The Issue is Human Rights
an Individual Speaks Out about 'Rights' of the Unborn

The Tennessean
Wednesday, 04/07/04

If only privacy were the biggest issue at stake in the state's latest abortion-amendment conflict.

A proposed constitutional amendment would add the words ''nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or the funding thereof.''

Predictably, the ACLU and other abortion activists have attempted to position this amendment as a first step on a slippery slope that would erode women's rights of privacy under the state constitution. They also contend it's a political ploy to divide voters before election time.

Abortion proponents and opponents will never agree on this issue because they look at it from two different viewpoints: the mother's and the child's. In one instance, the amendment would remove rights; in the other, it would restore them.

As long as the mother's side is taken, abortion will always be seen as her right and her choice. After all, why shouldn't a woman have complete say over what happens to her own body?

An unplanned pregnancy can ruin a reputation, complicate a relationship, strain a budget, interrupt a college career or otherwise complicate her life.

But when a person's freedoms encroach on someone else's, it ceases to be a personal freedom.

A person has a right to do whatever she wants with her own body, as long as it doesn't harm someone else.

But abortion inflicts the worst sort of harm, final and irreversible, on someone who's done nothing to provoke it.

A mother who goes ahead with an unwanted pregnancy to give a baby up for adoption has just a year of her life to lose, plus the pain and expense of childbirth. The one who is aborted loses an entire lifetime.

Exceptions for rape, incest and the mother's life would be decided by the General Assembly. These cases make up a tiny percentage of abortions and detract from the ugly truth that abortion is almost exclusively used as a method of birth control.

We can't change the past, and the millions of women who have had abortions need compassion, not condemnation. But we should move forward to restore the most basic right to those who have the most to lose in this ''choice.''

Pregnancy is temporary. Death is final. Women seeking abortion do so for many reasons, but precious few of them justify denying another human being the right to live.

This isn't a privacy issue. It's a human rights issue. And Senate Joint Resolution 127 is the first step in restoring the most essential human right to a minority group of people who can't speak for themselves — the unborn.


The Tennessean
Wednesday, 04/07/04