QUALITY OF LIFE MATTERS IN ABORTION DECISIONS

QUALITY OF LIFE MATTERS IN ABORTION DECISIONS

As a biologist, I believe life is important no matter where you find. Nevertheless, our society cannot survive laboring under the ridiculous assumption that a beating heart is sacrosanct. We see how unreasonable this by studying certain religions that treat the life of a cow as being equal to the life of a human—an asinine concept to some of us but it does make the point that everyone innately knows; life has dimensions. If you follow this blog you will understand, but perhaps may not accept, my argument that we have a pangenetic sense of right and wrong based on or drive to survive. The human animal has molded this universally held sense into one aspect of what we refer to as our culture. It is the instinctual sense of survival, which is at the interface of biology with culture, really an extension of the raw biology of “survival of the fittest” into culture. Scientists extrapolate this fact back to the evolving chemistry found in primordial pools. Religious leaders express this in the form of “Thou shall not kill”, “Thou shall not commit suicide”, and you should not do to others those things that might cause strife.  Of course, we do but that is not the point.

Where does abortion and assisted suicide fit into this cultural scheme? The most adamant “prolife” faction bases their absolutist position on the idea that life is sacrosanct. Impregnation due to rape or incest does not matter, nor to some, the life of the mother does matter; the life of the baby is more important—these folks often use the expression “God will decide” to explain what they can’t. To prolife advocates, to abort a fetus or baby is murder, which sounds like it is consistent with “survival of the fittest”; but is it. By the way, the use of the word ‘murder’ is wrong; murder is to kill someone with malicious intent. I have never heard of an abortion being performed with “malicious intent”.

The corollary argument would be that to kill another human being under any circumstances would be wrong.  However, we all know that is not true; we can legally kill another person is to act in self-defense. The self-defense argument completely opens up the debate. If a mother decides to abort her baby to save her own life, this is undeniably self-defense. If the mother already has more children than she can feed and decides to abort a new pregnancy, is that not done in defense of what is most dear to her, which is her other children? Alternatively, should someone ostracize or otherwise force her to abandon her biology and live a life without sex? Isn’t that equivalent to destroying her quality of life.

In other cases, by denying the abortion option, must she give birth to a handicapped child that will need total daily care for the rest of the child’s life—thus have other decide that the mother must give up her personal freedom for the rest of her life—just because culture says she must? Quality of life issues in the abortion debate are no different from the debate dealing with assisted suicide for a terminally ill individual begging for relief from pain and suffering. The point is that the “prolife” argument completely ignores quality of life issues based on the idea that a heart beat is life and that life is sacrosanct—no it is not—and I believe that they shouldn’t treat it as if it is. Still, if a woman believes that abortion is “murder” regardless of what you or I think, then so be it.