The question of abortion is arguably the most contentious issue of our time—correction, of all time—as well as the most complex. It divides families and polarizes the religious and the secular, Republicans and Democrats, young and old, men and women. More single-issue voters cast their ballots based on a candidate’s position on abortion and government funding of clinics such as Planned Parenthood than on health care, immigration, economic policy, or gun control. 

I am a Catholic. I believe that all life comes from the divine grace of God. But I know that not everyone shares my faith or beliefs. Turning abortion into a fight between believers and non-believers or a conflict between church and state only muddies the waters. If you don’t believe in the same god as I do, or any god at all, I’m not going to be able to use religious morality to convince you that abortion is wrong. When the religious use doctrine to argue their position on abortion with non-believers, they’ve already lost the argument.

The decisions we make in life—no matter how big or small—are based on a combination of the sympathetic/emotional and logical/analytical options that come from our hearts and our brains. When discussing abortion, those on both sides are often driven by their hearts and when it comes to using their brains, select only the facts that support and validate their feelings. While we need to listen to the compassionate callings from our hearts, decisions based purely on our feelings are rarely sound. To understand those who differ with us—especially on an issue that inspires such passion—we must temper our hearts and heed the information and objective findings of science. So, please bear with me and keep an open mind while I push my religion and my passion about the issue aside and focus on facts and logic.

At the most basic level, abortion comes down to two questions: When does life begin? And does one person have the right to take another’s life? With the exception of the evil among us, we can all answer the latter question with an unequivocal “no.” The answer to the former question has been a little murkier. 

Until the Age of Enlightenment and the invention of the microscope in the 17th century, a prevalent theory about procreation was that each human being comes from a series of nesting dolls—dormant inside either a man or a woman. People had a general idea of how babies were made, but absolutely no understanding of the science involved. It’s easy to laugh at our ill-informed ancestors and we can forgive them their ignorance and confusion as to when life begins. They couldn’t possibly know better. But, we do. Yet, despite all the objective scientific evidence available to us today, we still can’t agree on when life begins.

When does life begin?

The entire pro-choice argument rests on the position that if an unborn baby is not a human being, then how can killing it be a crime? So, we get trapped in discussions about when is a life a life and a baby a baby and when does life begin. This debate may have had its place fifty or more years ago, but to presume to ask such questions now is utterly disingenuous. 

Some believe that life begins at insemination. Starting in preschool, our children are taught that a baby is made when a sperm inseminates an egg. 

But most adults don’t know that at that moment, the entirety of that new human being’s DNA is complete. Think about how much we love DNA—whether to solve decades’ old cold cases or learn about our heritage through mail order kits. All of that genetic information is held in the zygote before it even travels to the uterus. Who knows, with advances in the sciences, it’s possible that a 3D virtual rendering could be made of that human being at any age. I wonder if we could “see” the potential of those unborn babies, would people feel differently about never giving them an opportunity to live.

We can all agree that life ends when the heart stops beating. It makes sense then that the reverse would be true—that life begins when the heart starts beating. But this simple logic is inconvenient for those who argue in favor of abortion. With current technology an unborn child’s heartbeat can be heard at eight weeks. Yet we know the heart actually begins to beat just eighteen days after conception— a far cry short of the twenty-four to twenty-six weeks that most US states permit abortions to be performed.

Just eight weeks after conception, another one of our unique identifiers begins to form—fingerprints. It’s around this time that a baby exhibits reflex movement during invasive procedures. Have you seen the real-time ultrasound of the twelve-week-old unborn baby being aborted? I have, and I never want to see it again. It’s absolutely chilling and certainly not for the faint-hearted. I dare you to watch it and tell me that the fetus—or tissue as some would call it—instinctively moving away from the abortionist’s probing suction instrument as its heart rate elevates from 140 to 200 beats per minute, is not alive, not a human being, not a baby. 

To me, the most egregious position assumed by the pro-abortion side is that of viability—that life begins when the unborn baby can survive outside the womb. It’s like a young child who covers his own eyes and since he can’t see you, believes you can’t see him. Can anyone with any sense honestly believe that a baby only becomes a baby after it passes through the birth canal? And before that it’s just tissue or a clump of cells? Almost as if a magical transformation happens in the moment of childbirth.

What’s “viable” today wouldn’t have been viable centuries—or even decades—ago. Scientific advances continue to move the bar. While a full-term pregnancy is forty weeks long, the most premature baby known to survive was born at an astonishing twenty-one weeks. At this printing a twenty-four-week-old baby has a 40 to 70% chance of survival outside the womb, yet most US states permit abortions to be performed up to twenty-two to twenty-four weeks. 

What do you think? Does life begin at:

• conception when a person’s DNA is formed

• eighteen days when the heart starts beating

• eight weeks when we can hear the heartbeat (with current technology)

• twenty-one weeks, when we know a baby can survive outside the womb (with current technology)

• twenty-four to twenty-six weeks (most US states at this publication date)

Whatever your answer, when would you be comfortable ending that life? 

Hiding behind terminology

I know plenty of good, decent people who believe aborting a baby is okay. I think this is due to ignorance, in part because of the deliberate terminology abortion—excuse me, “pro-choice”—advocates use to distract and obfuscate. 

Because the process of aborting a baby is so truly ghoulish, its supporters are encouraged to only use carefully chosen words and euphemisms. These phrases have become so commonplace and part of our vernacular that we don’t even think about them anymore. Abortion proponents refer to unborn babies as clumps of cells, fetal tissue, products of conception, part of the mother, and worst of all, medical waste. Sayings such as a woman’s right to choose, reproductive freedom, and my body, my choice serve to take the focus off the unseen baby and onto the “victimized” woman who we can see with our own eyes.

  I can remember a time when an unborn baby was called a baby—not a fetus. It is no accident that it and terms like extraction, induced miscarriage, and termination are now part of our accepted nomenclature. Headlines don’t read, “Man Aborts Wife After Argument” or “Truck Terminates Child Crossing Street.” When discussing a serious illness, doctors talk about survival rates, not a person’s viability. Rotten teeth are extracted. 

I wonder how differently people would feel if we substituted expressions like  

“terminating a pregnancy” and “extracting tissue from a woman’s body” with “killing a baby” and “murdering the child inside a mother’s womb.”

What do you really know about abortion?

Our newspapers publish photographs of immigration detention centers, the homeless, and victims of war and poverty. These images often appeal to our emotions and our humanity and influence our opinions. It is important that we don’t hide from injustices and the things that should, and do, upset us on a profound level. We have a responsibility to our fellow man to understand the suffering and pain in our world—especially on social issues on which we take a stance. Yet the entire business of abortion is shrouded from public view. As I just mentioned, this is the intention of its advocates and clinicians. But we are complicit too by turning a blind eye to what is really happening. 

I challenge you to look go on the internet and see for yourself what a sixteen-week-old unborn baby looks like. It doesn’t look like a clump of tissue. It looks exactly like what it is—a baby. Its arms and legs are formed and able to move. Toenails, eyebrows and eyelashes can be seen, and it may even be possible to determine the baby’s gender. Internally, all the major organs are formed. Though its eyes are still closed, they perceive light. Some have already begun to suck their thumbs. And they may be able to hear. Protected in the amniotic sac, the baby depends on a life-support system delivered from the placenta through the umbilical cord. But hardly so for the baby who is only doing exactly what nature has meant for it to do—living on a literal lifeline, presumably safe and sheltered from the outside world.

Most states permit abortions to be performed well beyond this stage of development and through the second semester. In other words, up to five or six months. Have you seen a five- to six-months pregnant woman and ever questioned that she was indeed carrying a new life? 

Planned Parenthood describes the process of abortion as gentle. It may be for the mother who has been given numbing agents to help with the pain. I challenge you to watch the 1994 documentary The Silent Scream which shows real-time ultrasound imaging of a twelve-week-old baby being aborted. As the baby’s heartrate elevates it is chilling to see the tiny being recoil in vain from the abortionist’s tool. 

While early-term abortions are performed by a suction device, a sixteen- to twenty-four-week-old week baby is simply too large to simply vacuum out of the womb. In dilation and evacuation, the abortionist must first use forceps to crush the baby’s head before dismembering the body so it can be removed in pieces. Yes, I said in pieces. Sometimes they inject the baby’s heart first with digoxin or potassium chloride to make sure it’s indeed dead before its skull is crushed. This is considered a humane act.

Perhaps nothing is more grotesque than dilation and extraction, more familiarly known as “partial birth abortion.” The “partial birth” part means that the baby is partially delivered—completely alive and feet first. At this point, the baby could be pulled out of the birth canal and cared for by doctors and nurses to ensure its survival. Instead, while half in and half out of its mother, the abortionist drills a hole at the base of its skull with a scissors so the baby’s brain can be sucked out through a tube. At this point, the baby’s skull collapses, making it small enough to be removed. 

It is incumbent that every proponent of a “woman’s right to choose” understands what they’re really advocating.

What about unwanted pregnancies?

Unwanted pregnancies are a sad reality. And I ache for women and of course, girls, who find themselves in this position through no fault of their own from rape or incest. The men who inflict this violence are monsters. Victims of rape and incest bear the scars from their ordeals for the rest of their lives. Pro-choice advocates argue that it adds further trauma for their victims to carry these children for nine months and give birth. Yet this undermines the guilt and remorse many (unfortunately, not all) women feel after aborting their babies. When seeing the pregnancy through, some good comes from the crime against the mother—a new life that may improve her life in unexpected ways or bring joy to a childless couple.

To invoke a trite saying, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Aborting a child conceived under such horrific circumstances doesn’t undo any of the injustice a woman has suffered. Where there was one defenseless victim, there are now two. How can taking any life be considered a good thing or that it should be another person’s decision? Pro-choicers imply that getting an abortion is a quick and easy procedure. In and out. Over and done. Out of sight, out of mind. Plenty of women who’ve had abortions would say otherwise and mourn their unborn children. Maybe bringing a new life into the world and either choosing to raise it or offering it to loving parents desperate for a child of their own can be a healing experience. And to that point, we need to make the adoption process easier and less bureaucratic.

I’m against capital punishment, but don’t you find it an injustice that the criminal who created the life gets to keep his while his child’s life is snuffed out? And what of children conceived in a consensual relationship? Should the father not have a say in what happens to his child? What about a man’s right to choose?

What is the government’s role?

A functional society depends on law and order. This includes the protection of its citizens’ lives and punishment for those who take a life unlawfully. A moral society values and protects its weakest members. This includes the young, the elderly, and the mentally and physically infirm. It is our responsibility to defend those who can’t defend themselves regardless of their perceived value to society.

I value life. I’m against abortion. I’m against capital punishment. To be human is to be flawed. How can any one of us have the audacity to presume that we know best if, when, how, or why another should die? Considering the many earlier examples of government inefficiency and mismanagement discussed in this book, how could we possibly entrust our elected officials with such monumental moral responsibility? We can’t.

Maybe you don’t agree with me or not on the ethics and legality of abortion, but I hope we can see eye-to-eye on the government’s fiscal role. 

The ease of availability has led to abortion-on-demand and too easy an out for couples who choose not to use birth control. Pro-choicers are trying to overturn the Hyde Amendment which prohibits federal Medicaid from funding abortions. That aside, seventeen states already use public funds to pay for abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the state of California funded 88,466 abortions . . . in just 2014. I don’t know about you, but that is certainly not how I want my tax dollars used.

Most abortions are performed at women’s health clinics. The most well known is Planned Parenthood which receives over one-third of its annual revenue (over $1 billion) from government grants and contracts. Though the Hyde Amendment prohibits the government for giving Planned Parenthood money for abortions, giving the agency over $500 million for the other health services and contraception it provides makes it possible for it to devote the rest of its budget to providing abortions. Without these fungible government funds, it couldn’t afford to continue with abortions which helps explain their $6.5 million contribution to candidates and political parties in 2014.

Given the sorry state of our politicians’ fiscal spending and considering our shortcomings in educating our children, taking care of our veterans, and our decrepit infrastructure, how can we possibly justify diverting funds that would enrich our nation’s future citizens to finance something that is morally corrupt, largely preventable and, for the most part, determined by individual citizen’s choices?

Unwanted pregnancies happen. They have since the beginning of time and that’s not going to change. They are an unfortunate fact of life and something with which individuals, families, and cultures must contend. 

As caring people, we should continue to do everything we can to minimize unwanted pregnancies and at the same time, make the adoption process easier for all involved.