Sacrifice

Most Americans are OK with abortions, at least under certain circumstances.  According to the most recent Gallup poll, a little over half of us, fifty-one percent, believe abortions should be permissible in cases such as rape, incest, or when the health of the mother is at risk.  While only twenty-nine percent believe abortions should be allowed in any situation, and an even lower percentage, nineteen, believe abortions should be banned entirely, the majority of those polled wind up in this fuzzy middle.

These statistics, perhaps, are not surprising. For many Americans, abortion is a complicated issue involving multiple lives.  What might be surprising, however, is that none of these numbers have fluctuated much in forty years.  Today’s percentages are nearly identical to what they were in 1975, two years after Roe vs. Wade.

Thus, the purpose of this column will not be to persuade you one way or another.  If you’re literate enough to read a newspaper, then you probably already know into which percent you would fit.

Now, granted, I am tempted to use this forum to share with you my own personal views.  I would like to spend a few paragraphs expanding on how I believe that life in general is miraculous and human life is especially sacred.    I could also share with you my own political ideas on the topic.  I could go into detail about how, due to the above mentioned statistics, I think the focus for everyone should be on minimizing abortions as much as possible through education and support for local crisis pregnancy centers.  After all, in a democracy, when over two-thirds of the population believes something should be at least quasi-legal, throwing all your resources behind trying to make it illegal is a bit like trying to plug up a dam with a stick.  We might consider using buckets.

Regardless, I will spare you that column, because in the end, what would happen is this:  those of you who agreed with me would put down the paper and say, “Yep, he’s right,” those who disagreed with me would click on a different link and mutter, “What an idiot,” and both groups would move on to their next moment in time. 

Personally, I think our time is too valuable for that.  We are all too busy to rehash old arguments.  However, I do have a request, and as an English teacher, it is a request born out of a need for clarity. It is the same ask my students often hear:  be precise.

Thus, I would ask that we stop referring to abortion as murder.  It isn’t murder.  Murder is a crime, and abortion is legal, and so it cannot, technically, be murder.  When we use words like “murder” we get both sides angrier than they already are and nothing gets accomplished. No one gets rescued when we shout “murder.”

I would also ask that we stop referring to it as choice.  It isn’t a choice.  A choice is something you make at a drive through window.  A choice is a plane ticket to one destination over another.  When we use sterile words like “choice,” we dismiss in a very profane way the gravity, for every person involved, of the procedure.  No one is fooled when we whisper “choice.”

The word we should be using is one you might not consider when it comes to this topic, and that is “sacrifice.”  More importantly, we are talking about human sacrifice. 

Clearly the pre-born human is being sacrificed for one or more reasons.  It is being sacrificed due to economic hardship, unanticipated health concerns, social pressure, or a bleak combination of all three.  The human mother, however—a person rarely discussed in this conversation, weirdly enough—is also sacrificing something. She is sacrificing potential.  She is sacrificing, perhaps, many years’ worth of lost moments, when she must ponder the twin questions, “Did I do right?” and “What if?”

Every human involved—the father, the family, the medical personnel—sacrifice part of themselves in an abortion. That is why it’s so important that we get our terminology exactly right, because minimizing human sacrifice as much as possible—ending human sacrifice as quickly as we can—seems to be an idea that any rationale American could get behind.

After all, we’re not exactly the only culture that practices human sacrifice.  The history books are full of them.