The moral quandry that is abortion...

A Vatican official on saturday harshly criticized President Barack Obama's decision to suspend the "global gag rule" that banned the United States Goverment from sending funds overseas to Family Planning groups that promote or conduct abortions or distribute contraceptives.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the "Pontificial Academy for Life", said this about Mr. Obama's action in the Corriere della Sera: "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life....What is important is to know how to listen... without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death."

Let me first comment on the statement by the Vatican official.The President HAS the right decide between life and death. He is the commander-in-chief. As such he makes decisions everyday that could lead to the deaths of people. I will also add that Mr. Obama is not the one making the decision to abort an fetus. That it burden belongs to the mother. You cannot accuse him of something that he is not doing.

Secondly, the last sentence with the statement of "..locking himself into ideological visions.." is as applicable to Archbishop Fisichella as it is to President Obama.


As for the act of abortion itself. I am inclined to agree with their assessment of abortion. Any act that destroys an innocent life disturbs my conscious. But as with a decision to bomb or attack a town to protect your soldiers in a war that leads to civilian deaths, abortion is at times a necessary evil.

Rape, incest, and the life of the mother, are legitimate reasons in my opinion for terminating a pregnancy. I don't see how anyone can condemn a woman for choosing to abort a fetus that was created from violence, offers the potential of physical and mental deformities, or threatens the life of the mother.

Some do take an uncompromising stand with this issue. Like pacificists, hardline pro-lifers see the world in a black-and-white. Their world is one in which only ONE decision is correct, anything that deviates in the least is be denounced with the upmost vigor.

This puritanical approach to an issue suffused with morally ambiguity is simplistic and self defeating. Most people if asked straight forwardly will blanche at the notion of an abortion. But given time to ponder certain situations many(as with war) will admit that abortion should be legal. The act itself repulses, but the absence of the ability to perform an abortion in the aforementioned situations mitigates the innate aversion people have towards abortion.Right-to-lifers generate more sympathizers for people who support legal abortion by being so obdurantly hostile to any sort of compromise. Most people do not see the world in such an unyielding light.

Probably the most problematic aspect of this issue is not related to morality, but whether a person is allowed to have sovereignty over their body. Most people think that a person has a right to do what they want with their body so long as it does not threaten the safety of other human beings. Pro-Lifers approach it from the perspective that the fetus is another human so by attempting to abort the fetus the person is placing in harm's way another person. This is the crux if the issue. What exactly is an fetus? Is it an human? If not, than at what stage are we humans? At birth? Third trimester? That is a lingering question that is being hotly debated as I write.

The Pro Choice movement is driven mostly by feminists who resent deeply any intrusion into the prerogatives of women. Considering the long history of females being told what to do by their fathers or other male relatives, this bitterness is understandable.This not an issue of morality with pro choicers, but of rights. The right of a woman to determine if she wants to mate, when she wants to, and if iimpregnated, to carry the fetus to term or not.

Child bearing is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a woman. If she cannot control that element of her existence, than what can she? And if a government can control a womans' right to choose, than a government can tell anyone to do anything. That is something I cannot abide by.


Abortion as an act by itself, is an ugly, terrible thing. But when I weigh the moral and legal sides of the issue, I cannot support the banning of it without violating my conscience. This is an issue that is very much similiar to that of war in terms of morality. Both are acts of barbarity , but both are also at times necessary. If anything proves that life is cruel, it would be something like abortion or war.