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The Confederate Lawyer
June 29, 2009
The Lies They Tell
by Charles G. Mills
GLEN COVE, NY — If the Devil is the prince of lies, his elite shock troops are the abortionists and their lobby.
Advocates of legal abortion often state that they want abortion to be “rare, safe, and legal.” This statement, however, is frequently spoken by those who make their living by performing abortions, those who work for organizations that do a booming business in assembly-line abortions, lobbyists for these two groups, and politicians who receive money from the abortion industry or lobby. If anyone believes they really want abortions to be rare, such a person probably believes that the tobacco companies want cigarette smoking to be rare.
Closely related to the “rare, safe, and legal” lie is the statement by proponents of widespread legal abortion that both sides of the abortion debate should work together to reduce “unwanted pregnancies.” Nobody has really ever defined “unwanted pregnancies.” It sounds like something that just happened to a woman contrary to her own desires. There is an epidemic of pregnancies in our public schools that are “unwanted” by school faculty and administrators, social workers, and youth bureaus. The majority of them, however, are not “unwanted” by the mothers.
Even if we limit “unwanted pregnancies” to those unwanted by the mother, we have to understand what “work together” means. To proponents of abortion, it means joining them in promoting artificial contraception. Artificial contraception, however, has been shown to lead to more, not less, abortions. Contraception, even when practiced carefully, is less effective than chastity. The real purpose of the “work together” proposals is to weaken the resolve of opponents of contraception. This will, in turn, weaken their moral backbone and make them easier targets the next time a difficult vote or a charismatic abortion supporter candidate comes along.
Another deceptive tactic of the abortion lobby is to frame the debate in terms of the most difficult and rare cases. This can be done by saying that someone opposes legal abortion even in cases of “rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Another way to practice this deception is to tell horror stories about mothers giving birth to headless children, dying on the operating table during delivery, or being forced to bear a rapist’s child. The truth is that virtually all abortions are performed for the convenience of mothers who put their schedule or their wealth ahead of their children.
It was once the case that women sometimes died in childbirth. Some mothers chose to die so their babies could live. Some mothers chose to let their babies die so they themselves could live. There was a proper moral distinction between directly saving the mother’s life and indirectly killing the baby, and directly killing the baby and indirectly saving the mother’s life. Today medical science has advanced enough so that mothers now rarely die from childbirth. Although some mothers do die in childbirth, American law has never required them to do so. It is dishonest to bring up this issue in the abortion debate.
It is also dishonest to bring up the issue of rape. If a woman receives the proper medical treatment in the immediate aftermath of a rape, she will not get pregnant. If she chooses to hide her rape until she discovers she is pregnant, she should not complain that she cannot kill her child.
I have never heard of a case in which incest was the deciding factor in the legality of an abortion.
The most insidious deception practiced by the proponents of legal abortion is their abuse of the language. The use of the terms “pro-choice” and “a woman’s right to choose” implies that the choice of whether to undergo an abortion is somehow the one choice that has no need to be specified. Choices range from such trivial ones as what color of dress to wear to such truly grave ones as whether to have sex outside of marriage, whether to include abortion in the medical procedures one performs, or whether to shoot an abortionist. The bureaucratic word “terminate” belongs in bad spy movies, not in an intelligent discussion of abortion.
The most important word is “baby.” The abortion lobby never uses it, and this omission is just as deceptive as its affirmative lies. Happy expecting parents call what they are expecting a “baby.” They almost never call it a “fetus” or a “pregnancy.” The proponents of abortion never call the object of their action a “baby.” If, however, you were to put two sonograms up on a wall, one from a happy and expectant mother and one from a woman contemplating an abortion, and ask which was the “baby,” there is no way anyone could make a distinction. If, however, the proponents of abortion started to use the term “baby,” they would admit that the object of their procedure was exactly the same thing happy parents are expecting At that point we can legitimately hope they would lose the argument.
We must be vigilant never to cooperate by words or by silence in the deceptions of the abortion lobby.
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The Confederate Lawyer column is copyright © 2009 by Charles G. Mills and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfBooks.com. All rights reserved.
Charles G. Mills is the Judge Advocate or general counsel for the New York State American Legion. He has forty years of experience in many trial and appellate courts and has published several articles about the law.
See his biographical sketch and additional columns here.
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