Government regulations are important but should only be enforced to the extent that it does not interfere with reasonable individual rights to follow their own logic and morals. For example abstinence will eliminate the same child that killing him/her at age 3 will do. However, the child at 3 clearly is a living human being and has the right not to be intentionally killed. There are decisions citizens make concerning their desire to have a child and whether the child exists yet. Most people don’t believe a human exists on the night of the sex act giving rise to a newborn 9 months later although there certainly two life forms struggling for survival within their bodies at that time. Because of that many don’t believe there are killing a human by using birth control—although the dramatic efforts to the two life forces certainly have a desire for survival and are dedicated to a task that will covert them into a human existence.
Religion is a possible source to create a rule of thumb as to when life begins and what could be done to avoid the burden of another child. The problem is that many times religions are, at best, confusing on the point. History is replete with stories about people killed at the instruction of god or by god.
At the other extreme a large part on the Christian movement, the Catholic Church, ordered its members to not practice birth control, causing large families in South and Central America. Not only does this show a religious position of an extreme increase in population but also implies that life begins at conception, leaving out birth control as a solution for over population. Even abstinence has been accepted as a violation of God’s will in some places.
The responsibility of the government regulating criminal law is to stop short of infringing on reasonable religious and moral discretion. Abortion has been a classic challenge for the Supreme Court. Killing a human, without significant circumstances, is murder and the perpetrator and accomplices should be punished for committing a felony crime. But when is a life form a human? The separate sperm and egg? When they are both in the woman’s body? When they touch? Its been determined that the fetus becomes a citizen with human rights when it is viable…capable of independent life. Each individual in the US can make a more conservative decision concerning this complex philosophical and anatomical analysis. The question for the Court was: When is it so apparent that the sperm and egg have evolved to human status that the government should step in to enforce its rights. When should felony criminal punishment be invoked against the woman making this decision and the person assisting in the act? Certainly every individual has the right to explore their own conscious and make their own decision before the sperm and egg have reached a status requiring the government to step in and inject its own decision to protect the human.
I have been told by anti-abortion people that those in Planned Parenthood sell aborted fetuses’ body parts. If the fetus is less than three months old, there are no body “parts” as we envision them. Researchers are looking for stem cells. There stem cells as part of the live fetus but what is collected after a baby is born is the medical waste product called the placenta which contains the amniochorionic membrane. They are fetal cells by definition but they are not harvested from live babies or aborted fetuses. Scientists or MDs who usually work in large medical research centers would lose their careers and put in jail if this cell collection was taken from a viable fetus.
Such a harvesting of parts or killing a viable fetus (one capable of independent life) is a violation of the dictates of Roe v Wade (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113)
and a felony criminal violation.
The challenge most of us have is that we argue extremes that support our political position. This is too sophisticated and important issue to argue with clichés and “facts” provided by some advocate group. I recommend we all read Roe v Wade in an objective manner and decide where we should draw the line for all circumstances that will arise. Remember, we are deciding when an act is criminal requiring government intervention, not what you or I might decide to do under those circumstances.
When we finish deciding what should be the threshold for government intervention concerning pregnancy then we can take on other issues of government interference in activities that balance individual discretion with known deaths…speed limit, pollution, smoking, over-population, medical care for the poor, candy….the list goes on.
This article addresses the point at which we as a society should intercede in personal decisions concerning abortions. In my personal life, surprise pregnancy has given me a wonderful gift.
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