Abortion and Worldviews

“A rat has a heartbeat, too.” I used to say this, as a pro choice atheist, in response to the fact that a fetus has a heartbeat. How could I say such a thing? What was wrong with me? Well, I will argue that as an atheist, absolutely nothing was wrong with my line of thinking. In fact, it was only natural.

I’ve tried to stay away from the abortion issue, but for the first time today, I found out what, exactly, partial-birth abortion is. Now, all abortion is horrible, but this particular method, once legal in many states, is just beyond the pale of all evil. Partial-birth abortion is very true to its name. Once the pregnancy is too far along, like 25 or 26 weeks (which the baby is viable at that point), the doctor can no longer just use forceps for an abortion. They artificially force it to be born. Except the head, of course, because if the whole body was delivered, it would legally be a child. I honestly am struggling how to describe this… so I will let Brenda Pratt Shafer, a nurse who worked at an abortion clinic, describe the partial-birth abortion of a 26 1/2 week old baby with down syndrome.

“Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heart beating. As Dr. Haskell watched the baby on the ultrasound screen, the baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms-- everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp.”

     

Brenda’s account has been corroborated, and the clinic even admitted that she worked there as a nurse. I just don’t know how anyone can read that account, or look up a video of the procedure being done (which is easily found on Youtube), and not fight the urge to vomit. Thankfully, there is a ban on partial-birth abortion in America since 2003, but Planned Parenthood has been seeking to overturn it via the courts.

Which brings me to my next point… Do you want to know why Planned Parenthood is trying to reinstate children’s brains being sucked out by a tube? It sure as hell doesn’t have to do with women’s health, I can tell you that. They’re doing this because they don’t believe in God. Put simply, if you don’t believe that God created humans in His image, and that we all have a soul, then of course you’re not going to care if fetuses are killed. After all, even a rat has a heartbeat, right?

This godless problem is rampant in liberal Hollywood circles (and I say that as someone whose blog is called liberalmuffin). One of the most high profile defenders of abortion is Peter Singer, an atheist professor who somehow has tenure at not just any university, but Princeton. He literally has argued not just for abortion, but for infanticide. He claims that since a newborn baby is incapable of rational thought, then it is not a person. His views are succinctly summed up in this one quote from him, “Membership of the species Homo sapiens is not enough to confer a right to life.”

I have a question for Peter Singer though: Where’s the cutoff? Why not euthanize a five year old with Down Syndrome? I mean, our culture already aborts them as babies. Maybe we should just jump ahead to the logical conclusion of all this and execute everyone who is “unfit.” Where have I heard that before? I’m sure a certain mustachioed man would like Peter Singer… and I ain’t talking about Mario.

Please, if you’re thinking about getting an abortion, know that there really are options. Your child deserves to be loved.