An Opinion about Abortion Rights

A long time ago, my wife and I sat on the carpet with another young married couple to play a game.  The game was called “Scruples”.   The game posed challenging hypothetical ethical situations for the players to answer.  Our answers were sometimes simple and direct, sometimes with embarrassed laughter, and sometimes after considerable squirming.

I remember one question very well.  I drew my card, and the question read “If you knew that a pregnancy would result in a highly disabled child, would you have an abortion?”    My answer was simple and direct.   

I would not knowingly bring a highly disabled child into the world.

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About two years later, the hypothetical question became an anguished reality.  A sonogram of my wife’s growing belly showed a cyst developing in the brain of the fetus.  Water pressure was building up in the brain.  The pressure was slowly splitting the brain apart from within.  

We had three options.   The first option: do nothing.  Let nature take its course, and allow the pregnancy to go to term.  The second option: attempt an experimental, invasive brain surgery on the fetus in utero, to install a stent to release the fluid pressure.  Third: end the pregnancy by abortion.

We chose the abortion.   The pregnancy was still early, before the formation of the higher functions of the brain.  We had certainty that we were doing the right thing.  After a few years, we tried again for a baby, and had a healthy, normal girl.

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A few years earlier, I had seen the results of the first option.  A baby with such a condition, left untreated, is doomed at birth.   I saw grief-stricken young parents holding a baby whose head was the size of a small melon, filled with fluid.  I cannot image the pain of having the brain torn apart from within.  The baby died within hours.

Years later, I read a review of the stent procedure.  The procedure proved ineffective, and resulted only in severely disabled children.  The value of such a life is debatable.  I know that some disabled individuals lead rewarding lives.   But some disabled children suffer greatly and die young, and others live long, empty and lonely lives.   I have seen both, and known those who cared for both.

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In modern medicine we define death as the cessation of higher brain functions.   When such a death occurs, we often take organs from the deceased to give life and health to the living.   Responsible people carry donor cards to give the gift of their bodies when they die.  The higher function of the brain is accepted as the definition of human life, and its cessation is accepted as death.  

So, to me, a fetus cannot be considered a living person before the brain is fully formed.  There can be no higher brain function without the higher parts of the brain.  Beyond that, after the physical form of the brain is complete, it seems to me that humanity does not exist until the brain is illuminated by the experience of living. 
We cannot have a different definition of human death and human life. 

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The Religious Right holds that life begins at conception, that the human soul is formed at the moment sperm meets egg.   I do not know by what authority they make such a claim.  It is certainly not through word of the Scripture. 

The Republican Party would outlaw all abortions.  The 2012 Republican Platform calls for a ban on all abortions, regardless of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother.  They are attempting to move the center of the debate, so that by compromise on these issues, most abortions in the USA will become illegal.  The landmark Supreme Court ruling “Roe v. Wade”, which granted the right to abortion nationwide, is in danger of being repealed, and hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court.  If the Republicans win the presidency in 2012, the right to choose abortion in the United States will disappear, probably for decades.  

If such a ban had been in place 23 years ago, my wife and I would have been faced with the choice of carrying a doomed baby for nine months, or to undergo ineffective brain surgery on the fetus, resulting in a severely disabled child.   Instead, today we have our healthy daughter.   She is now a college student.  She laughs, she talks (and talks, and talks), gets grouchy, loves deeply, and lives a fulfilling and normal life.

I agree that abortion should be avoided.  There are many reasons for abortion.  The health of the baby, or the health of the mother; perhaps a mother is unable to care for a baby; perhaps a couple is not ready for a baby.  Every abortion is a possibility for life that has gone wrong.  But not every possibility can or should be realized.

In my opinion, in a free society, the choice to carry a pregnancy, or have an abortion belongs to the woman carrying the child and her husband or partner, after consultation with their doctor and spiritual advisor.

The decision to have a child should not be dictated by the government.