I don’t think about abortion much, and hadn’t planned on writing about it here, but what with the national discussion lately over Sarah Palin’s baby with Down syndrome and her daughter’s unwed pregnancy, it keeps coming up.
I remember that I used to hear people say, defending abortion, that nobody would be so callous as to use it as birth control, but I haven’t heard that argument in a long time. I think proponents must have realized that abortion, if it deserves to be legal, might as well be touted as birth control, with no stigma attached at all. If it’s not wrong, then it’s right, which makes such positions as Hillary Clinton’s–that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare“–baffling.
But I digress. Without making this partisan, I’d like to relate a story that, sadly, I think sheds a lot of light on the state of abortion today.
Several years ago, during my free period at work, when teachers do their grading and planning, a senior girl popped her head in the door and asked if she could make a quick call on her cell phone. Not wanting to be distracted from the work I was doing at my computer, I just said, “Sure,” and continued typing.
However, my attention was yanked away from the screen when I heard her ask the other end of the line, in that very mature tone we all use when asking for information from professionals, how much an abortion would cost there. (more…)
