Since 1973, generations have come and gone, 50 million abortions have been performed, and still the mantra is chanted—“not the church, not the state, only I’ll decide my fate.” It’s a line in the sand and a warning to any political officeholder who would dare seek restrictions for abortion-on-demand. “It’s my choice,’ the radical screams, “don’t limit it!”
Yet the word “choice” is misplaced. For abortions aren’t part of the choice, rather, they are used to take away the life that results from poor choices made. Or to put it as Doug Bandow did, “Sex is a matter of choice; abortion is an attempt to avoid accountability.”
In other words, there’s a choice—will I have sexual relations or not?—and what follows that choice is responsibility. However, the combination of nihilism and a tendency to mix and match a “have-it-your-way” morality leaves us scrambling for the means to circumvent the responsibility our choices have manifested.
In effect, this makes death a solution for our self-created problems. And instead of all roads leading to Rome, more and more of the roads we trod seem to lead to death.
This is evident in situations like we recently witnessed in Ohio, where the state senate passed a ban on performing abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy if the baby can survive outside the womb, and NARAL’s response was:
In passing this legislation, the Ohio Senate is ignoring the devastating impact this legislation could have on the health of many Ohio women and they are inappropriately inserting themselves between doctors and their patients. This legislation [also] harms women with wanted pregnancies that experience heartbreaking complications, such as a fetal anomaly or a cancer diagnosis.
Note there is no concern whatsoever for the baby that would be aborted. Rather, there is outrage over the fact that a mother’s chance to kill her child has been shortened.
No matter how you look at it, this is a tragedy beyond measure.
To justify this nihilistic endeavor we tell ourselves that the child—who has no choice in living or dying—is not really a child at all. Rather, he or she is but a bundle of DNA yet to survive apart from the sustenance received from another, and is therefore labeled “non-viable.”
This is a frightening argument because a 5-month old infant is also incapable of surviving apart from the sustenance another provides (as is an 8-month old, a 1-year old, or even a 2-year old for that matter). Should we therefore be free to dispose of our 2-year old sons and daughters if the responsibility of sustaining them becomes too great?
Of course there are those who argue that we should, and that’s because the culture of death has swallowed their minds and now permeates their every inclination.
And that is why these are fair questions. For we must deal with the fact that we’ve tossed logic out the door in a bid to justify our deviousness. As a consequence, we are literally chasing death.
We should all bemoan the fact that we’ve arrived at a place in our culture where death is viewed as a solution, for this indicates how far we’re willing to go in order to dodge the consequences of choices made poorly.
Liberty requires responsibility. Our pursuit of death is an attempt to exchange responsibility for faux-freedom, which is no freedom at all.
Dead people aren’t free.