The way to end abortion is to show women that abortion strips them of freedom. Abortion does not preserve choice; abortion pollutes choice.
Not All Free Choices Are Beneficial
Killing in the name of freedom does not preserve one’s own freedom. Women nearly always have the freedom to kill; they do not always have the right to kill.
Pro-choice activists tell women that in order to preserve their freedom, they must defend their right to kill their children. But the question is not whether an act is committed freely, but whether it is an objectively good act. If you freely choose to do something that harms your own life or the life of another, you are perverting your freedom.
For example, we do not applaud a lonely woman for freely choosing to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and end her life. We applaud the woman who makes the harder choice to preserve her life by facing, treating and overcoming her isolation head-on. Nor do we applaud a destitute man for freely choosing to break into a wealthy family’s home. We applaud the man who burns the midnight oil until he can support himself.
Inconsistent Protection of Choice
We have a U.S. Supreme Court precedent (Roe v. Wade) which asserts that it is fine to kill babies when they are growing in their mother’s wombs. Many American women think that this precedent is ethical because it defends their freedom to choose.
However, this precedent does not defend female choice consistently. For, a woman cannot “choose” not to be a mother once the baby comes out and starts crying, pooping and peeing. Two women can make the same choice and the Supreme Court will applaud one woman for making the choice early and send another woman to jail for procrastinating.
American abortion precedent sends the mobster-like message: “You want to kill? Just make it quick and dirty and don’t tell nobody. Capisce?”
Choosing Life Expands a Woman’s Options
An unplanned pregnancy can be hard to face. For the woman, it can appear as though she should have the right to choose to end her baby’s life so that she does not need to deal with the expected inconvenience.
But how can we compare inconvenience to life? It seems like they can’t be weighed against each other in this way. How can the worth of a human being’s life be less than the (assumed) flexibility to be gained without the (assumed) burden of another life? If life itself is worth less than maneuverability, then life is not worth much at all—including the woman’s own life. And, using this logic, a single father could take his teenage daughter’s life if she became a “burden” to him.
In order to show women that choosing life can expand their field of choices, I think we should:
1.) Make adoption more attractive
More young women would say “yes” to life but “not yet” to motherhood if their doctors, friends and family members encouraged them to choose adoption over abortion.
2.) Tell women how their choice will hurt their minds and bodies
What woman would want to choose abortion if she knew the side effects of her choice, including permanent physical and psychological pain? Why don’t women’s magazines committed to “female health,” such as SELF, Glamour and Cosmopolitan tell women the truth about how abortion rips apart their bodies? After all, they devote most of their content to sex, and abortion is a choice women make after having unplanned sex.
3.) Admit babies in wombs are persons
When we tell women that babies in wombs are not persons (as Roe v. Wade does), we are not helping women to live “freely.” We are damaging their psyches by promoting a lie. This is because murder violates natural law, which comes from reason. And, if you believe in God, murder violates divine law (see the 5th Commandment), which comes from God.
As Judge Andrew Napolitano explains on FOX News, our culture needs to admit what science and reason tells us, that babies in wombs are persons.
I think the best way to convince women not to have abortions is to show them that abortion actually degrades their humanity and strips their free will rather than expanding their range of choices.