Opinion: Saving lives is better than aborting them

By MICHAEL LEWIS

Published: 10-24-2024 7:00 AM

Michael Lewis lives in Hollis.

There are many loud voices out there advocating for abortion with minimal limits. Vice President Kamala Harris, Joyce Craig, and Maggie Goodlander to name a few. The latest Gallup poll shows 70 percent of us oppose legal abortion in the third trimester and 55 percent oppose it in the second trimester. The voices are advocating for something that 70 percent of us oppose.

I see two approaches being used to gain support for unlimited abortion. One gets you to focus solely on the woman with themes such as reproductive rights are under attack, my body/my choice, trust women, trust the woman and her doctor. When pressed for an answer on support for late term abortions, the evasive response I hear most often is “late term abortions aren’t happening.” None of the themes make mention of the life of the unborn child. Or the father’s responsibilities. The pro-life folks I know all support a woman’s bodily autonomy, trust women and trust doctors. They just support respecting human life as a higher principle to follow.

The second approach is to relate heart breaking tragedies of miscarriage, or fatal fetal anomalies that many of us have also experienced in our life’s journey to have children, and assert that you should support abortion as healthcare and oppose those who favor abortion restrictions. We all grieve these terrible losses, even when we just learn of someone else’s tragedy. Many happen in the first trimester. Miscarriages and fatal fetal anomalies are unintentional events. Aborting healthy babies is intentional, a very different situation.

We also feel sorrow for an unborn life when we hear that a pregnant woman is the victim of a violent crime, and both she and her unborn child are struggling for their lives in an ICU. If both don’t survive, we expect justice for two lost lives. We know in our heart that the unborn child is a human life. We know that once upon a time, each and everyone of us was an embryo. That was all of you, all of me, and all of everyone else. A human life with unique human DNA. When we have a DNA sample today, we know who it belongs to with confidence of about one billion to one odds. Fingerprints come along around 8-10 weeks later, and are now just icing on the identity cake. This was not the case 50 years ago, but it is our reality today.

So let’s pause and ask ourselves a question. Does it make any sense that we openly grieve for lost human life at its earliest stages in a heartbreaking tragedy or crime, only to passively go along with loud voices seeking to justify the intentional ending of similarly aged human life in healthy mothers at a rate of about one million times a year in the U.S.?

I think we can also ask ourselves if abortion is really just an extreme form of age discrimination or body shaming. Specifically, human life in its early stages is not old enough (pick any number 6, 8, 13, 15, 20 , 24 or 40 weeks), or look similar enough to our adult form, to be respected.

I suggest that we can do better by embracing two principles: respect human life in all its forms, and save all the mothers and babies we can. Recall the joy we feel when we hear of first responders or other folks saving someone’s life. It makes the news, we celebrate and give thanks. This is us at our best. If a mother finds she is unable to cope with the birth of a child, let’s step up and help the mother. Let’s help her to be a life saver, not a life ender.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

In closing, I’d like to note that loud voices also once supported slavery, smoking, and oxy painkillers just to name a few of the once popular practices that have destroyed millions of human lives. Yet many people knew in their heart that we were on the wrong path at the time. I believe history will add abortion to our list of self-inflicted tragedies. We are a great nation with vast resources. Elective abortion is not the best we can be, saving lives is the best we can be.

Consider supporting non-profits that help both mothers and babies. I also encourage you to vote for more saved lives, not fewer this fall.