Jefferson Weaver • It’s Not an “It”

Jefferson Weaver
Jefferson Weaver

The recent Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade handed the responsibility for abortion law back to the states, where it should have been in the first case. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there a single mention of the right to abort a child, although all Americans of any age are supposed to have the same rights as anyone else, including life. 

I have never made any bones about the fact that I am not in favor of the government-subsidized, socially-acceptable murder of unborn children. I am, however, in favor of state government leaders being able to pass laws that reflect the values of their electorates. 

Many in the pro-choice movement tend to follow the same “non-violent” piper as the anti-gun, anti-Christian, anti-military crowd. Ironically, some of those who are pro-life are in danger of physical injury, property damage and worse by some of those who are pro-choice. I personally know of one family that has received the most vile threats because they have the courage to share the word of God with women outside an abortion clinic. 
Shoot, I’ve had keyboard warriors attack me because “it’s a choice.”

It’s not an It. 

The “clump of cells” created by the cojoining of human sperm and egg will only create one thing: a baby. 

The vast majority of the time, when a baby is created, there was a choice already made. Choices have consequences.

For what my opinion is worth, life begins at conception. God created that life. Whether the act that caused the cells to begin to form was intentional, sinful, criminal, teenage passion, boredom, or alcohol-induced is beside the point.

A human life is created at conception. Period.

Before you attack me over the miniscule numbers of pregnancies caused by rape and incest, let’s make it clear that even the staunchest of the baby-killers agree that the majority of pregnancies are not the result of criminal behavior. In the situations where a crime does result in the creation of an embryo, I feel like the mother and her family have to make the choice.
There are also heartbreaking incidents where a pregnancy truly will endanger the life of the mother. That, too, is decision that should not be taken lightly. The parameters must also be very, very narrow about what is life-threatening.

But killing a child because it will be inconvenient, less than perfect, or worse, because the man and woman were just too lazy to use any one of the dozen or more options to prevent an unwanted pregnancy – that’s wrong. Period.

The critics of the pro-life movement are quick to scream about how every single person who is against abortion should be lining up to adopt these unwanted children. I agree – but at the same time, the process is heartbreakingly complex and ridiculously expensive. We have friends who have gone through it. We have looked into it, since we have no children. And it is criminal on the part of government that  the courts would rather a child of a drug addict with a criminal history remain with his or her crack-addled parent than with a family that could break the cycle. I literally know folks who were bankrupted by the process, after having jumped through every hoop – then told that since they were bankrupt, they couldn’t be good parents.

That bureaucracy needs to change – but first the lives have to be saved.

I do not understand the left’s loud obsession with the desire to kill children. The signs, the protests, the social media posts all seem to vie with each other to see who can be more vulgar, more shocking. Kafka said we should only read things that bite and kick and scratch, but at a certain point, those bites and scratches are ignored.  The calmer heads find themselves lost in a sea of hysteria and radicalism, or at the very least are judged so guilty by association that they can never be heard by either side.

If there is a coherent thought in the bunch of folks screaming about the “violence of forced birth,” someone should have realized by now that protesting outside a Supreme Court justice’s home likely isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. It won’t get you arrested under the current administration, which selectively enforces federal law, but it won’t win you any support, either. 

Screaming obscenities and wearing white pants with fake blood on the legs doesn’t do anything except make one look like an idiot. Waving coathangers at people does nothing. Targeting children and churches because you disagree with a legal opinion is reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Offering bounties on public figures seen in public places and bonuses if they’re still there when protestors arrive is just asking for trouble.

I will tell you the truth: if people showed up at a restaurant where I was trying to enjoy a meal with my family, and in any way, shape or form endangered someone, there would be serious problems. It might even go viral on social media, but it would be rather satisfying to know that the aggressors wouldn’t be able to watch it until the swelling went down.

It’s a sad day when people who have benefitted so much from the rights to free speech, the right to vote and so many other rights of being Americans feel they have to resort to making those with whom they disagree feel unsafe in their homes and in public. It’s even sadder when this rabid radicalism is out of a desire to kill unborn children. Then you can add the media stoking the fires with entire forests of untruths and half-truths, and of course, the politicians who stand to make a dollar off  of the entire process. 

It’s interesting to me that people on both sides of this issue can agree on some things. That’s the type of thing that gives me a little hope.

Denise Harle, a senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said she condemns violence, and said abortion is an act of violence. Dr. Colleen McNichols of the St. Louis branch of Planned Parenthood said there should be was similar outrage for abortion doctors who’ve been murdered. University of California Berkeley Law Professor Khiara Bridges said she condemns violence, but added that “forced birth” is violence.

At least most everyone agrees violence is bad. 

Yet many of the anti-violence types are okay with the wholesale dismemberment of infant children. I’m not in favor or any kind of violence, especially when it is directed toward an innocent child.

I have become rather tired of the repeated chants of “My Body, My Choice.” The choice was made when that body engaged in the act of sex, an act which God designed to be the only method of making children.

Everyone does indeed have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies.

The choice was always there, whether it was choosing to use birth control or to abstain from the act that can cause pregnancy; again, I am not referring to criminal acts of violence, but to the act of having voluntary sex with another human being.

But in the case of abortion, it’s not the mother’s body that is being voluntarily destroyed. It is the body of an innocent, defenseless, unborn child.

That child has no voice, but every one of them is much, much more than just a choice.

That life, however it was created, is no “it”. That’s a child.

About Jefferson Weaver 1928 Articles
Jefferson Weaver is the Managing Editor of Columbus County News and he can be reached at (910) 914-6056, (910) 632-4965, or by email at [email protected].