Live Action’s Sami Parker recently countered the argument that support for limited government logically necessitates supporting legalized abortion. This is a fallacy.
In an Instagram video, Parker reacted to Fox News host Tomi Lahren’s explanation as to why she is ‘pro-choice’. Here’s what she said: “I am pro-choice because I believe in limited government — not because I’m pro-abortion, not because I’m not pro-life, but because I believe in limited government. I don’t believe that’s the government’s place.”
Parker got right to the point. “That’s crazy,” she explained. “This is like saying, ‘Well, I don’t believe in legislating things around child abuse because I believe in limited government. It’s not because I’m for child abuse. It’s not because I want child abuse to happen. It’s because I believe in limited government.'”
If she’s ‘not for abortion but not against abortion,’ is she also ‘not for child abuse but not against child abuse’? Her logic fails.
The idea of “bodily autonomy” or the “my body, my choice” argument is common among abortion supporters; these phrases fail to note that countless laws in society govern what people can and cannot do with their own bodies (pause and consider this for a moment). And while government overreach into many aspects of people’s lives can be a very real problem, when it comes to directly preventing the intentional killing of other human beings, this should be a no-brainer.
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Parker continued, “This isn’t an argument about limited government. It’s an argument about whether or not you think it should be legal to kill innocent children — which it shouldn’t. And the government should legislate against that. I know way too many conservatives with this take who… it’s clear you have not taken five minutes to consider what abortion actually does. Either that or you don’t actually think that every human being should have equal human rights, which doesn’t make you conservative.”
The government is obligated to protect
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that all human beings are equal and deserve protection. The New North Star Coalition Letter, signed by 26 pro-life groups, explained, “The Fourteenth Amendment expressly forbids the states from denying ‘to any person within [their] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws’… Crucially, the Amendment then goes on to provide that ‘no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’”
The personal protection afforded to every member of the human race under the 14th Amendment must be bestowed equally to preborn human beings; to choose not to protect all members of the human race is discriminatory.
Even a limited government is obligated to protect innocent human beings from being directly targeted for death and intentionally killed. Even a limited government has laws penalizing offenses against others, like homicide (which is what abortion is — the homicide of an undelivered human being) and theft of personal property. To use a desire for limited government as an excuse to allow the legal, targeted killing of certain human beings equates to using limited government as an excuse to allow child abuse, rape, incest, and other acts of violence against one’s own family and children. These aren’t issues of “privacy” any more than abortion is.
If laws against child abuse are legitimate under a limited government, then why not laws against intentionally killing the same child while he or she is still growing in the womb? The right to life — the first and most basic right, without which no other rights could exist — should not be denied to someone because of his or her size, location, level of development, degree of dependency, or any other reason.
A human being is a human being, and all human beings deserve equal protection from being unjustly killed. The only way to get around this is to claim that preborn humans aren’t “fully human” so they don’t count, or to claim that the mother “matters more” than her child (which must also require one to treat the child in the womb as “less human” than his or her mother).
What happens during an abortion
Most abortions take place during the first trimester of pregnancy, and the most common way to carry out these first-trimester abortions has become the abortion pill — marketed as easy, safe, and like ‘bringing down a missed period.’ But it’s not that simple.
The late Dr. Noreen Johnson, a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist, carried out over 1,000 abortions before becoming pro-life. In a video explaining how the abortion pill regimen works, she said it is approved for use up to 10 weeks and includes two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol.
“Step One: At the abortion facility or at home, the woman swallows mifepristone pills,” said Dr. Johnson. “Mifepristone blocks the action of a hormone called progesterone. Progesterone is naturally produced in the mother’s body to stabilize the lining of the uterus. When mifepristone blocks progesterone, the lining of the mother’s uterus breaks down, cutting off oxygen and vital nutrients to the embryo, who then dies inside the mother’s womb.”
She continued, “Step Two: 24-48 hours after taking mifepristone, the woman takes misoprostol by placing the pills in her cheeks. She will experience severe cramping, contractions, and heavy bleeding to force the dead embryo out of her uterus. The process can be very intense and painful, and the bleeding and contractions can last from a few hours to several days.”
Dr. Johnson explained that the woman may see her dead baby’s body — an experience to which many women have testified. One such woman, Christina, said Planned Parenthood staff told her she “wouldn’t see anything” (meaning the baby’s body) during the abortion pill process. But she did.
“They didn’t ever use the word ‘baby’,” she explained. “They always just said ‘it’ or ’tissue’ or ‘the process.’ They never said anything about the level of development. They did tell me it would be too small to see anything.” But, she said, the process “felt like hell” and she gave birth to her dead baby on a toilet.
“When I turned around, there it was in the sac and everything,” said Christina. “I broke open the sac and held the helpless little baby in my hand. I cried and felt like I had just murdered someone so innocent. I regretted it 100% after that night.”
Photo: Reddit user brazen 177 (10-week aborted baby by abortion pill)
In the second trimester, abortion gets more violent through the use of D&E (dismemberment) abortion, which involves tearing the arms and legs off the near-viable or even viable baby before removing the rest of the body and crushing the child’s skull to remove it.
To claim to be “pro-choice” on allowing people to make such a decision — to kill a human being at any age or stage — under the guise of limited government, is to avoid the truth and facts of the issue entirely. If there is one legitimate use for government, it is to protect innocent and defenseless human life.
