Those kind and good people who want to ban abortion after twenty weeks really, behind the masks and shadow-dancing fetuses, are arguing for the establishment of a theocracy where God’s Law determines public policy.
They talk with great conviction about the sanctity of life and they say the aborted child-to-be feels pain. For example, let’s imagine the late-term fetus that has no brain, or no lungs, or no heart. Further, let’s imagine the mother-not-to-be and her doctor. If abortion is no longer an option, is it better to let this woman who bears such a child die in agony? Does this woman and how she wants to decide count for nothing ?
The ardent and moral persuaders want to step in between doctor and patient to eliminate this medical option and to impose their morality on this most private and difficult medical and life decision.
The zealots clearly think their idea of God trumps the messy business of public discourse, the fallible standards of democracy, the sectarian sanctity of doctor patient relationships.
These folks also argue against government intrusion into our private lives, our private decision making, except in the case of late-term abortion when we’ll just let God call the shots.
The strictures of patient-physician privacy often dictate that we rarely hear the stories of these women who must make this most difficult choice, stories that might provoke compassion for the woman herself and not just for the fetus.
The theocrats have no such constraints and seem to revel in their gory fetus imagery in promoting their case.
Nobody has any right to make the late-term abortion decision except the patient and doctor, and in the context of what is left of our democracy, let’s keep it that way.
Vote against banning late-term abortions
October 28, 2013