Heartbeat

I’ve been seeing a lot of comments from people on the pro-abortion side that those of us who are against abortion are trying to “force our religious beliefs” on others. I think that’s neither accurate nor fair. I’m not anti-abortion because of my religious beliefs; I’m anti-abortion because I believe that life begins at conception, and that taking a life is murder.

I understand that this is a complex issue. Some people say abortion should be the choice of the woman; after all, it is her body. But once the woman chooses to take the risk of getting pregnant, she also has chosen to take the risk of sharing her body. Once she is pregnant, we can look at her body not as just her own, but also as belonging to the life growing inside of her. The choice of abortion affects not just the woman, but the unborn child. It also affects the father (although I do acknowledge that we live in a society where fathers do not always take responsibility).

I said once in a discussion on Facebook that although I don’t find abortion to be morally acceptable, I do have sympathy for those who for whatever reason make the difficult choice to have an abortion. I stated that I had a real problem with abortion as someone’s main method of birth control. Someone I didn’t know responded that I must be “very young and very naïve” to believe that because “that has never happened.” She didn’t give any statistics to back up her statement. I could offer names to back up mine, but wouldn’t invade others’ privacy like that.

I believe abortion is murder. I don’t believe that because my religion says so; I believe that because science tells me so. The heartbeat of a wanted baby is cheered in virtro. The heartbeat of an aborted child is ignored.

Life is full of difficult choices. To have sex or not is a person’s right to choose. To use birth control or not is a person’s right to choose (and to choose to do so is certainly easy and convenient, at least in this country, for at least the majority of women). Why bypass the easy choices to instead decide to kill or not kill?