Life Under the Stairs

I remember huge national debate over the morality and legality of abortions that take place after the first trimester when I was a kid. At that point in a pregnancy, my personal feeling is that it’s hazy at best as to the proper course of action, but that it really takes a full-grown adult who is aware of the consequences of her actions to make the best decision about what to do. I think it’s a personal decision that takes place after the proper medical advice has been given between a woman and God. I think that at that point, it’s not my place to judge.

I have a family member who works for an American consulat in Canada, and most of the time his job is getting Americans out of trouble when they encounter the Canadian police or lose their travel documents. He also does visa interviews for Canadians who want to come to the states, and they’re normally about someone getting married or going to college. Occasionally, they’re about someone who wants medical treatment they can’t get in Canada, and he recently told me about a 15 year-old girl who was 27 weeks pregnant and wanted to go to Boulder Colorado to get an abortion because Canada doesn’t allow abortions after the first trimester.

By the time you hit 27 weeks, a pregnancy is long past being covert. It’s not like she’s worried about her parents finding out. If it was a medical issue, Canada would allow the abortion, so it’s not like there’s some danger to her. Her body has already made such huge changes that it will take several months for it to get back to normal, if it’s ever really normal again. This girl has felt this baby move. If the baby were born tomorrow, it could live outside of her body. How is an abortion in the third trimester not murder? You can’t even make an argument for self-defense, since if the girl was medically in danger, she could have the procedure done in Canada. Our country is founded on principles that don’t allow us to infringe on someone else’s rights. How is killing this kid now not an infringement on it’s rights? It’s not a fetus at this point, where the line might be considered blurry. It’s a baby. It’s an infant. There is absolutely no justification for allowing elective abortion in the third trimester. The damage is done people. There is no escaping it. Yes, it might be her body, but she has allowed it to change significantly already and there really isn’t much more that can be done to it. But killing a baby that can live outside the mother’s body at this point is murder. That child doesn’t get the option to try to exist? He doesn’t even get to make an attempt at getting old enough to make choices about his body? How is that ever ok? If the kid had been born and someone pulled a plug on him so he couldn’t breath, we would charge that person with murder.

This law is unacceptable. If we’re going to allow elective abortion, it should never be performed on someone so far along in a pregnancy. Let’s be clear here: I’m not talking about medically advised abortion. I’m not talking about cases of rape, incest or abuse. I’m talking about someone making a stupid decision and not doing anything about it for 7 months. You can’t even go that long without making a car payment. Your car would get reposessed. If you’re so lazy that you can’t deal with it for 7 months, wait another few weeks and find a nice couple to adopt the kid. Either way, there’s a psychological scarring that you’re not prepared for and you’ll walk away feeling like, “wow that really sucked.” There are no circumstances where making this decision would be right. She has felt this baby move inside of her. It’s a real person.

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