Nine Abortions? So What?

Last updated on: July 13, 2013 at 10:35 am by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Nine Abortions? So What? 2013-07-13T10:35:56-05:00 Fr. Dwight Longenecker

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Following the triumphant pro-life, pro-women’s health legislation in Texas, a report in London’s Daily Telegraph informs us that 37% of abortions in the UK were performed for women who had already had at least one abortion.

More than 4,500 women had had at least four abortions, 1,334 were on at least their fifth and 33 women had nine or more terminations. The Department of Health figures show the total number of abortions fell slightly last year, by 2.5 per cent, with a total of 185,122 carried out. Of those, more than 66,000 were repeat abortions, compared with 54,603 a decade earlier. The figures also disclose a sharp rise in the number of pregnancies aborted because of disability, with a 17 per cent rise in such cases in a year, to 2,308 last year.

The paper reports the news with a sense of bewildered dismay–not because they think abortion is wrong, but because it all seems to be rather an error in taste, and while this is the unwritten mood or subtext of the article, it is, in many ways the most important part of the article.

Nowhere does the author express outrage or disapproval at the shocking statistics. The lack of moral judgement on the issue may be an attempt at objective reporting, but I suspect it really reflects the general attitude among the chattering classes which might be expressed as, “To have an termination is sometimes necessary, but it is all rather unpleasant isn’t it? Not something one likes to talk about. Let’s change the subject shall we? Did you see the final at Wimbledon? Wasn’t it simply divine?”

The fact that no outrage was expressed and that the issue is treated as a distasteful subject indicates that morality itself, in Britain, and among the well heeled classes everywhere, has become more a matter of taste than objective moral teaching. No one suggests that abortion is actually wrong. What they object to is the poor taste in discussing the matter.

When morality becomes simply a matter of taste then it is also simply a matter of preference–“You say po-TA-to, I say po-TAH-to” If abortion is not wrong, then why not have nine or ten or a dozen? Why not use abortioin as a contraceptive? If abortion is not wrong, why not use it to weed out the disabled and mentally unfit?

The pro-aborts began making legal what all people considered to be a crime. They legalized the illicit as utilitarian gesture–realizing that abortions happen and trying to stop butcher shop back street abortions. But when the illicit is legalized it becomes licit, and what is legal and licit cannot be thought of as morally wrong. Consequently any idea that a new generation should be taught that abortion is wrong went out the window. If something is legal it can’t be wrong. Furthermore, if something is legal is must not only be okay, it must be good.

The problem with out society is that too many people are not willing to think issues through to their logical conclusion. If abortion is perfectly okay and is merely a woman’s choice, and if terminating the lives of the disabled before they are born (and in the UK they abort children for no more than a hare lip) then there is no logical reason why newly born disabled children should not be terminated, and if they may be terminated why not anyone who is in a coma, or for that matter anyone whose life we decide is “not worth living”?

How can we say “no” to euthanasia and selected terminations if we say “yes” to abortion? Let us move away from whether this is an issue for women and not men. The simple moral decision in abortion is that an adult person has the power to terminate the life of a dependent and vulnerable person. Once we see abortion in those terms we must either reject it completely, or allow any person who has the power to terminate the life of any other dependent and vulnerable person if they so choose and if they have the power to do so.

This is why the legalization of abortion will lead to death camps. If those who have sufficient power also have the choice to eliminate others who they deem to be unfit to live, then why not weed out the mentally unfit, the criminally insane and the physically disabled? Why not weed out the elderly infirm and the insane?

Excuse my little foray into paranoia, but if all the above is possible, once religious mania is put in the books as a certifiable mental illness, why not remove those insane religious fanatics?

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