I've been wanting to write this for quite a while and today seemed a fitting time. This afternoon President Bush signed the ban on partial birth (D&X - Dilation & Extraction) abortions and, while I support that measure, I disagree with many conservatives on a fundamental cornerstone of the abortion debate.

But first, I'd like to quickly debunk a point that the opposition to this law are going to bring up, specifically that it doesn't include an exemption for preserving the health of the mother. But what that phrase - "the health of the mother" - really means is another matter entirely. It's hard to get solid abortion statistics since many states don't have reporting requirements in place and, if they do have the statistics, they're not easy to find. One exception is the state of Kansas and it's Center for Health and Environmental Statistics (part of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment). The abortion statistics are found here in PDF format. You can download the Adobe Reader if you don't have it. I specifically looked at the 1999 stats because that's when Kansas' ban on D&X procedures went into effect and, thus, none have been performed since September of that year.

Out of a total of 12,421 abortions reported, 182 were D&X. In all of those, the fetus was deemed to be viable. In none of those was the life of the mother in jeopardy. All were deemed to be a risk to the mother's "health", but not to her physical health. In every case, the risk was to her mental health. There are no standards that I could find as to what constitutes a "mental health risk" in those circumstances. But the impression left by the phrase "preserve the health of the mother" is entirely physical in nature. I would challenge anyone to do a man-on-the-street survey and find more than 1% (if that) who view it otherwise. By the way, most of the states who have bans on D&X abortions include exemptions for instances where the life of the mother is at risk but not the health.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post.

I firmly believe that abortion is an absolute tragedy and should be discouraged at every turn in favor of either keeping the baby or, if that's not feasible, placing it up for adoption. I believe that abortion contributes (along with other societal factors) to the ever-decreasing level of respect for the sanctity of life in this country. And I believe that this lack of respect for life has manifested itself through the years in an increase in violence (read: killings) in schools and in life in general, often for the most petty of reasons.

Make no mistake, I don't like abortion.

But abortion is not murder.

Clearly abortion in all forms is, at the least, the ending of a life. But to qualify as murder, it would have to be a human life and that distinction is what forms the basis of my view. Yes, a fetus is alive and growing through cell division, has a feeding mechanism and reacts to stimuli. Honestly, though, the same can be said for plants and, aside from a small group of wingnuts out west, no one argues that logging is murder.

While a fetus is certainly alive and is certainly a nascent human, at what point does it actually become human? Some say conception. Some say delivery. I say that there is no scientific answer to that question. That's one reason why abortion should never have become a political or legal issue. There is no proof to back up either side. It's all based on belief one way or the other.

My thoughts on this matter were backed up some time ago when I heard Dennis Prager compare it to a playground killer. Dennis is a much better thinker and writer than I, but I'll paraphrase as best as I can.

If you were walking along and saw someone with a rifle shooting kids on a playground you would be justified - indeed obligated - to stop them by any means including killing them if necessary. If abortion is murder, then we should all be killing abortion doctors.

That really got me thinking and cemented my doubts about what has become the party line in this matter. If you truly believe that abortion is actually infanticide then you should be doing - or, at the very least, actively supporting - what Paul Hill was executed for in early September. And to be fair, I've heard many people who do express that support. But the majority of abortion opponents (SWMBO & my mother among them) decry Hill's actions while simultaneously claiming that legalized murder occurs when an abortion is performed.

As for me, I can't reconcile those two viewpoints in my mind.