Abortion in the News

Abortion was on my mind as I read the front page section of today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  A cover story by Blythe Bernhard (links below) brought news of hope.  It should have been a positive story, one that people on either side of the abortion debate could have been happy to read.  The basic facts of the story are these . . . chemotherapy for pregnant women diagnosed with cancer seems not to be harmful for their babies.  That's great news and definitely newsworthy.  Kudos to the Post for reporting it.

Unfortunately, the story bore a misguided headline . . . "There was no hope.  But now . . . Birth is a viable choice."

Of course it is a viable choice!  It is the only viable choice.

According to Bernhard, "terminating the pregnancy was once seen as the only option to save the mother."  Thank God that that is no longer the case.  In fact, Bernhard also writes, "there's no evidence that terminating a pregnancy improves the outcome [of cancer treatment] for the mother."

Again, this story contains good news and I'm glad to have read it.  I hope that all women who are diagnosed with cancer during a pregnancy will be told this news.  But I'm still pained at the assumptions made . . . namely that it is anyone's choice or option, other than God's, to create or destroy a baby. 

Another abortion story was found on page A6 of today's Post.  It told a growing trend in "stem cell tourism."  Desperate Americans are traveling the globe - to places like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and China - and paying up to $75,000.00 to be injected (or to have their children injected) with stem cells from the blood of aborted babies in the hopes of being "miraculously" cured of their afflictions.  The practice has been derided as "unethical and dangerous, if not fraudulent."  "There is no evidence that a shot of blood stem cells can magically fix any problem in every organ system, experts ays, but that's what stem-cell tourists are led to believe."

I'll not judge anybody who suffers from any horrendous disease, or whose loved one so suffers.  Many of us might be tempted in similar situations to grasp at any available straw.  However, one straw that must remain off-limits is destroying the life of another human being (born or unborn) to improve our own lives or the lives of a loved one.  Aborting babies to use their bodies as raw material for "miracle" cures should be unacceptable to any moral society.

(Here are two links from stltoday.com for the Bernhard story referenced above:   the first link contains the entire story as printed in today's newspaper - but does not include the second part of the headline, "Birth is a viable choice."  The second link omits the first paragraph of the story itself and the first part of the newspaper's headline but does use the misguided headline.  I included both links in an effort to allow you to see all of what I saw in the paper today.)