Attempted Abortion: Exposing the Chasm
December 15, 2009
A week ago the New York Times published an article about a crime featuring a familiar situation and a very unfamiliar phrase. The situation: a wife learns that her husband has cheated on her and seeks to exact revenge on his mistress. Her means of this revenge? Enter the unfamiliar phrase: attempted abortion. In short, the offended wife went to extraordinary means to see that the lover’s baby was killed through abortion, an attempt that ultimately failed. (You can read the original story here.)
The Times was curiously silent about the implications of this phrase, “attempted abortion.” I have searched the internet in vain to find any legal explanations of this crime and its consequences, but at the surface level it seems straightforward. A person cannot force another person to have an abortion. A woman has a legal right to attempt an abortion herself through a licensed doctor, but another person cannot attempt the abortion without her consent.
Of course, this type of logic works in other situations as well. For instance, I have the full legal right to purchase a baseball bat, enter my house with it, and proceed to demolish my desktop computer. However, no one else has the legal right to do the same; they could be prosecuted for destruction of property.
Herein lies the problem with the legality of abortion and the illegality of attempted abortion. The current law of the land situates an unborn baby as property, not a person. For born children, the identity of one who would harm them makes no difference-mother or not. But for unborn children, the status of motherhood grants the legal power to fatally harm her child. Quite apart from Biblical truth, this is simply illogical and immoral.
My prayer is that God would use this recent case of “attempted abortion” to help those who pursue justice for the unborn to raise a red flag, citing this gaping chasm between what is legal and what is ethical in our society. I do not pretend that the broader social and economic issues surrounding abortion are simple and easily solvable. But this point is clear: if it is illegal for a person to kill an unborn child without the mother’s consent, it should be illegal for a person to kill an unborn child with the mother’s consent.
Pastor Chris