Why is the issue of abortion such an acrimonious topic?
On one side of the issue you see people arguing for body autonomy while on another side you see people arguing for a respect for human life regardless of the level of development.
Amendment 2 attempted to address this issue from one side of the argument. An Op-Ed in another publication mentioned that the Kentucky constitution grants a right to privacy and cites that right as a means to justify someone choosing an abortion. This argument appears to jump late into the stream of logic. A mandatory question when confronted with this assertion is: when are people granted the status of personhood? When is someone actually a “someone.”
I must admit that I am a Christian. I attempt every day to look through the lens of the Gospel when interacting with others, when responding to suffering and when making decisions. No one is perfect and I would never claim such infallibility, so I would never expect that from others. We are all in this world together, trying to gut through the pain and suffering and enjoy the good parts of life. But that is the point, we are all on this journey of life.
When does a person become a person? When is there actually new human life? There must be a “magic moment” that prior to, there wasn’t an individual and after, there is a new human life. Science allows us
to know this exact moment: fertilization. Once there is new, separate DNA, there is a new person. No one (with the slight exception of identical twins) has your specific DNA. Logic tells us that we can’t value a 65-year-old more or less than a 2-year-old. So why would we argue that a 4-week-old has less value than a 10 month old?
If someone of Christian or Jewish Faith attempts to justify an abortion, then they must discredit the value of the human being that is being “aborted” or “terminated” or “killed.” I believe that most if not all of us can agree that ending a human life is wrong. I’m not sure that arguing religious freedom or privacy to kill someone holds much water.
How does the right to privacy supersede the right to life? If I kill someone who is less developed than me and because that person is hindering my lifestyle, should I argue “privacy” to justify that death that I inflict upon them?
I argue (respectfully of course) that all religions condemn abortion as long as logic and science are used in determining the value of human life. That the choice is obvious: Life is a Right, choosing to end human
life isn’t.
Let us stop people’s interference in other people’s right to life.