A moral schizophrenia afflicts our culture on the issue of abortion. There are inconsistencies both in our nation’s laws and in people’s attitudes about the moral status of the unborn. Nevertheless, too many people still seem unable to see the contradictions. A case in point appears in today’s New York Times.
Pam Belluck reports on a new study appearing in the The New England Journal of Medicine. A rigorous clinical trial has shown that fetal surgery can help babies with spina bifida to walk and experience fewer neurological problems if operated on before being born rather than afterward. Here’s a summary of the study’s findings:
“In the study, about 80 babies were randomly selected for surgery after birth; another 80 had the spinal opening surgically closed in utero, between 19 and 26 weeks of pregnancy. Two in each group died. Before surgery, babies in the prenatal group had more severe spinal lesions than the postnatal group, but more in the prenatal group had better results.”
The success of this procedure is truly amazing. Equally amazing is the fact that the unborn can be treated medically just as the mother can. Moreover the unborn can have spinal surgery just as their born counterparts can and with greater success.
How does it make any moral or legal sense, therefore, to take heroic measures to do surgery on a 19 week old fetus while at the same time allowing the abortion of a perfectly normal 19 week old fetus? The only difference between the one and the other is that one has a mother that wants him and the other doesn’t. This inconsistency doesn’t even bear the lightest scrutiny, yet it is one that is plain to anyone who has eyes to see.
Love in the Truth.
3 comments:
Our legal system seems to adapt to whatever whim the attorneys want to choose in bending the law to conform to the morality they are trying to defend. With lawyers there seem to be no inconsistencies in the things they do.
Lee
Tossing It Out and the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge 2011
I think that abortion is just wrong! how can you kill an innocent child its just heart breaking </3
Schizophrenia is a good word to describe the thinking in our country regarding abortion. It's just absolutely insane. And this photo never loses its power, no matter how many times I see it.
Thanks for the post.
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