The debate over abortion has moved onto new ground, a ground that should be easier for the pro-life side to defend. Then again, maybe not.
It could be that our side will win the debate that has been raging since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but, in doing so, harden the resistance of the pro-abortion forces to any efforts to stop the killing of the unborn. We may have won a battle, only to lose the war.
Here is what I think has changed: Until now, the goal of those committed to ending legal abortions has been to demonstrate that abortion is the killing of an unborn child, a form of infanticide. The pro-abortion side counters with the argument that the fetus is not yet a human being, but merely fetal tissue that a woman should be free to remove from her body at her discretion. For over a quarter-century, this debate has raged on, with the pro-life side relying on reason and scientific data about what is going on inside the womb to press their case. Pro-lifers proceed as if the pro-abortion faction in the country can be won over by the facts; as if those who favor legal abortion will change their mind if it can be demonstrated clearly enough to them that the fetus is not just a blob protoplasm.
In other words, pro-lifers argue as if the pro-abortion side is arguing in good faith, as if they really believe what they say about the nature of the fetus. The pro-life assumption is that our side will carry the day if we can make the case that there is no real difference between abortion and infanticide; that once we demonstrate that fact, the other side will have no choice but to call for an end to legal abortion.
Admittedly, there are times when it has been hard to give the pro-abortion crowd the benefit of the doubt. Hearing them make the case for partial-birth abortion is one example. It is difficult to engage in reasoned debate with a person who insists that they think it permissible to kill a child just because a portion of its head is not yet visible in the hospital operating room, but that anyone who smokes a cigarette around the child five minutes later should be sent to jail. It is obvious that they are playing games with us, being intellectually dishonest in order to keep abortion legal; that they know partial birth abortion is infanticide, but do not care.
This is where things get interesting. Recent developments have made it demonstrable that abortions at much earlier stages are also infanticide. That is the new ground in the debate. The pro-life side has made its case. The supporters of legal abortions are cornered; they can no longer act as if it is plausible to hold that the fetus is not an unborn child.
What are the new developments that have brought about this state of affairs? Advances made in ultrasound imagery, the so-called “3-D/4-D ultrasound technology.” The Internet site the Drudge Report recently circulated ultrasound images of fetuses between 26 and 34 weeks after conception, taken in Great Britain by Professor Stuart Campbell. Campbell is an obstetrician at a privately run health center in London. Campbell’s images show babies moving their limbs at 8 weeks, leaping and turning by 12 weeks, curling their toes and fingers at 15 weeks, yawning at 20 weeks. The pictures have caused a brouhaha in England, especially one shot of an unborn child with a beaming smile, a baby who does not look all that different from my most recent grandson when he was a month old. They are pictures of babies. Period. There is nothing to talk about. If you defend aborting them, you are defending infanticide.
How have pro-abortion groups reacted to Campbell’s photos? They are in denial. Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin reports that Anne Karpf, who identifies herself a “medical sociologist,” ridiculed the anti-abortion lobby for “being intoxicated with evidence of a fetus’ humanity” on the basis of the photos. Australian Birth Control Services director Geoff Brodie complained that the photos “will be picked up by those groups that use anything and everything to stop terminations but ignore the fact that women have a right to choice.”
An editorial in the American Prospect magazine last year was similarly adamant about ultrasound imagery. It was written in reaction to the General Electric advertisements for their ultrasound machines. The American Prospect writer complained that these commercials featuring parents watching their unborn children in the womb were a “milieu of clever illusion” that “blur the distinction between a fetus and a new born infant.” Right. Someone is blurring the distinction, but it is not the ultrasound images.
Malkin also reports that pro-abortion forces are organizing to stop legislation introduced by Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida that would guarantee free ultrasound screenings to any woman who visits a nonprofit crisis-pregnancy center that receives subsidies from the government for sonogram equipment. Kathryn Allen, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, complained, “With all the problems going on in our world, I can’t imagine that Congress would spend its time and energy on ultrasound for anyone.” Allison Herwitt, director of government relations for NARAL Pro-Choice America, attacked supporters of Stearns’ bill for wanting women “to be exposed to this weapon at taxpayers’ expense.” Got that? Sonograms are a “weapon.” Liberal groups that favor a vast array of free government-provided health care services for pregnant women, are now fretting about the cost to taxpayers of a sonogram. If the issue were not so serious, it would warrant a horselaugh.
It is easy to appreciate the dilemma facing those who favor legal abortions. These sonogram images make it impossible for them to hide under the fiction that the procedure does not take the life of an unborn child. The sonograms are making it harder and harder for anyone to pretend that there is a legitimate difference of opinion about the humanity of the fetus. I repeat: The pro-abortion faction in this country is cornered. They will have to defend infanticide if they want to defend abortion.
My apprehension is that they are up to the challenge.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
