The Sanctity of Life

At first inspection, the combatants in the pro-life/pro-choice debate are lined up on the wrong sides of the aisle. The progressives claim to want the government to protect the weak and disenfranchised. Who could be more defenseless than unborn children? Yet progressives consistently oppose laws requiring even the most basic care for babies accidentally delivered alive during an abortion. Conversely, conservatives claim to want the government out of their hair. Why then do they support government intervention in the case of abortion or physician assisted suicide? I cannot speak for all progressives, but I believe that that vast majority are pro-choice because they have bought into the lie that they are actually protecting women. Likewise, I cannot speak for all conservatives, but as a conservative myself I firmly believe that every person should have the freedom to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, especially the unborn. 

I will deal with the progressives first. Early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were against abortion. The pro-abortion movement has its roots with Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement. Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, believed that the human race could be improved by preventing people with “undesirable” characteristics from having children. As a result she was in favor of birth control, forced sterilization, and, of course, abortions for society’s “undesirables” like minorities and handicapped people. To this day, Planned Parenthood uses their abortion clinics to target minorities, particularly Blacks (and increasingly Hispanics). Clearly this does not fit with the traditional progressive mindset. Abortion proponents needed to convince the mainstream progressives that abortion in fact protected women. 

The statistic widely quoted at the time (that is, the late 1960’s and early 1970’s) was that 10,000 women died a year from illegal “back-alley” abortions. This is now known to be vastly exaggerated, but the trick worked: The right to an abortion became an official stance of mainstream feminism, and from there became part of the Democratic Party platform. Unfortunately they were wrong – legalized abortion, far from protecting women, has deeply harmed tens of millions of women since 1973. Abortion is almost always more dangerous than giving birth, with a wide variety of physical complications.

 Perhaps even more serious than the physical danger, the emotional trauma of having an abortion, known as Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS), can last for years. Pro-abortion advocates vehemently deny the existence of PAS, but that does not negate the pain felt by millions of women. If any other medical procedure was so physically and psychologically dangerous the government would strictly control it, and yet in many states there are more government regulations on a McDonalds than on an abortion clinic. This does not seem to be protecting women. I urge progressives to reconsider their stance on abortion. By supporting abortion you are harming thousands of women every day.

But why are conservatives pro-life? As a conservative myself, I fundamentally reject the claim that the government can help people succeed. Just as breaking the eggshell for a hatching chick will result in the chick being too weak to survive, the creation of a welfare state does more harm than good. The role of the government is not to pull people up; it is to give them the freedom to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is the great American dream: the dream of a meritocracy where people are judged by their own accomplishments rather than their family or their race. This was why Lincoln was anti-slavery. He correctly saw that slavery prevented people from having the freedom to pursue their own prosperity. Likewise, since 1973 abortion has prevented 52,000,000 men and women from pursuing the American dream.

 It is the government’s duty to protect the freedom of all citizens, including the unborn. Because the government ultimately represents the people, as a society we must value all human life. Despite its proponent’s claims, embryonic stem cell research devalues human life, and results in a culture that devalues human life. 

A more subtle example is physician-assisted suicide. I grew up in Oregon, the first state in the nation where assisted suicide was legalized. Proponents claim that the Death with Dignity law enables people with terminal illness to make their own decisions about how to end their life. In the majority of cases, however, it is difficult to determine whether it is really the patient making the decision or their children or spouse. It is common for the primary care physician to refuse to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients, often because they do not believe that is truly the will of the patient. Often a family member, such as a child, will take up the cause and cycle through doctors until they find one willing to prescribe the suicide drug cocktail. In the majority of cases, these doctors have never seen the patient before. 

Furthermore, since the passage of the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, the quality of end of life care in Oregon has deteriorated significantly. Oregon currently has one of the worst ratings for end of life care in the nation. This is not a case of not throwing enough money at the problem: the Oregon medical community has a culture that devalues life, and so it does a poor job of helping dying patients. It is the government’s role to pass laws that protect citizen’s freedom, from the unborn to the terminally ill. Instead of giving terminally ill patients more freedom, physician assisted suicide has caused their freedom to erode. Dying people in Oregon are now pressured into committing suicide, instead of being empowered truly to make decisions about medical care at the end of their life. 

In this article I have referred to many facts. I strongly encourage you not to take my word for it. The facts and statistics I cited are easily available on the internet. Do your own research and draw your own conclusions. Abortion, assisted suicide, and other right to life issues are important enough that every American should develop their own cohesive stance. I commonly hear people say, “While I’m personally opposed to abortion, I don’t believe that it’s the government’s role to intervene.” Why are you personally opposed to abortion? Why shouldn’t the government intervene? I urge you to think it through – don’t let the talking heads do your thinking for you.