Pro-choice/pro-abortion activists will often state that pro-life laws or actions are an offense to women’s reproductive health or abortion care. However, these statements are misnomers and misinformation.
Abortion is not reproductive health care in the slightest. Abortion does not fix or heal any reproductive health concern. Rather, these statements aim to degrade the value of the human life in the womb treating him/her as a medical problem to be solved or removed rather than a human being. And this is exactly what abortion does. Abortion is the direct end of the life of a human embryo or fetus in the womb either through medical or surgical means. Abortion is not centered around the reproductive health of the mother, but rather the destruction of the baby.
However, a common tactic that these pro-abortion activists do is to lump life-threatening pregnancies in with all abortions. The vast majority of abortions are not done because of the life of the mother. These pregnancies are lumped in for the activist’s great "I gotcha" moment. If you promote, enact, and/or enforce laws that restrict or abolish abortion, you are endangering women. Yet, most women who seek abortion do not have life-threatening pregnancies, so abortion does not serve as a medical benefit to them.
But even if the vast majority of abortion were for life-threatening pregnancies, this would still not justify abortion. Why? Because even in those circumstances there are medical alternatives that save both the mother and the baby. Take a woman with uterine cancer. The best medical and ethical solution is to induce labor and deliver the baby early. Due to modern medicine, babies are now able to survive outside the womb at 25 weeks, and in some cases, even earlier.
Abortion is not even necessary in the worst case, an ectopic pregnancy. Here a procedure called salpingectomy, or the removal of the fallopian tube, can be done. The baby will still die, but he/she is treated with the dignity and respect he/she deserves.
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Even a great number of medical professionals agree with this. The Dublin Declaration , signed by over 1,000 medical professionals, states “As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn child – is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.” And later, “We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.”
Chris Savageau lives in West Fargo.
This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.
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