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When Justin Bieber said that killing an embryo is killing a baby, he was criticised by the media.
Now a woman who is in favour of abortion, Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for Choice and a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has written an article looking at why the pro-abortion side is losing ground in the USA.
She says they cannot continue using the same arguments as they did 40 years ago. She writes:
"We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. .. The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event. Very few people would argue that there is no difference between the decision to abort at 6 weeks and the decision to do so when the fetus would be viable outside of the womb, which today is generally at 24 to 26 weeks."
She does call for some restrictions on abortions post-viability:
"We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases. Exceptions include when the woman's life is at immediate risk; when the fetus suffers from conditions that are incompatible with a good quality of life; or when the woman's health is seriously threatened by a medical or psychological condition that continued pregnancy will exacerbate. We should regulate post-viability abortion to include the confirmation of those conditions by medical or psychiatric specialists."
She concludes:
"Some of my colleagues in the abortion-rights movement will resist even this modest shift on post-first trimester abortions, fearing that any compromise reflects weakness. Give the opposition an inch and they will take a yard. I believe most in the movement share my concerns and hold more moderate positions on abortion than their rhetoric or silence implies. These shifts I am suggesting are not about compromising or finding common ground with abortion opponents. Compromise assumes that there are two parties prepared to give up something in return for settling an issue. Neither opponents nor advocates of legal abortion are willing to do that. But, for pro-choice advocates, standing our ground will mean losing ground entirely."
Read the article by Frances Kissling: Abortion rights are under attack, and pro-choice advocates are caught in a time warp
It doesn't seem that the pro-abortion advocates listened to Naomi Wolf ... will they listen to Frances Kissling?
It reminded me of the classic article by feminist Naomi Wolfe in 1995 -
Our Bodies, Our Souls: Rethinking pro-choice rhetoric
She said that those in favour of abortion must acknowledge that it does kill the 'fetus'. And yet she still supported abortion as a right, although one that may be influenced by morals or conscience.
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