Dirty Back-Alley Abortions

The new Abort73 feedback form has been active for a couple months now, and it's great to see all the responses coming in. Some of them get posted to our feedback section as testimony of eyes opened, minds changed, and lives saved. Of course, not all of the feedback is positive. We receive plenty of angry, even hostile comments. Though such remarks are painful to read, they are at least evidence that Abort73 is reaching those who are not sympathetic to our position on abortion. That's a good thing. And while most of the criticism falls along the same lines, most of which is already addressed by specific sections of our website, it can still be helpful on occasion to respond more directly. To that end, the following feedback came in yesterday from Albany, NY:

This site seeks to impose personal beliefs on others which is a severe limitation of civil rights. Allowing women the right to choose how they lead their lives is of the utmost importance to me. Placing unjust limitations on my right to control my own reproductive rights is wrong. Eliminating the right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion will not eliminate abortions. It will force them into dirty back alley ways, just as in the days before Roe v. Wade.

Perhaps you have similar complaints yourself, or have found yourself in dialogue with those who do. Either way, I hope this thought by thought response will be helpful.

"This site seeks to impose personal beliefs on others which is a severe limitation of civil rights."

Impose is a vague word. It can be defined in numerous ways, but I would simply note that Abort73 is not a political advocacy group. We do not lobby the government in an effort to outlaw abortion. While we do hope to see abortion prohibited by law, we're pursuing that end through educative means. As such, we're not trying to force (impose) our personal beliefs on people; we're trying to demonstrate why our "personal beliefs" are in fact reasonable and consistent. And to be fair, there is simply no getting around the fact that it was the personal (and highly inconsistent) beliefs of seven Supreme Court justices that invalidated hundreds of years of legal protection for unborn human beings. That is a much more egregious example of someone imposing their personal beliefs to the fatal detriment of another's civil rights.

"Allowing women the right to choose how they lead their lives is of the utmost importance to me"

Our opposition to abortion has nothing to do with a desire to control how women live their lives. There is a popular "pro-choice" motto which says, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Though some may oppose abortion on sexist grounds, we certainly do not. In fact, most data indicates that women are significantly more likely to be "pro-life" than their male counterparts. Of the more than 16,000 fans Abort73 has on Facebook, 65% are female (females make up about 55% of all Facebook users).

"Placing unjust limitations on my right to control my own reproductive rights is wrong."

We agree. Women should be free to reproduce or not reproduce with whom they choose, but once that reproduction has taken place, a new life has begun. At that point, it is a greater injustice to destroy the life of an innocent human being, than it is to legally prevent the mother from having an abortion – even when the context is rape.

"Eliminating the right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion will not eliminate abortions. It will force them into dirty back alley ways, just as in the days before Roe v. Wade."

Peter Singer, a highly decorated Princeton philosophy professor, is a well known public advocate of abortion. But as he notes, this is a meaningless argument. The relative safety of abortion has absolutely no bearing on the morality of abortion. Nor does the fact that laws against abortion may be broken. Laws against rape do not eliminate rape, but they sure go a long way towards protecting potential victims. Abortion must be considered on its own merits. The fact that someone might feel compelled to break a law does not thereby make the law unjust. Nor does the fact that said persons might injure themselves in the process. Having said all that, the fact remains that the "dirty, back-alley abortion" is an extreme exaggeration perpetrated by those desperate to legalize abortion. As documented on our page, What About Illegal Abortions?, women were not dying en masse from illegal abortions prior to Roe vs. Wade and there's no evidence to suggest that would change after Roe vs. Wade.