Abortion rhetoric

Does the rhetoric drive you nuts, too? "Pro-life" "Pro-choice" are both happy euphemisms for something completely different. I am pretty familiar with life and death decisions in my line of work. So let's look at the issue with some sense. Granted, there are some nuts out there, but I long to believe that most people have some bit of reasonableness in them.

Even the most strident abortion foe cannot possibly believe that making a woman die to give birth, or carry a dead fetus to term is not incredibly cruel and dangerous. If a fetus is diagnosed with trisomy 13, or trisomy 18 (not trisomy 21 Down's Syndrome, before someone goes nuts), anencephaly (baby with no brain), or Tay-Sachs disease, all universally fatal, incompatible with life; who would make that woman continue to carry that fetus around at the risk of her own health and sanity? The arguments for adoption, etc. can potentially be made for rape or incest victims but not for a fetus which cannot possibly live. The people who say "no abortion" are saying they would let women die and/or deliver dead babies. Therefore, any reasonable person should admit that in some set of cases, abortion is an approprate medical procedure.

Even the most strident abortion supporter cannot honestly think that using abortion as a routine birth control technique of convenience is a good thing and that decapitating a healthy late-term fetus is a good outcome. Therefore, if you believe that a fetus is a living being, there should be some reasonable limits set by society about when abortion is an appropriate procedure.

Given those arguments, the discussion becomes not a yes/no absolute but rather, "When is abortion appropriate?" No law or set of criteria will cover all individual cases but the discussion should be couched in those terms. Of course, you don't hear that question because those reasonable terms do not fire up the hard right and hard left primary voters.

The world is not black and white. There are hundreds of abortion and end of life Terry Schiavo-type medical decisions made every day without national publicity. I have been involved in them with families. Except for political gain, there is no reason to stake out extreme unreasonable positions but to raise campaign funds and demonstrate your prostitution to the vote.