I raised some hackles with bloggers I like and respect like Angel and Henry with my previous post, How can Christians support Obama? I was going to let well enough alone. But somehow, I just can’t. I’m not a rabid pro-lifer in the sense that I’m a one-issue voter. I have voted for pro-choice candidates in the past.
I’m also pragmatic about the issue to some extent. Women will have abortions, laws or no laws. They did before, when abortion was illegal (although the popularly used statistics of women dying of illegal abortions are propaganda which has been soundly debunked.) Nevertheless, some women did in fact die in illegal abortions. It’s also quite true that some women die in legal abortions, and some women are rendered infertile by them, and quite a lot suffer serious mental health issues afterwards.
I’m not talking in generalities. I’m also talking about women I know. Friends of mine whom I love dearly. A young woman in my circle of acquaintances who had an abortion last week. I wish I had known in time to connect her with my friends who have had abortions, and to make her aware of the excellent programs which help women with a place to live, education, job and parenting training, or if they don’t want to keep the baby, hooks them up with adoption agencies.
Randy Alcorn – and I have a shelf full of his books
There is a case to be made – although I disagree – with permitting abortion before a baby is viable. But I can find no moral justification for a medical procedure that purposely denies a baby her chance to live. Because if it’s just about ending a pregnancy, there are choices which allow for ending the pregnancy AND giving the baby a chance to live. Consider that question, and consider Obama’s stance on abortion.
It’s not just Senator Obama’s long history of voting in favor of abortion every single time it comes up. I previously focused on his failure to support BAIPA at the state level, even though his own committee added abortion rights protection to the bill. In last night’s debate he made it clear he will appoint Supreme Court judges who will permit abortion to continue.
Even partial birth abortion, one of the sickest, most disgusting abortion methods imaginable, and documented as more dangerous for the mother than just giving birth in the traditional way or a C-section, is not too extreme for Senator Obama. The procedure includes causing a breech birth so that the body of the child is expelled from the woman’s body but the head is still inside. The doctor then jams an instrument into the base of the baby’s skull to kill the baby, sucks out his brains, and completes delivery of the now-dead body.
Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said that “partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to protect a mother’s health or her future fertility. On the contrary, this procedure can pose a significant threat to both.”
The baby is just a few inches away from life and legal personhood in this procedure. How could it possibly harm the mother to finish the delivery? According to Koop, it won’t. But even if it could, Cesarean sections are done every day in every hospital in this country. If there are medical reasons why a pregnancy must end, it can be ended. Premature infants born at 4 months and up routinely survive. There is NO REASON why the baby must actively be killed – except that the purpose of partial birth abortions is not to protect the mother, but to kill the baby. This is evil. And Obama supports it.
He doesn’t just support it, he is proud of it. He made it clear in last night’s debate that he will appoint judges who will protect abortion, and going even further than that, he promised that his first priority in office will be to get the Freedom of Choice Act passed, a bill which undoes decades of work at the state level to provide informed consent and parental consent, provides taxpayer funded abortion as a right, and permits partial birth abortion.
Randy Alcorn writes,
Please don’t tell me abortion isn’t the only issue. Of course it isn’t. Treatment of the Jews wasn’t the only issue in 1940 Germany. Buying, selling and owning black people wasn’t the only issue in the United States of 1850. Nonetheless, both were the dominant moral issues of their day. Make no mistake about it. In our own day if we support a candidate who defends abortion, who is dedicated to that cause, we are supporting the killing of children.
If your priorities for the next few years include fighting poverty and ending the war or anything else that you agree with Obama’s positions on, nothing prevents you from working toward those goals. He will remain a Senator; he can introduce bills in the Democratic majority Congress to further those goals, and you can organize and lobby for your Congressional representation to co-sponsor and vote for those bills. McCain has no qualms whatsoever about slapping conservatives in the face – his whole career is based on doing so, from his attack on the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold), to his immigration stance, to his Gang of 14 membership that he bragged about at the debate, and a host of other issues. McCain is extremely moderate; conservatives call him a “Republican In Name Only,” and we didn’t want him because we know he will not forward our agenda. In 2004, McCain enraged conservatives by saying:
“I believe my party has gone astray. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and in their philosophy.”
Since poverty is a key issue for many Christians who support Obama, I remind you that we have always had poverty and we always will – as Jesus said, “the poor will be with you always.” We may disagree on reasons and methods, but I’m not against fighting poverty. I believe in fighting poverty by individuals, particularly Christians, giving voluntarily and sacrificially which glorifies God, and by government programs that specifically focus on job training and on work. On the international front, what Presidents Clinton and Bush have done with the African Growth and Opportunity Acts strike me as the best way to fight poverty – it’s been proven successful and had a real impact on people’s lives. These are the kind of things that reasonable people can duke out anytime. Programs can be tried, scrapped, or changed as needed.
But nothing will give these babies their lives back.
Laura, I respect you too … but you did nothing to upset me. Nothing. You haven’t raised one “hackle” ,,, truly. My post had to do with what a commenter of yours said.
If you will remember, my first and only comment directed to you was on Obama supporting the Born Alive Act federally and why he says he opposed it on the state level. That comment also started with me saying I didn’t know who I was going to vote for.
Now, as for Obama. I think I read you way more than you read me (you may not read me at all). But, I have expressed my opinion on FOCA on a few posts and how I feel about Obama’s support of it. I am pro-life. I have my doubts as to the value of totally ending abortion legally, because it won’t stop it, but it appalls me to no end that we live in such a society so full of advancements of every kind … yet women find it so hard to prevent pregnancies they don’t want. And, I know that doesn’t cover all those pregnancies, but it is a lot of them.
Anywho … just thought I would step in and let you know that I am cool with you and still read you. I don’t always agree with you, but I doubt you always agree with me either.
I’m glad. I do read your blog, just in my RSS reader.
I wish more would open their eyes to truth. It is true that abortion will never completely stop but Obama followed his “no litmus test” statement with I will appoint only judges that support abortion….. isn’t that a litmus test?
I also am not a one issue voter but his vote on the Infants Born Alive (even if it was just in committee) was too much for me. But then I was never a fan of the man anyway so it didn’t change my mind, it just strengthened me.
I guess what gets me is how an American of African descent could ever support abortion as the majority of babies being killed are of their race. Why would you want to kill off your race? It boggles the mind.
I don’t like abortion, and generally support efforts to reduce its occurrence (including appropriate sex education, contraception, etc.) I don’t like Obama’s position on the issue, though neither do I like McCain’s. With that in mind…
1. It appears that this (http://www.caep.ca/template.asp?id=94FACBDDDA954C7E9F8B73A696A87C44) is an image of an 8 week old fetus. I would believe you if you told me it was a human, but I would if you told me it was a dog, a chimp or a horse (well, maybe a bit small for that).
2. pottermom – I’ve not heard of that contradiction from Obama, though I’ll point out that McCain’s said the same thing (only for him it was about only appointing pro life judges). Few subjects can contort candidates so thoroughly.
3. Using the example of an 8 week old fetus, what are the options for ending the pregnancy without killing the baby?
Paul, there are no options, obviously, for babies that young. That’s why I said there’s a case to be made (although I disagree with it) for allowing abortion in the first trimester.
But when a pregnancy has progressed to the point that the baby is viable, or might be viable, there is no moral justification for ending the pregnancy in such a way that it purposely kills the baby. If the point is to end the pregnancy – the woman’s right not to be pregnant – then that can be done. If the point is that the woman does not want the baby – she doesn’t have to keep it. If it’s too preemie to live, then it will die. So why actively kill it?
I wrote a post not long ago where I said plainly that I do not believe partial-birth abortion should ever be legal. Even in cases where the mother may die (and I mean she had better be ready to drop dead), I believe they should be able to do a c-section or induce labor and deliver the baby while taking every medical precaution and care so that the baby has the highest chance of surviving. In my opinion, incest and rape should have no impact. She knew way before she got that pregnant that she had been raped or had sex with her daddy/uncle/brother … whatever.
If abortion is going to be legal, I think it needs to be confined to first trimester only with exception for the life of the mother afterwards.
I’m not sure I see the distinction for a baby that’s too preemie to live – you did something that killed a baby that didn’t ‘need’ to die. Perhaps that’s a minor point, compared to what’s happening now.
Something that does intrigue me is the cost of the alternative. I’m sure a great many women, if forced to give birth, would choose to keep the baby. And many of those babies who were given up for adoption would be taken very quickly by their new parents (though there’s currently only 1 family looking to adopt for every 10 abortions conducted in the US). Even allowing for this, it still seems likely that a bill for $5 billion per year would need to be covered just to get all the children through their first year ($15,000 per child in the first year, multiplied by just one quarter of the abortions currently conducted, to give us a conservative estimate). And that assumes that all of the babies are adopted by the end of the first year, otherwise the costs start to stack up.
So as a genuine question, do you think the anti-abortion community is ready to provide that much money, and also that many adopters (is that a word?), each year? I’m not trying to score any points here; that seems like an awful lot of money to me, and an even larger number of people, but in a handy coincidence it roughly means each church in the US ‘adopting’ one child each year, which is perhaps not unfeasible. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Paul, where on earth did you get $15k per child? That’s just insane. My daughter didn’t cost nearly that much to raise in her first year or any subsequent year.
http://www.babycenter.com/cost-of-raising-child-calculator
For want of any other basis, I used my (former) situation, which might be at the higher end. On the other hand don’t forget that for you the marginal cost of housing for your child was probably zero; providing that for several hundred thousand children may not be the same.
Paul, the biggest chunk of the total cost in that calculator was college. While I’m a big fan of college (even though I dropped out myself, we put my husband through night school, and we’ll be putting my daughter in college next year) that is not a realistic choice for everyone.
a) not everyone does, or should, or even wants to, attend college. We need roofers, electricians, waitresses and people in every other trade and industry too.
b) the cost of college per family varies wildly based on what kind of college, scholarships, etc.
As for the first year, the cost of housing varies wildly. For example, in my area the difference between a 1 bedroom ($625) and a 2 bedroom apartment in the same complex ($800) is $2100 per year. If you already own a house, it’s a moot point. (Further, kids can share rooms if necessary – my husband shared with two brothers.) So that $2100 is a good deal less than the $3590 the calculator specifies. As you say, the marginal cost for most adoptive families is probably zero. Likewise for transportation. The calculator includes “childcare education” for some reason in the first year also… strange. So the realistic costs are obviously a good deal less than $15k.
The idea that we’ll suddenly have big orphanages popping up all over… first, I’d be pretty amazed if that actually happened. I know a dozen families in my church alone, including me and my husband, who would adopt right now if it were feasible to do so. We have considered becoming foster parents as my dad and his wife were – they adopted three children that way, but it’s a heartbreaking system that tends to take over your life, so we’re still praying about what to do.
Second, even if that did happen – if families didn’t step up and adopt these babies, it would still be cheaper and better to have those children than it would to continue to import a segregated underclass from Mexico and points south. Much has been made about the population decrease, which is often used as an argument for opening the borders. Letting these babies live would partly solve that problem. It would help a little, at least.
If I magically got to decide how things are done, I might do it this way: Families would apply to get on a list to adopt a baby. A couple of random home inspections, check their references, search for criminal history, verify long term employment. Outsource this function; DO NOT keep it as a function done in house by a state agency – instead let the state agency supervise churches and secular charities to do it. Applicants would pay fees to the church/charity, which would have to keep fees competitive, or people would just find a cheaper one.
When your number comes up, you get a baby. The mother and father’s rights are severed immediately, permanently, and that’s it. Period. If the mother is willing to risk the life of the baby in order to end the pregnancy, she loses all rights. If the father doesn’t know where he’s deposited his sperm and follow up to make sure it didn’t take root, he loses all rights. The focus here is on the baby’s right to live and grow up in a decent home, not on the procreative rights of the birth parents. There wouldn’t be any followup on the part of the state; at that point it’s fully their baby, and unless there is some reason for Child Protection Services to get involved, it’s as if they gave birth to it themselves. A tax break (not a credit. I mean a reduction in taxes actually paid, not a handout for people who don’t pay at all) for families that adopt might not be a bad idea. It would defray the costs for the adoptive parents to register and go through the system, and society would certainly get it back later as these kids grow up.
Of course, the Big Hole in my plan is that preemies are expensive to care for, medically. I’ll have to think about that… there must be a good solution for it.
There is currently a shortage in the supply of adoptible babies — a shortage of at least 100,000 babies per year.
I’ve said before that maybe we would have fewer abortions if we allowed people to sell their children. Then they would understand the true value of life!
Laura – yes college is a big expense there, which is why it was excluded from what I said. And yes, as I mentioned above, the marginal cost for housing an extra baby can be zero. But we’re talking about 1.2 million babies per year. Assume half of them are kept by their birth mothers, and assume half of what’s left are adopted immediately (wildly optimistic, imho, as that would roughly triple the current adoption rate). You still have 300,000 kids who need housing for a year until they’re adopted. Just writing that makes me realize it’s even worse than I fist thought – we’ve already tripled the adoption rate, and now we’re assuming that the same huge number will be adopted again before the year’s out and the same huge number of extra babies turn up next year. We’d better hope that my guess of half staying with their birth mother is wildly pessimistic – if even 90% do we’re still going to have to double the current adoption rate.
One other thing. I don’t question your willingness to adopt another child. But I suspect you’re in a relative minority, and the smaller that minority and the larger the number of children made available the more often you’re going to have to adopt. Are you prepared to adopt a child every 5-10 years for a generation (i.e. until the next family like yours comes along)?
Drew – Can you provide a link for this? The best info I could find suggested that there are half a million families who had an interest in adopting, but only 100,000 at any one time went as far as registering with an agency. If that’s true a shortage of 100,000 babies would only last for 4 years.
Drew -
yeah, I misspoke when I used the phrase “per year.” I was thinking of the straight 100,000 figure.
But you gotta admit that if adoption were easier, more people would sign up for it.
I know a lot of families who’d adopt if it didn’t cost $10-15k for a private adoption with less chance of breaking your heart, or the soul-crushing you’re likely to get from the foster care system.
My dad and his wife had foster kids – as I said, three they eventually adopted. And it’s necessary, and critical, that those children be cared for, but it’s not the same as adopting a baby. Most of their foster kids went back to their original families. To adopt from that system is miles of red tape and likely heart-break. The kids have special emotional needs that you need to be ready to deal with – they have been wounded in all sorts of ways; sometimes physically or sexually but always emotionally. Bottom line – foster care ≠ adoption, it’s an entirely different thing, and not just anybody is emotionally or financially equipped to do it.