I promised to bring the subject up again for your consumption, so… here it is.

In a past post, I indicated that my position on abortion is more nuanced than the Pro-Life movement’s “all abortions should be illegal”. As I mentioned then, I’m a supporter of any and all contraceptive measures, and in favor of RU-486.

There was a time that I was staunchly pro-choice - I was a cynical lad, and I viewed population control as one of the prime responsibilities of a civil society. I was infected, perhaps, with more than a touch of misanthropy in those days as well, so abortion wasn’t really a big deal to me.

As I got older, I began to wonder if, at some level, abortion wasn’t having a callousing effect on the national psyche (like my own). My concern could be stated thusly: If we’re so glib about destroying our own children (even “potential” children”), how will that translate into our ability to maintain any standards of moral decency as time progresses? Society is built on civility to our fellow man; abortion, to my mind, represents a lack of social civility that grows more and more alarming the more heated the rhetoric on the issue becomes.

Then, of course, I became a daddy, and my position on abortion further changed.

It’s probably not solely due to the birth of my son; moreso, the terrible way he came into the world. My wife discovered, 37 weeks into an otherwise model pregnancy, that Connor had gone into distress. Fortunately, the decision to perform an emergency C-section came in time to save my son; unfortunately, the placenta had, unbeknownst to the surgeon, presented anterior at some point late in Chrissy’s pregnancy, and it was sliced open when the initial uterine incision was made. Connor began to lose his blood.

When he came out, there was no presentation to his mommy and daddy. He was white as chalk. He was too weak to cry. He was rushed to a metal table where, I would later learn, the doctor and nurses (there were a gaggle of professionals there by this time) were injecting his tiny body with a weak saline solution just to keep his heart beating. Over the next week in NICU, he’d have four full blood transfusions and be treated for jaundice. He received supplemental nutrition intravenously. In the end, the nurses had run out of places to put an IV, so he had to bear with one being put into his head. He was littered with bruises from the treatments, and times with his parents were few and far between.

While Connor was being treated, his mother and I had plenty of time to look in on the other infants in the NICU. Now, no baby is there for anything other than a serious situation, but some of the preemies defied logic. One, who had a name that indicated a Somali descent, would have fit in the palm of my hand, easily. I don’t think I ever saw him awake; he spent his life that I could see, for that week, crashed in an incubator. Every type of machine I could think of was hooked up to him; his breathing was probably assisted (lungs are one of the last organs to develop) and it’s likely that the great majority of his nutrition came through a tube. All of his vitals were under 24/7 monitoring. I reflected, then, on both the wonders of modern medicine and the struggle that so many children endure just to live. The adversity they so often must triumph over, to have a future.

That there are those in this world who would look in the face of that and demand the right to abort a pregnancy right up to the moment of delivery sickens and shames me.

Most, though, are more “reasonable” about the parameters under which an abortion should be allowable. The Supreme Court attempted to find consensus on the window of what was “medically reasonable” with 1973’s “Roe vs. Wade” decision. Consider this one line from the final text of Blackmun’s opinion:

“With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the “compelling” point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester.”

Of course, this was “present medical knowledge” circa 1973 - over thirty years ago, now. Current technology is beginning to offer a much better, more detailed view of the life of an infant in-utero, and what researchers are finding is troubling for current abortion norms:

“Stuart Campbell, former head of obstetrics at King’s College Hospital, says striking new images from ultrasound scans that allow doctors to view babies inside the womb have convinced him the normal 24-week legal limit for terminations should be reassessed.

“The more I study foetuses the more I find it quite distressing to terminate babies who are so advanced in terms of human behaviour,” he said.

“For normal babies being terminated for social reasons it’s probably unacceptable nowadays to be terminating them much after 14 weeks. They can suck their thumbs, they can open their eyes, they can perform complex movements. I think it’s time we got our act together.” Department of Health figures show that about 13,000 of the 175,000 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2002 were later than 14 weeks.

Prof Campbell now runs a private London clinic that offers the new 4D scanning, which allows more detailed examination of the foetus, and is about to publish a book showing pictures of babies at various stages of development. The images show 12-week-old foetuses stretching and kicking; others are pictured opening their eyes at 18 weeks and, by 26 weeks, scratching, smiling and crying.”

It’s been my opinion for several years now that it’s time to reassess our abortion parameters and methods in the US; other people are starting to agree. You’ll see some of my reservations echoed by Glenn Reynolds:

“Good: On the other hand, I think the abortion issue is “stuck,” and would probably have reached a better, or at least less painful, resolution via legislative processes if Roe v. Wade hadn’t shunted the issue aside. That resolution would probably look more like what we see in Europe — abortion available, but less freely than in the U.S. — and the political pathology associated with abortion polarization would have been avoided.”

Anything that would cut down on the number of abortions in the US would hearten me; the German model referenced at President Aristotle sounds like a good start. I’ll probably never be completely Pro-Life, but I can’t help but look at abortion, as it’s been performed in the modern world, as a global tragedy, and an affront to civilization.

Also, Connor ended up just fine. He’s a smart, beautiful kid, and we have some wonderful doctors and nurses at Central Maine Medical Center to thank for it. At four years old he can (almost) count to 100, and swings a mean lightsaber.