“…are better served by messages like Naomi Wolf’s, that characterize abortion as a necessary evil, but a real evil nevertheless.”

That’s something I feel like I believe, but have never really thought about. Very interesting piece, thanks for posting it.

It’s not slavery. To say otherwise denigrates the mother. It’s not property either. Until the baby is out of the womb, that baby is a part of the mother, and not an independent being. It is literally tied to the mother. That’s not slavery and that’s not property. You do a disservice to the debate on the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn by introducing those terms into the debate.

The exceptions in LDS Church policy that allow for abortion are comparable to these common law doctrines of self-defense. In the case of threat to the life or serious threat to the health of the mother, we are in classic self-defense territory. In the case of rape or the type of rape called incest, bearing the child of the rapist is tied to the physical and emotional injury inflicted on the victim. Taking the life of a rapist during an attack is justifiable homicide.

Obviously the child in each of these cases is itself innocent. It is the unwitting instrument of harm to its mother. It is itself a victim, either of disease or medical condition, or of the rapist. That is the reason that the Church policy includes an admonition to counsel with one’s ecclesiastical leaders and seek one’s own guidance from the Holy Spirit about this momentous decision.

The fact that this policy would allow the taking of the innocent life does not deny the humanity of the child, but only recognizes the difficult choices forced on us when there are two innocent victims of disease or evil men.

In the absence of exceptional, compelling circumstances like those cited in the Church policy, there is no justification for taking the life of the innocent child, just as there is no justification in the life of a mother of a born child to take its life.

Treating not-yet-born children as solely property of the mother, to be kept or discarded at will, is akin to slavery, in which the life and death of a slave was at the discretion if his owner. It took a century after slavery was ended to overcome the prejudices that let some men think they were entitled to own the lives of other men. For a mother to treat her own child as a slave is objectionable for all the reasons that slavery is objectionable.

#86,

I disagree with Matt’s position, but I didn’t name call. I wonder why you are hoisting up the victim canard. Matt’s no victim here.

Rosalynde, you imply that such gadgets almost have a consciousness of their own or that the information they provide us with is somehow untrustworthy. While technology always has limitations, I would prefer to look at it as giving us access to previous unobservable points of view. I have faith that new sources of information like these will ultimately lead us to more charitable behavior, despite the occasional uneasiness that they may cause us.

(I’d post more, but I’ve got to go clean the third maid’s room. Great and spacious building maintenance keeps a guy hopping, I tell you.)

You haven’t read enough.

In the Philippines, in the 80s, it might have been several times that. We don’t really have good data for that situation, however.

Based on what I have read about placental abruptions (which is the condition that Mrs. Tebow was facing), the risk of maternal death goes up to about 3%-4% (it is well below 1% for healthy women in developed countries).

I guess my broader question for pro-life advocates would be whether abortion should be a legal option for someone in Mrs. Tebow’s situation.