Abortion =/= Murder

This post is going to piss off a lot of people on both sides of the equation, but so be it:  Let the chips fall where they may.

The pro-choice side will doubtless have those who think I’m trivializing the issue and / or am speaking out of turn since I can’t get pregnant.

So be it.  

The underlying truth needs to be brought home,
and there’s a long history of using absurdity
to prove a moral / ethical point.

The anti-abortion side will claim I’m making a false argument, that life begins at conception, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Fuck ya.

The difference between abortion and murder is simple.

Abortion is like burning a pile of lumber that's been set aside to build a house; murder is burning down a fully constructed home with somebody in it.

The lumber is the genetic material and human DNA tissue that has the potential to make up a viable human being; until it's actually constructed and inhabited it is not a home.

As Polly Adler observed
w-a-a-a-y back in 1953,
“a house is not a home.”

Once the house is built / a viable body is formed, then a human being may inhabit it.  Humans don't live on lumber piles, they live in constructed homes.

Unless and until there's a viable human body, there can't be a viable human being.

And to be utterly fair, science is pushing the viability age earlier and earlier.  The current record for a premature infant to be delivered and survive is 21 weeks.  When medical catastrophes threaten a mother's life in the third trimester and require the pregnancy to be terminated, doctors will do everything in their power to deliver the child alive, and they’re succeeding more and more often.

Brava.

We can liken that to somebody inhabiting an unfinished house; the framework, walls, and roof are up but the details need to be completed.

To carry this analogy further, once the house is built, it belongs to the person inhabiting it.  Until the house is built, the owner of the lumber may do what they wish with it.

Now, there are imbeciles and poltroons out there spreading the lie that all abortions are performed on lazy sluts who won’t use birth control and won’t stop fucking.

They’re especially fond of spreading the lie that these women will wait until just before they’re due to deliver and one day short of a full term birth demand the fetus be aborted.

Speaking purely metaphorically, these imbeciles and poltroons should be drag hanged over a mile and a half of broken coke bottles.

Purely metaphorically.

I refer to these imbeciles and poltroons as imbeciles and poltroons because anyone who is not an imbecile or a poltroon recognizes no sane woman is going to go through nine months of pregnancy just to abort the fetus on a whim at the last second.

Third trimester abortions account for less than 2% of all abortions performed.  They are almost certainly always performed in cases where not immediately terminating a pregnancy will result in the death of the fetus and quite probably the death of the mother.

(Actually, “third trimester” is a misnomer; that would mean 26+ weeks into the pregnancy.  What is typically meant by third trimester is any time after the 21st week.)

As noted above, doctors in these cases will make every effort to save both mother and fetus, but there are cases where something has gone horribly wrong and the option is either lose the fetus or lose both fetus and mother.

You need to be an imbecile and / or a poltroon to advocate the latter over the former.

One in 50 pregnancies is an ectopic pregnancy where the fetus develops outside the uterus (typically in a fallopian tube).  The fetus cannot survive such a pregnancy.  If not aborted, ectopic pregnancies kill the woman bearing them. 

Abort a doomed fetus or murder a live woman?

Over 90% of all abortions are performed before the 13th week.

They’re typically performed as soon as the woman is aware she’s pregnant.

Whatever makes us human beings, it’s not found at the moment of conception.

Human life has not started yet; there is no human being yet, there isn’t even a potential human being.

None of the vital organs -- especially the neurological system, most especially the brainstem -- are functioning yet.

All that’s happened is that the lumber is stacking up.

Whatever makes us us is not found in unformed human tissue.

We tragically have too many cases of fully developed fetuses brought to term stillborn.

They are not and never were human beings because those “houses” were never “inhabited homes”.

Pro-choice is not pro-abortion; only imbeciles and poltroons make that claim.

Pro-choice is giving each woman -- the “builder” as it were -- the right to decide what they want to build and when, and how they wish to hand it over to someone else.

Give them all the choices they need:

• Adoption

• Adequate social services

• Income to support the child

• Pre-natal medical care

…and the right to terminate a pregnancy if the woman thinks that is the best option.

If it’s not your pregnancy,
it’s none of your business.

© Buzz Dixon