Someone left an intriguing comment on Elrod’s post this morning. This is the main line that caught my attention:
Republicans are so quick to kill convicts, and Democrats are so quick to kill babies.
I understand the inherent difference between taking the life of a criminal adult and that of a voiceless, unborn person (or person-to-be, depending on how you view one that has yet to technically enter the world). But how does killing a murderer make any sense, honestly? Sure, they won’t be killing anyone else. But most criminals simply aren’t deterred by the threat of the death penalty, which renders it more or less ineffective.
Some would argue that this isn’t a fair rationale; that you cannot compare abortion to the death penalty. I would argue otherwise.
At least one form of abortion seems to be universally (within the US, that is) accepted: if the carrying and/or birth of the fetus/child is going to put the life of the mother/carrier at risk. And even another form of abortion (“nature’s abortion,” I call it) happens quite regularly in the bodies of pregnant women and they don’t even realize it: miscarriage. Women’s bodies reject someday-babies on a fairly regular basis, I’ve recently discovered. And let’s take it one step further: what if a woman, knowing that she was pregnant, flew on a plane, and in the process “lost the baby” – would this make her a murderer, an abortionist, for knowingly endangering the fetus?
My main thought is this: when an issue if this subjective, this sketchy, this uncertain… why is it such a polarizing issue in the first place? I know it’s hard to believe, but other important issues exist in politics besides abortion and homosexuality (another post for another day).
