On a recent episode of “The View,” the talk show’s hosts turned their conversation to recent news of a Texas woman who sought a 21-week D&E abortion on her preborn baby with Trisomy 18. Although a lower court initially said she could go forward with an abortion, the state’s Supreme Court this week ultimately denied it, much to the ire of abortion supporters across the country. This pro-abortion outrage found a platform on “The View,” where former Good Morning America host Sara Haines attempted to utilize a very odd argument against pro-lifers.
“I tend to think when people say it’s God’s will, it’s a miracle, it’s life,” said Haines, reading off her notes. “If it’s God’s will on the way in, it should be God’s will on the way out too. That brings into question are you taking heart attack medication? Are you treating your cancer? Are you dying when you said you should? Because if we’re going to argue about life in, then let’s be honest about life out. Don’t go to the hospital if you’re hurting because it is God’s will. Like, I don’t like the inconsistencies and the hypocrisy when people weaponize religion on this issue.”
Haines’ comments are profoundly misguided. Not only is her argument based on the fundamentally misguided premise that abortion is a type of health care, but she also prejudicially stereotypes pro-lifers’ motivations in an unhelpful and unfair way.
Health care is pro-life
Haines’ claim on “The View” was not a serious argument based on the sincerely-held beliefs of pro-lifers, but instead appeared to be an attention-grabbing way to score a few points with the audience, claiming if they’re pro-life, they shouldn’t utilize medical treatments for heart attacks or cancer. “’If it’s God’s will on the way in, it should be God’s will on the way out too,” she said.
But health care is the process of promoting or maintaining physical, emotional, or mental well-being. Properly done, it is an undeniable good.
Haines was right to talk about taking medication for preventing heart attacks, treating cancer, and even palliative care at the end of life as health care. But abortion by design destroys a living human organism by poisoning, suction, dismemberment, or lethal injection. A sick baby can be treated, but the point of abortion is a dead baby.
By definition, abortion cannot be health care.
Haines is correct when she implies that pro-lifers believe that life should be respected until natural death (“God’s will on the way out”), which is part of the reason we oppose abortion. But respecting a “natural death” doesn’t mean foregoing medical care.
In fact, when preborn babies are treated as fully human patients who deserve medical care before and after birth, the field of medicine is able to grow by leaps and bounds. Because of a belief in the worth of pre-born babies, NICU care has developed, in-utero surgery has improved to treat conditions like spina bifida, and even life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has increased dramatically. Even Trisomy 18, though labeled as “incompatible with life,” can be survivable with proper medical treatment.
The Texas issue: sick babies shouldn’t be killed
The case that the ladies of “The View” were discussing was that of Kate Cox, a woman pregnant with a 20-week-old baby diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a condition which many babies are not expected to survive, but some certainly do. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the condition doesn’t carry any extraordinary risk of maternal complications. (For context, the most premature baby was born at 21 weeks.)
According to the Texas Supreme Court ruling, Kate’s life was not threatened by continuing to carry her baby, and if her life were in danger, she wouldn’t need a judge’s opinion to save her life.
“When she sued seeking a court’s pre-authorization, Dr. Karsan did not assert that Ms. Cox has a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ or that, in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires,” reads the ruling. “Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis. Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.”
“Our ruling today does not block a life-saving abortion in this very case if a physician determines that one is needed under the appropriate legal standard, using reasonable medical judgment,” the ruling continued. “Nothing in this opinion prevents a physician from acting if, in that physician’s reasonable medical judgment, she determines that Ms. Cox has a ‘life threatening physical condition’ that places her ‘at risk of death’ or ‘poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”
There was some speculation that Cox’s water may have broken, increasing the risk for infection after preterm rupture of the membranes (PPROM). But as Live Action News has pointed out, abortion is not standard of care for treatment of PPROM.
The real reason for the abortion, as Haines herself pointed out, is that Cox had had previous C-sections before, and that delivery of her baby – rather than a violent D&E abortion – would have “risked her future fertility.” In other words, instead of having her baby live her last moments knowing only the love of his parents, it seemed preferable to dismember the almost viable baby piece by piece.
Haines claimed denying Cox an abortion is “pro cruelty” and “pro inhumanity.” But the case very much appears to be of parents not willing to risk future futility on a sick or “defective” baby, so they could try again later.
Isn’t that pro-cruelty? Isn’t it pro-inhumanity to discard the sick and the weak before their natural death?
Abortion is not strictly a religious issue
The media loves to paint all pro-lifers as the same red state Christian stereotype, so it’s no surprise Haines reached for that immediately. However pro-lifers come from all walks of life, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all religious backgrounds, and are in all parts of the country. They all hold a diversity of reasons for being pro-life.
While many abortion supporters love to tell pro-lifers to “stop pushing religion” when they try to defend the inherent right to life, there is a significant swath of pro-lifers who believe in the value of human life who aren’t religious. And in fact, it’s not difficult to argue a scientifically sound, logically consistent case for being pro-life without making reference to religion at all.
The rule of law in the country assumes that humans have a right to life and rightly punishes people who violate that principle. Secular Pro-Life argues that preborn babies logically fall under this, as they are human: zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are scientific terms that describe different stages in human development.
Preborn babies have human DNA and are separate organisms that will eventually develop into maturity. They are human. Abortion supporters must make a case over who it is permissible to kill if they want to exclude preborn babies from having the right to life, as they are living human organisms.
