Defining Person (Part 3)

Many people place the definition of "person" on whatever the mother/woman decides. Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics use this tactic all the time. It's a no-no to call the woman's pregnancy a "baby" if she's going to abort--or if she isn't sure. Use "pregnancy". "Fetus". "Products of conception". But not "baby". Only use "baby" if the mother is accepting of her pregnancy and entirely sure she wants to keep it.

It's this way with our culture. We have Facebook pages for unborn babies, complete with ultrasound pictures and development timelines. We have baby showers. We talk all about the baby. Have you ever heard anyone say, "How's the fetus doing?" to a pregnant woman? Yet we don't make a peep (if we're good little politically correct citizens) if a baby--sorry, fetus--is quietly aborted.

Yet when you think about it, this is quite the bizarre mentality. What if a woman aborts, but regrets her decision later (as many do), and wish she had kept her fetus? Does that mean that it's a baby now, but wasn't when it was aborted? Is the woman delusional? Are all pregnant women delusional when they call their pregnancy a "baby"? Can you turn personhood on and off like a switch?

"Maybe not," some may say, "but when a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, she hasn't accepted responsibility for it." Oh? So personhood relies on dependence? If nobody wants to take care of you, you're now disposable? Sometimes you automatically have responsibility, whether you have "accepted" it or not. What happens if a woman decides to keep her baby, but then later changes her mind and decides she wants to abort him? Is it too late, since she had already accepted responsibility for him earlier? If there's nothing wrong with that, why do we have abortions at all? Let's let all the women carry their fetuses to term, and then simply kill them after their born. It's safer for the woman. Or why stop there? There's no reason she can't order the death of the fetus when it's, say, seventeen, or as long as it's dependant on her.

I suppose maybe this scenario is a little unfair. A seventeen-year-old can take care of himself if he has to. The fetus--and children up to a certain age--certainly can not take care of themselves. The fetus is the most helpless--if it's taken out of its mother's womb before 23 weeks, it'll most likely die.

But wait a minute. Since when does "helpless" make us care less for individuals? Which scnario gives you the strongest feeling of revulsion: a man raping a 30-year-old woman, or a man raping a 3-year-old girl? Both crimes are terrible, but there's more outrage over the 3-year-old girl, because she could not defend herself. The woman could have been threatened with a gun; she could have been killed. But she still had the chance to run away. The 3-year-old physically had no possibility of escape by herself. The child's helplessness makes us more determined to make the criminal take responsibility for his actions--and possibly greater responsibility. The same goes for the elderly and the handicapped.

The weaker someone is, the more we are obligated to take care of them. If a twenty-one-year-old barges into his mother's home and demands that she make him lunch, she can refuse him if she wants. She can even turn him out of the house. However, if a two-year-old askes his mother for food and she refuses him, she will be accused of child abuse. We automatically strive to protect those who are weaker than ourselves. Only with abortion is this supposed to not be the case.

*Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.