By Jonathan S. Tobin
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Last week, one of the most liberal constituencies in the
United States got a reminder of the moral cost associated with blind support
for abortion on demand. When an out-of-control car in Park Slope, Brooklyn,
struck Tony Award–winning actress Ruthie Ann Miles and her family, it took the
life of her five-year-old daughter, Abigail and a friend’s one-year-old infant
who was in a stroller. But the casualties were not limited to Ms. Miles’
non-fatal injuries and those two children. At the time of the incident the
actress was 39 weeks pregnant. Despite the efforts of her doctors, Miles’s
unborn daughter, Sophia Rosemary, died.
The errant driver, however won’t be charged with an
additional count of vehicular homicide for Ms. Miles’s baby. Owing to a
loophole in existing legislation, New York state law, unlike that of most other
states, refuses to treat unborn children as human beings who can be murdered.
The reason why this loophole hasn’t been closed is simple. The “pro-choice”
lobby in Albany enforces strict adherence to their demands that legislation
should not give even tacit endorsement of the notion that unborn children are deserving
of the protection of the law.
In this respect, pro-abortion groups such as NARAL and
Planned Parenthood are very similar to the National Rifle Association. Just as
the NRA opposes even the most anodyne and popular gun-control measures because
they think giving an inch in that direction would start a slippery slope
leading to a repeal of the Second Amendment, so, too, does the pro-abortion
lobby oppose anything, no matter how widely supported, that might give comfort
to the notion that life begins at conception.
Yet even in a place as liberal as New York, the notion
that an unborn child is just a collection of cells that can be discarded runs
up against the moral conundrum presented by modern science. Today’s medicine
has made great progress in allowing premature babies to live outside the womb.
(In 2015, the New England Journal of
Medicine reported that given adequate care, such babies have a fair chance
of survival at the age of 22 weeks or older.) This alone may not have persuaded
very many on the left to back reasonable proposals banning late term abortion.
The advent of sonograms and other medical advances that enable us to see that
children in the womb as living human beings, however, does influence the way
people think about the unborn. But only when, as was the case with Ms. Miles’s
baby, they are wanted.
The widespread sympathy for the actress’s loss ought to
impact the way we think about abortion. On the one hand, it’s easy for ordinary
New Yorkers who consider themselves, “pro-choice” to feel Ms. Miles’s anguish,
since they likely consider any wanted baby to be a human life deserving of the
state’s protection against errant drivers or anyone else. Yet a parent who
wished to terminate her pregnancy, even at that a late stage, would have the
support of the powerful pro-abortion lobby. As is obvious from most of the
coverage of the debate over a referendum to lift the ban on abortion in
Ireland, any effort to depict the issue as a moral conundrum is often rejected
out of hand.
After the landslide victory for a 2015 pro-gay rights referendum
In Ireland, the assumption among progressives was that another referendum
lifting the prohibition on abortion there would be passed just as easily. But
as the New York Times reported in a
feature published on Tuesday, that isn’t the way it’s playing out. Though the
“yes” side in favor of abortion may win, the vote appears to be close and the
“no’s” may yet prevail.
On first inspection, the only explanations that the
article can provide for this anomaly reflect the prejudices of so-called
progressives: the still potent power of an anachronistic Catholic church, an
unhealthy lack of interest in discussing sex and sexual health and misogyny.
Yet even it acknowledges that many in Ireland consider abortion to be morally
problematic. While “live and let live” attitudes have radically altered
attitudes toward gay rights (Ireland currently has a gay prime minister) in
recent decades, the notion that the only victims deserving of notice when
abortion is discussed are women who wish to rid themselves of their pregnancy
has not drowned out concerns about the lives of unborn babies.
That’s the point about the death of Sophia Rosemary that
the abortion lobby wishes to ignore. One needn’t be a supporter of the pro-life
cause to note how different attitudes can be about some unborn children. If
many in New York City instinctively understand that baby Sophia’s life was
deserving of protection, then the same uneasy feeling many are experiencing in
Ireland also exists here in the United States.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio initially attempted to
deflect outrage about what happened to Ms. Miles and her family by increasing
the already extensive rules about driver safety. This effort has already
flopped. A proposal to extend the law’s protection to the unborn if they are
viable outside the womb while still protecting doctors and access to abortion
services is now under debate in the New York state legislature. While the odds
are still heavily stacked against anything that offends the abortion lobby, the
mere discussion has to worry NARAL and Planned Parenthood. If the campaign to
ensure the right to abortion on demand even for viable fetuses requires
allowing baby Sophia’s killer to elude justice, that is a problem that will
leave many uneasy — even in one of the most liberal cities in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment