{"id":246233,"date":"2021-05-31T15:45:10","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=246233"},"modified":"2021-05-31T13:44:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T18:44:12","slug":"washington-post-defend-abortion-dehumanize-preborn-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/washington-post-defend-abortion-dehumanize-preborn-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post columnist: Women have ‘actual lives’ and preborn babies don’t count"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a Washington Post\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0titled “Why does \u2018pro-life\u2019 mean disregarding the actual lives of pregnant people?”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Monica Hesse claims that the pro-lifers behind legislation like the Texas Heartbeat Act<\/a> \u2014 concerned with protecting preborn babies from abortion \u2014 hurts mothers (“pregnant people” being the new moniker). But Hesse\u2019s caricature of the pro-life movement sets up a false dichotomy between the child and his mother that ignores the facts: statistics show that pro-life laws actually do not harm women<\/a>, and research has also shown that abortion itself\u00a0can and does harm mothers<\/a>, many of whom struggle with that\u00a0trauma for the rest of their lives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rather than considering the pro-life worldview, Hesse begins with the perspective of an abortion doula \u2014\u00a0a woman who accompanies and supports mothers undergoing elective abortion<\/a>. When pressed on how late in pregnancy abortion doulas might have hesitation about assisting an abortion client, one doula asserted that the question did not matter. Hesse writes, \u201cShe didn\u2019t need to know when life \u2018began for a fetus incubating in someone else\u2019s body, she said. She only needed to know that there was\u00a0already<\/em>\u00a0a living patient, one with hopes and dreams and loved ones and responsibilities, and that person did not want to be pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hesse uses this statement as a springboard for her column, but there are several problems with it:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> \u00a0We know when human life begins<\/a>, and this is an undisputed scientific fact.\u00a0<\/strong>Abortion supporters continue to pretend that this is a controversial point, yet this is already established. Scientific advances continue to reveal more<\/a> about the earliest stages of human life. Elsewhere Hesse derogatorily states that a six-week-old preborn baby is \u201cthe size of a lentil,\u201d as if size is a necessary feature of life and personhood. No matter how abortion activists try to define human life, the fact is that the preborn baby is human, alive, growing, and separated from all of us only by time and development.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Hesse\u2019s thesis mischaracterizes the nature of pregnancy and abortion.<\/strong> The mother, one of at least two patients who should be considered (more if there are twins), is very unlikely to be destroyed by pregnancy. Pregnancy is temporary. Abortion activists frequently claim that a mother\u2019s life depends on the availability of abortion. There are fatal complications that can occur, especially in the later stages of pregnancy, but deliberately killing the \u00a0child is not a solution<\/a>\u00a0even in these cases. Abortions late in pregnancy are multi-day procedures<\/a> that involve injecting the baby with a drug to stop his heart over the course of several minutes or hours and then inducing labor. By contrast, an emergency C-section, which ends a pregnancy by delivering a living baby, can be performed in less than an hour, not days.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the supposed harm of pro-life laws, Hesse concocts a bizarre hypothetical. She asks what would happen if pro-lifers were given the chance to save either a blastocyst (a preborn baby in the early stages of development<\/a>) in a petri dish or a woman \u201cwho has a heartbeat but no desire to become a parent or put her body through the ravages of childbirth.\u201d Hesse claims confidently, \u201cThe petri dish would be saved. The woman would hit the pavement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, this is merely a hypothetical meant to slander, and it makes no sense. In reality, a mother and her child are intimately connected, and pro-lifers rightly oppose violently severing a child from her mother, destroying an innocent human life. It should be obvious that starving to death or dismembering the baby inside her mother would understandably cause physical and emotional trauma for the mother. Even the abortion doulas Hesse quotes in her piece are evidence of the harm and trauma that abortion often causes<\/a>. If abortion is really of little consequence and no more significant than having dental work done<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 as it has been described by some abortion advocates in the past \u2014 then the emotional support of a doula should not be necessary.<\/p>\n