Majority in muddy middle on abortion

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

There are zealots on both sides of the abortion issue: pro-choicers who believe a woman should be able to have an abortion at any stage in her pregnancy for any reason at all; pro-lifers who decry all abortions, no matter what the circumstances.

These are the people we continually read about or see on the news. But their views aren't our views. Their views don't represent where most Americans are on this issue.

Most of us remain confused and morally ambivalent about an issue that pits a mother against her child. Most of us lean over backwards trying to understand and be fair.

"Whatever you decide, we'll stick by you."

"You have to do what feels right."

"Maybe it isn't what I would choose, but I don't have the right to impose my beliefs on someone else."

"I don't know what I'd do, if I were in your shoes."

These are the things we say.

The words are rooted in kindness and empathy. A girl is too young for motherhood; a woman too old. The timing is wrong. The circumstances are bad. What right has anyone to judge the decisions of another?

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The world is full of glass houses. We live in them. Our children live in them, so do our friends, our neighbors.

And so we consistently identify with the girls and women who are pregnant. They are the ones we see in those houses. They are bits of ourselves and our daughters.

We seldom think about the unborn child. We don't even think words that humanize the child. We keep it clinical - the embryo, the fetus. This makes it easier. For it is easier, far easier, no matter how wrenching the decision, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy than to give birth. The scales are tipped in favor of abortion. Abortion is an instant solution to a huge problem, a way to make the slate clean.

Quick and supposedly easy.

But maybe too quick and too easy.

And about to become even quicker and easier.

Last weekend, Catholic churches around the country used the pulpit to preach against the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would eliminate all the restrictions that are now on abortions. If FOCA is passed there will be no more waiting periods for women having abortions, no more parental notice requirements, no more apprising women of other options, and no time limit on when abortions can be done.

Theoretically, a woman could choose to abort in the ninth month.

This is a grave assault on human life.

The womb used to be a safe place for a child to grow. That's what the priest in my church said. His words made me remember how amniotic fluid is an insulator and a shock absorber and how when I fell down the library steps when I was eight months pregnant, I skinned my knees and tore my pants, but the baby remained unharmed.

"A woman was talking to me the other day about how much her baby son had grown in just eight months. Imagine how much he grew in the first eight months, I told her," the priest said.

Imagine - it's the thing we don't want to do. We don't want to put a face on the life a woman carries or give it arms and legs and a tiny body.

"Everyone has someone to speak for them," the priest continued. "Women, gays, minorities, persons with disabilities and handicaps, even animals. If we don't speak for the children, who will?"

This is an old argument, I know. And maybe it doesn't hold much weight for a fertilized ovum that has yet to implant itself in the uterus. But at some point, the mass of cells that is that fertilized ovum becomes a human being. When is the big question?

Pro-lifers insist that life begins at conception and the pro-choicers argue that life doesn't begin until birth. Every woman who has ever had a child knows that life begins long before birth. That's why they grieve when they have miscarriages: they know that a life has passed through them.

Convicted murderers on death row are entitled to dozens of appeals before they are executed. It is not an infringement on a woman's rights to require that she wait 24 hours before having a procedure that will take the life of a child; that she talk to someone about other alternatives; and that she be restricted to having an abortion in the early weeks of her pregnancy.

If the unborn could speak, they would certainly demand far more.