Women Are Not Better Off Because of Abortion

All babies deserve to be protected from the brutality of abortion

110

113

By Connie Mackey

, President of the Family Research Council Action PAC.

January 22, 2013

About Connie Mackey:

Connie Mackey is president of the Family Research Council Action PAC.

Common sense and basic human sensitivity have been diminished since 1973 when the Supreme Court made what even liberal legal scholars have declared a very poor ruling. The consequences are such that millions of young, innocent human lives are sacrificed each year. Women are no better off for it. A society that labels abortion as "women's healthcare" has no true understanding of what women need or want.

Common sense is found in the definition of "pregnancy" in Webster's Dictionary: "containing unborn young within." Not young elephants or donkeys, but young human life. The next question is, then, do we not respect and protect human life? Abortion by definition involves the taking of human life. This issue is unlike any other issue that has been made political by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is not about strip mining or saving a snail darter. Human life is "within" and the mother's body is preparing for the child's arrival. Prolife advocates have no barriers as to which babies should receive protection from the brutality of abortion. All innocent life is inclusive in the call for protection. The Declaration of Independence declared this the "unalienable" right to life.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Catholic contraception controversy.]

The late Rep. Henry Hyde, in his address to Congress regarding the brutal practice of partial birth abortion (where the baby is half born), noted what happens in a society that condones abortion: "The law exists to protect the weak from the strong ... The supporters of abortion on demand have exercised an amazing capacity for self deception by detaching themselves from any sympathy whatsoever for the unborn child, and in doing so they separate themselves from the instinct for justice that gave birth to this country."

For these and for so many other reasons of basic human dignity for both the mother and the child, the law should stand on behalf of the innocent and the voiceless, and society should hold out its hands to those mothers whose circumstances require help beyond an immediate family.