This week, the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion has brought the issue once again to America's forefront, and Salon.com marked the event today with a controversial column that admits life begins at conception, and that life can be ended if a mother so chooses.
The column, entitled "So what if abortion ends life?" was written by Mary Elizabeth Williams and makes some shocking admissions. First, Williams acknowledges what many pro-choice activists will not: that life begins at conception. "I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life," she said.
Second, despite admitting that a fetus is a human life, Williams says "that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice....I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
"All life is not equal," she continues. "That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about...Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides."
The idea that any human life is less equal than another, and susceptible to being murdered, may not sit well with most people, but that is Williams' contention, one that she feels abortion supporters should not be ashamed of. She criticizes pro-lifers, which she calls "the anti-choice lobby," for grasping the concept and term of "life" for themselves.
Even so, Williams contradicts herself by then referring to an unborn child, not as a human life, but as a "non-autonomous entity" whose human rights can be revoked by the mother carrying it, at least when abortion is the issue. That may provide enough emotional distance for some to ease their guilt, but then Williams muddies the issue once again by admitting "I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born."
Williams then confirms the basic contentions of nearly every pro-lifer. "When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb? It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina."
Those truths, however, are trumped by William's own narcissism, which justifies ending a life but not calling it murder, only because you feel you are more valuable or important. "If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion," she says.
In the 40 years since Roe v. Wade, an estimated 55 million abortions have been performed.
Victor Medina writes for Yahoo News and his political blog WhenLiberalsAttack.com. His other writing credits include The Dallas Morning News and SportsIllustrated.com. He has served as a Dallas County election judge and on the Board of Directors of The Sixth Floor Museum. You can follow him on his blog, VictorMedina.com or on Twitter at @mrvictormedina. He can be reached by email at vic@victormedina.com. To be notified of future stories by Victor Medina, click the SIGN UP or SUBSCRIBE button at the top of this page.
This subject was first reported on by LifeNews.com.
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