We constantly hear the message that extremists must be stopped.  These extremists are threatening the “right to choose,” the “right to privacy,” and other individual liberties.  Such rhetoric ignores the more basic rights to life (for the baby) and to the pursuit of happiness (for women adversely affected after choosing abortion) that have been lost.

Fortunately, recent hysterical reactions of abortion supporters to actions that many people see as reasonable are reshaping who is viewed as extreme.  States are passing laws to require parental notification before underage abortion, informed consent for women seeking abortion, bans on partial birth abortion, and legal protection for preborn children who are injured or killed by attacks on their mothers.  The last two of these are expected to pass in the U.S. Congress as well.

Claims by the opposition that they represent the majority are losing credibility. Defenders of “choice” claim that the ban on partial birth abortion would actually ban most abortions after 12 weeks, but reading the bill proves otherwise.  They fight for the “right to choose,” but are not willing to support any protections for the women who are making these choices.  They cannot acknowledge the humanity of preborn children under any context because it may lead people to recognize the inconsistency of aborting some infants while welcoming others.  Who can defend the logic that the preborn child is a baby when the mother wants it but something else when she doesn’t?

They say that abstinence-only programs are “not medically accurate” but offer no statistics that show the effectiveness of teaching “safe sex.”  Meanwhile, teaching of abstinence shows immediate results wherever it is tried.  Of course, such results mean less business for Planned Parenthood, et al.  It appears that Planned Parenthood is very anti-choice, if the choice is anything other than using their “reproductive” services.  And that is another misnomer – Planned Parenthood’s services are very anti-reproductive.

Bill Beckman