Abortion: Let’s look at the arguments pro and con – The Citizen.com

The primary way pro-choicers argue for abortion is through emotional sloganeering because their side of the debate cannot stand up to rigorous analysis or logic. But, simplistic and manipulative though it may be, it has worked well enough for the past 50 years and as a result, I guess they can take perverse pride in the deaths of 60 million unborn babies over that time.

One of the typical lines you hear from them is this: If you dont like abortion, dont have one. This appeals to peoples inherent libertarianism and the live and let live ethos that is an important notion in our national makeup.

But, I doubt the average pro-choicer would be as liberal (in the true sense of that word) when it comes to guns. An average gun owner may also say, If you dont like guns, dont get one. But, the average pro-choicer tends to be anti-gun as well and would say in response, But your right to have a gun can result in an innocent person getting shot.

Fair enough. Our constitutional right to bear arms does come with some risk, but we as a society have been willing to bear that risk in return for the liberties and protections we enjoy through gun ownership. Plus, as mentioned above, gun ownership is a right explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

As was clear even in Roe v. Wade, no such right was explicit in our founding document, so the justices used very lazy, weak legal argumentation to claim that it was somehow implicit in the also non-enumerated right to privacy. A house of cards built on sand, if there ever was one.

And this is why Roe must go. Not because it made abortion legal in all 50 states, which I think a bad thing, but because it set a precedent for the Supreme Court to use bad law to achieve certain cultural ends. That is not the job of the court and fundamentally undermines its legitimacy and authority.

But getting back to my imaginary friend who claims the problem of abortion just goes away if I, as a pro-lifer, avoid having one or paying for one.

Well, just as that pro-choicer no doubt agonizes over the plight of various marginalized groups in our country who are supposedly harmed by systemic racism or unjust laws, I too am concerned about the most marginalized of all humans, the unborn. I feel an obligation to defend the weakest and most vulnerable of people not only from persecution or unfair treatment, but from the denial of the most basic right of all, the right to life.

We as a nation decided we could not abide a similarly unjust situation when it came to slavery. Slave owners and those who supported that evil institution would and did say, If you dont like slavery, dont have a slave. But the better lights in our nation rightly pointed out the terrible injustice of that condition and would not stand by idly as their fellow human beings were treated like property, beaten and even killed at the whim of their owners.

Just the same, we who are against abortion are not motivated by controlling womens bodies or denying people reproductive healthcare. No. We are FOR protecting the very life of the human being in a mothers womb, for protecting his/her rights and well-being.

Yes, the woman who is pregnant unintentionally will face a difficult path forward, but no amount of difficulty could ever justify killing the baby as a moral, valid solution to the problem.

So, no, I cannot just avoid the problem of abortion by avoiding being involved in one. I must try and defend the most innocent lives as a human being, an American, a father, and a friend. To do any less would be to shirk my duty and allow the strong to dominate the weak in the most terrible way possible. That is not the kind of world or country I want to live in.

Trey Hoffman

Peachtree City, Ga.

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Abortion: Let's look at the arguments pro and con - The Citizen.com