One More Attempt At Defining Abortion

Deborah Venable

04/08/06

My father would sometimes use the term “abortion” when he was speaking about something that was so messed up that no one could make any sense of it. I regret that I never really questioned him about why he chose this term to describe a “monstrosity” – but perhaps he had looked up the dictionary definition of abortion and found that it fit so precisely what he was describing. My father, after all, was one of the wisest men I have ever known.

I have backed away from writing very in-depth articles dedicated to the subject of abortion, because it is such an emotional issue for me. I have discussed the subject with people from all walks of life, all income levels, and all religious and academic backgrounds. I am appalled to find that my position on the issue seems to be almost unique. I say that because just about everyone I have discussed the subject with have applied qualifiers or have an agenda that dictates their opinions on the subject.

Here is my position on the issue of abortion: abortion is a monstrosity. Never is it justified. Any doctor who performs this “service” should not be a doctor. Any woman who seeks it is a murderer. Anyone who condones it is ignorant. Any law or judicial decision that legalizes it is unjust. God may forgive it, but I never can.

I have absolutely no respect for the opinion of those who say that abortion should only be accepted if the mother’s life or health is in danger, or for the ones who condone it in cases of rape or incest. Those are cop-outs. A mother who places her well being ahead of her child’s does not deserve consideration. Not ever.

I don’t have a religious agenda. No organized religion drives my opinions, nor influences my beliefs. I am a mother – five times over. I would not have but one child if I had listened to doctors. My first child was born dead. Thankfully, she was resuscitated and has survived for almost 36 years now. From that point on, every time I went to the doctor with the subsequent pregnancies, I was advised to abort. Different reasons every time, but the doctors were adamant in trying to convince me to abort four of my children. I was a textbook case for the defense of Roe vs. Wade from 1975 through 1990. I only insert this bit of personal data to “qualify” my total understanding of the subject. I was told each time that my life wasn’t worth a plug nickel if I continued the pregnancy and once I was even sent home to expect a “spontaneous abortion.” That was the day that the doctor removed a golf ball sized polyp from my cervix. That was my only choice to continue the pregnancy. She is twenty-three years old now.

Okay, I need not give the rest of my medical history here. Suffice it to say, my destiny was to have my children. Every one of them was planned, but not one of them came at an opportune time. There were hardships that my husband and I had to rise up and meet head-on. We did it, so I expect nothing less of anyone else.

Why do I decide at this time to write an article on the subject of abortion? Let me tie it to an interesting news item that came up recently.

While abortion is a monstrosity, the child support issue for non-custodial parents is an atrocity. Nothing the courts have done over the years since the moral rules were changed for the benefit of people who believe in recreational sex and divorce on demand has worked in favor of society’s most innocent victims – unwanted, unplanned, or inconvenient children. In an attempt to get non-custodial parents, (mostly fathers – but sometimes mothers) – to make payments of support to custodial parents for children who must bear the burden of knowing that at some point they were in their parents’ way and not considered important enough to be top priority for one or both of their parents, the laws and courts of this nation have produced a cash cow for the legal profession and an abomination for family traditionalists.

The terminology, “deadbeat dad” is well known throughout the land. Lives have been destroyed in courtrooms that judged the sensitive issue of parental responsibility based on who got the best lawyer to argue their case, and having little to do with human responsibility. The feminist movement has long been a thorn in the side of family traditionalists, but even feminists have differing views on the issue of child support. After all, a “real feminist” can’t believe in children taking any semblance of priority in the lives of their mothers. Abortion is a much easier issue for feminists to support.

To spell this all out more succinctly, I will share this article with you:

If a child is not created at conception, then when does it come into existence?

By Steve Kellmeyer

The National Center for Men have finally gone and done it. For over a decade, they have been looking for a test case to overthrow the child support laws in every one of the 50 states. Now they think they have found it.

A man who was deceived by his girlfriend conceived a blob of tissue/fetus/child (depending on your point of view) and is now being compelled to pay child support. He’s arguing compulsory child support violates the equal protection clause. If you want to see the strength of the case, consider the argument:

Pro-life: “Is the choice to have sex a choice to have a child?”
Feminist: “No”
Pro-life: “No child exists at conception, right?”
Feminist: “Of course not.”
Pro-life: ”When would you say that a child clearly exists?”
Feminist: [the answer here doesn’t matter. Agree to use whatever time limit they choose].
Pro-life: “A woman may have an abortion for whatever reason she chooses, correct?”
Feminist: “Of course.”
Pro-life: “Men and women have equal rights?”
Feminist: “As long as abortion is legal, yes.”
Pro-life: “Alright. Who creates children?”
Feminist: “What do you mean?”
Pro-life: “Well, since we know there is no child at conception, the child must be created at some point X, well after conception. Now, the man only has sex. He’s not there after conception (indeed, conception may take place hours after the sexual act). It is only at point X that a child exists. Therefore, the woman alone creates the child through the act of gestation. Legal abortion asserts a new thing: sex doesn’t create children, gestation creates children. Sex merely creates a fertilized egg, a tissue mass.

Men don’t get pregnant. Men don’t create children. Men simply provide sperm. They provide one-half of a set of blueprints. The woman provides not only the other half, but the building site, the construction materials, she oversees the project, and she can destroy the whole thing anytime she wants. The man has got nothing to do with it.  The existence of a child is not his responsibility — he has no choice, he’s done nothing to create responsibility except have sex, and we already know that the decision to have sex is not a decision to have children, nor does it create a child.

So, the idea of compelling child support from the man is really a carry-over from the patriarchy, when men were thought to share responsibility for the existence of a child. Now that legal abortion has liberated us from those archaic ideas, we should throw away the last remnants of the old oppression.

If the woman wants to have a child, fine. Why should the man pay to support her lifestyle, her choice? If she can have an abortion for whatever reason she wants, then she is having a child for whatever reason she wants. In neither case does it have anything to do with the man.

Genetics has nothing to do with the problem. Is the man’s twin brother equally responsible for his child? Are you legally responsible for supporting your parents? No, to both. It is equally nonsense to say that the act of impregnation creates responsibility — if the woman has no responsibility towards a child who isn’t there, how much less does the man? Indeed, according to the law, an anonymous sperm donor can never be held for child support, even if he desires to be considered the child’s father.

What’s the difference between an anonymous sperm donor and one who’s name you happen to know?  The second just has a slightly more personal form of delivery. In both cases, the child exists only because the woman decides to allow it to exist. You might argue that the child wouldn’t exist without him, but neither would a Ford pickup truck exist without raw materials from US Steel. Yet we don’t hold US Steel responsible for the existence of the pickup truck — we hold responsible the one who built it.

Consider a woman who has identical twin boys. One grows up to be a carpenter, the other grows up to be an in vitro fertilization (IVF) specialist. The carpenter gets married, and he and his wife decide to have a child by IVF. The carpenter asks his brother to do the honors, and his brother readily agrees. The carpenter donates his sperm, the doctor extracts an egg from the wife, fertilizes it with sperm, and implants it in the wife’s womb.

Who is the father?

After all, the doctor used sperm genetically indistinguishable from his own and impregnated the carpenter’s wife. Doesn’t that make him the father? Is he responsible for child support? If not, then why is the carpenter?

If you really believe that men don’t have a right to a voice simply because they don’t get pregnant, then you darn well ought to support the demolition of existing child support laws. After all, as you say, this child-creation business has nothing to do with men.

The National Center for Men is using precisely this logic to attempt to weaken and destroy existing child support laws. The group is adamantly pro-choice. They point out that women have the right to force men to support a child even though the choice to create the child is clearly not their legal responsibility. In fact, a woman can rape a man, conceive a child, carry it to term, and then force the victim of the rape to pay child support. This is true even if the rape victim is a minor — a child himself. Such a boy pays for the crimes of another with his life’s earnings. This last is not legal fiction — it has actually happened. A 12 year-old boy was statutorally raped, yet the court found he had a duty to support the child his rapist bore. (STATE of Kansas, ex rel., Colleen HERMESMANN, Appellee, v. Shane SEYER, a minor, and Dan and Mary Seyer, his parents, Appellants. No. 67,978. Supreme Court of Kansas. March 5, 1993).

Examining the popular reaction

Now, Mona Charen and other conservative commentators are trembling with rage over this argument. They think it will somehow shock the feminists. It won’t. The National Center for Men is finally doing what NOW and NARAL have been in favor of for years.

Karen DeCrow, former president of NOW, argues vociferously that men should not pay child support. She is not alone; a great many “feminists” agree that compulsory child support should be abolished.

We know that impoverished households are disproportionately led by single mothers. Clearly, the removal of child support laws would increase the child poverty problem. But that’s ok. Every time another mother drops below the poverty line, the feminists have another stick to beat stay-at-home moms with.

Pro-abortion feminists (there’s a contradiction in terms) aren’t interested in helping women, rather, they are interested in re-making all women into their own image. They are interested in justifying their own life’s work. Every woman should be like them, every woman should become a sterile corporate worker bee. Human beings are a glut on the planet, and anything which reduces the human population is good. Removing subsidies for child production — and that’s what compulsory child support is, in their view — is a good thing.

Personal responsibility for children is precisely what they have opposed for years. If children must be raised, then do it in a commune, a kibbutz, a village, so that no one gets too attached. We don’t want anyone enjoying children. They might have more.

Profile: Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally recognized author and lecturer who integrates today's headlines with the Catholic Faith. His work is available through http://www.bridegroompress.com/.

Mr. Kellmeyer has it exactly right in his description of the feminists’ agenda. No wonder when it came time for President Bush to appoint Supreme Court Justices, the feminists were beside themselves with worry about the future of Roe vs. Wade. That is all we heard from them for months. If they’d had their way, any appointee would have been required to sign a contract in blood that Roe v Wade would not be touched as long as they served on the Supreme Court.

Abortion is the root of all evil in my view. Since its legal acceptance in this country, we have seen morality take a nose dive, children take a back seat, God put on trial, and weakness permeate the human spirit. Legalized abortion will continue to lead the way toward a time when every human life must pass a test for quality before being allowed to exist. We’re practically already there. No wonder the fight for liberty is such an uphill battle – hell, we haven’t even secured life yet!

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