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Words of Choice
 A
leading abortion advocate, Kate Michelman, says that if it had been
up to Judge Samuel Alito, she might not have been allowed, many years ago,
to have the baby she was carrying killed.  As you may know by now, Alito once ruled in favor of a
law requiring that a married woman get her husband’s consent before
aborting.
For Ms. Michelman, this ruling
brings both bad memories and dark forebodings. At the time of her abortion,
she recalls, her husband had abandoned her, leaving her with two other
children; even so, she says it was a “painful” decision.
It probably was, assuming she had
a conscience. That’s what we are told, of course; it’s always a
“painful” or “difficult” decision. But somehow
nobody ever seems to make the wrong decision. Every woman who gets an
abortion is obeying her conscience, not violating it.
We all have to make hard choices
at times, because we know we may decide wrongly. But we’re
expected to believe that women deciding whether to have their unborn
children killed in the womb always decide rightly, no matter what they choose
to do.
Notice that I use the old, crude
verb kill. It’s a habit I see no reason to shake. When I go to
the drugstore or hardware store, I see products boasting that they
“kill” germs, “kill” crabgrass, “kill”
mosquitoes, “kill” rats, and so forth. Why be squeamish about
what abortion does to a child?
But abortion advocates are
squeamish about this. They never say that abortion “kills.” They
prefer roundabout expressions like terminate a pregnancy, though a
live birth also terminates a pregnancy. And they never call the child a
“child”; they call it a “fetus,” as if to give the
impression that modern medical science has discovered that it’s
something other than what we all know it is. Actually, science seems to have
found that the fetus is infinitely more complex than the blob of tissue (as in
fetal tissue.) it’s more convenient to imagine. We used to say
that a pregnant woman was “with child,” or “carrying a
child.”
Even opponents of abortion now
shrink from using the impolite term baby-killers to describe its
proponents. Maybe we could spare their little feelings by saying
“fetus-terminators.”
![[Breaker quote for Words of Choice: Keep talkin’ happy talk.]](2005breakers/051108.gif) Aristotle
wasn’t squeamish. He not only saw
nothing wrong with abortion; he also argued that deformed infants should be
killed. The ancient Greeks and Romans, like some pagans today, considered
infanticide a perfectly acceptable option, though it was the father’s
prerogative, not the mother’s. The usual method was exposure; the
unwanted child would be left out to starve, dehydrate, freeze, or be eaten by
wild animals.
In those days it was up to the
father. No doctor’s skills were needed; you just abandoned the baby
outdoors somewhere. We have no indication whether it was often, or ever, a
difficult or painful decision. Who knows? Times have changed.
Today the law, supposedly more
humane, allows unwanted infants to be killed, but usually in the womb, and
only by qualified physicians. The big difference is that we keep hearing that
the mother makes the choice only after considerable anguish. And choice is
the word. The less we talk about what’s actually being chosen, the
better. It’s just “choice.” Maybe not as easy as a choice
of wallpaper, but choice all the same.
Be that as it may, the doctors
don’t seem to suffer any pangs of conscience, or things could get
complicated. When you hire a professional killer, you don’t want a
Hamlet. A Macbeth is more like it — though even Macbeth has qualms at
first. The act requires the steady hand of a helpful, seasoned specialist who
has put his tormented soliloquies behind him.
Still, apologists for abortion
don’t like to dwell on this. Their theme is that the only violence is
committed by the fanatics who don’t want to let us kill our babies.
Such people, we are told, want to “impose their views” and will
stop at nothing, including bombing the clinics where the “choice”
can be safely consummated with minimal disturbance of the mother’s
conscience.
And after all, what is conscience?
Isn’t it just an emotion — one of those unpleasant emotions we
have to conquer by avoiding, for instance, certain rude words?
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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