child up for adoption. While allowing their child life in the care of another is too painful, killing them is not.

Irish journalist and playwright John Waters offers this epitaph for the spiritual death of Ireland that this decision and the grotesque celebration of it signify:

For the first time in history, a nation has voted to strip the right to life from the unborn…. This is the considered verdict of the Irish people, not—as elsewhere—an edict of the elites, imposed by parliamentary decree or judicial fiat. The Irish people are now the happy ones who dash their own children against the rocks…. May 25 will go down as the beginning of the final stage of the disintegration: the carting of the human in Ireland from the spiritual to the material level, with the country that was once the jewel in the crown of European Christianity affirming that a baby is the mere chattel of her mother. 

Most within the human sacrifice industry continue to tug on heart strings by exploiting human suffering narratives. They appeal to emotions by focusing on babies who will be born with conditions that will cause them and their families incalculable suffering, while ignoring any discussion of whether murder is ever the ethical response to human suffering. They don’t want to discuss why the dependency-status, absence of their mothers’ desire, incomplete development, or imperfections of little humans grants other humans the right to kill them.

But not all advocates of the choice to kill pursue the emotional exploitation tactic. Increasing numbers of women display their now-seared consciences, going instead for piteously cold, calculating, self-serving appeals—the kind Pollitt recommends. That’s what we witnessed in the ghoulish responses from women in Ireland.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Child-Sacrifice-Legal-in-Ireland.mp3

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