Vote no on Amendment G

Constitutional Amendment G: An Initiated Amendment Establishing a Right to Abortion in the State Constitution is to be decided this November.

It is understandable that women sense a kind of violation of their bodily autonomy in being told that they cannot abort their baby.

They understand this as a private matter, one that ought to be entirely up to them. However, safe abortion as constituted today is far from a private matter. It requires the involvement of a billion-dollar abortion industry, the training of doctors explicitly trained to abort babies, nurses, medical supply companies, pharmaceutical companies, and millions of other such women in order to fund this massive effort.

As such, a safe abortion is anything but a private affair. If a woman wants to keep her abortion a private affair, she can deliver the baby and legally strangle it herself. Horrendous as this sounds, it is the logical conclusion of the right to choose. Just as we might say that if someone favors sending troops into an armed conflict, they must also be ready to either go themselves, or send their sons and daughters, so too any woman selecting abortion ought to be ready to strangle her own baby.

As a decidedly public matter, abortion is subject to regulation and oversight. Such regulation includes the regulation of medical supply and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the assurance of appropriate abortion practice. A safe abortion depends upon this oversight. But it would also include expert and thorough presentation of alternative procedures, risks, and a thorough explanation of what is involved.

Such regulation is typical for all surgeries, most especially elective surgeries. As such, it could very well include alternatives to abortion, like adoption, a description of what to expect from a pregnancy, a description of the procedure, an ultrasound to show the woman what the surgery intends, as well as parental consent.

It would seem that in accordance with Amendment G anything that might cause a woman to change her mind regarding an abortion would be forbidden, thereby intending to limit a womans right to choose an elective surgery.

Amendment G is by no means a compromise statute. Because less than one percent of abortions occur after the second trimester, it would essentially enshrine abortion on demand in the state constitution. At present, for every 100 live births, 40 are aborted, most of them by unmarried women. The very scope of the practice, and the very zeal of this discourse, are evidence of a broader national wound of mothers, intentional or unintentional, fathers, their neighbors, and children, born and unborn. We are all in mourning. This and so much more are by no means a private affair.

Most countries limit abortion to the first trimester. The very nature of the trimester structure of Amendment G indicates that mothers and fathers become increasingly uncomfortable with aborting a child the older it gets.

About 93% of abortions are already performed in the first trimester. Later-term abortions pose greater risks than earlier-term ones. If we must, by popular demand, have a right to this very public practice of abortion, for the sake of the womans health, and our collective mourning, it would make better sense to restrict it in most cases to the first trimester.

Hence, I recommend that we vote no on Amendment G. We can do better than this on many fronts, not merely in limiting the number of abortions, but also in fostering care for mothers, fathers, families, and our neighbors.