The issue of Life vs. Choice just is not the black-and-white subject so many would have us all believe. There are competing truths on both sides that require equal consideration.
At this point, it is safe to say the majority of people who read this will hate my stance on abortion.
I believe that life begins at conception.
Furthermore, I find the rate at which medical abortions are performed to be deeply troubling.
The first uncomfortable truth, however, standing in the way of any effort to ban the practice of abortion is that prohibition never works.
How many forms of prohibition in American history have ever delivered the results which were promised – and without all manner of unintended consequences that proved to be worse than the original problem?
It is a predictably very short list.
Another uncomfortable truth is that while the unborn child is truly alive and in their most vulnerable position of any stage of human life, any decision whether to continue with pregnancy or end it invariably concerns the body of the woman who is carrying and her right to decide what happens with her body.
One last point that I am surprised to have never heard anyone else address during any such discussion of Life vs. Choice is that conception and pregnancy do not (and cannot) come with a guarantee of carrying to term and live birth.
The constitutional conundrum
Any effort to end abortion in America will require codifying – via a constitutional amendment – that life begins at conception.
This is when unintended consequences become the real issue.
Of course, such an amendment to the Constitution will conclude with a section stating, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Given that conception and pregnancy have no guarantee the unborn child will be carried to term and survive during childbirth, we must reflect on what manner of situations will arise when an expectant mother miscarries.
Logically, given that whenever a young child loses his or her life unexpectedly there inevitably is an investigation into the cause of death, under the auspices of such a constitutional amendment the sudden loss of an unborn child would necessarily have to be addressed in the same manner.
Thus, the pitfall of codifying when life begins is that – as a result – Congress will amass the power to craft legislation governing human reproduction. I would like to know who out there is legitimately comfortable resting that kind of authority in the hands of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Lindsey Graham (among others).
If nothing else, I find the notion that government can retain for itself the authority and privilege to define anything whose existence predates the existence of government completely absurd.