What's 26 Weeks Got to Do With It?

8 Weeks (Source:  http://www.medicinenet.com/fetal_development)

Earlier today a question came across my newsfeed that got me to thinking, which led me to writing, which landed me here, where I  (very occasionally) share my thoughts that refuse to fit into Facebook or Twitter's truncated sound-bite style, to wit:

QUESTION:  Not being an advocate for either pro-life or pro-choice, I have to ask why it would take 26 weeks (6 months) for a woman to make a choice to abort or not to abort.

Before I delve into my thoughts on the issue, I have a comment on the question itself, and that is that one needn't be an activist to advance a position. Silence itself advocates a position, sometimes quite loudly, depending on the circumstances.  But I digress. On to the crux of it:

We have lived with the reality of abortion-on-demand since 1972, and since that time it seems we have talked about everything but the main thing, and that is that the very act destroys an innocent human life. That we have suffered as a society by denying the reality and the pervasiveness of this fact is generally uncontested; what to do about it is no small matter of debate.    

12 Weeks (Source:  http://www.medicinenet.com/fetal_development)

Advocates for life have long sought restrictions to stem the tsunami-like tide of abortion, which has taken the lives of more children (over 50 million) than populate entire European countries.  Restricting abortion based on fetal age has saved many from death by dismemberment, but the rationale behind the argument (the existence of fetal pain) is a begrudging admission of the incontrovertibly obvious:  that what we are talking about is a baby - a living person, not a 'product of conception' (a euphemism long favored by ProChoice advocates), mass of tissue, frog or fern, but a baby.

The recently passed Texas legislation that has garnered so much national attention, is a great opportunity to talk about what bearing fetal age has on the question of abortion.  The Kermit Gosnell travesty (the likely catalyst for the attention), repulsive as it was, rightly brought this issue into the open.  For those who are cringing even now, I would argue that cancer, urban blight and drug addiction are also repugnant, but a compassionate and civilized people do not hide their heads in the sand as though these conditions were nonexistent. We rightly acknowledge, confront and deal with them, hopefully in a way that promotes alleviation of suffering and elimination of the problem, lest by apathy or ignorance we implicitly condone them. 

20 Weeks (Source:  http://www.medicinenet.com/fetal_development)

The ProLife cause has no doubt been helped by advances in medical imaging, and the incredible clarity with which we can now view fetal life.  Most of us cannot help but be viscerally repulsed by just imagining what happens when an abortion is performed on a little person with such clearly identifiable and dramatically developed limbs and features. Hence more of our states have moved to impose greater abortion restrictions based on fetal development. In fact, as regards the "26-week" question, the United States is comparatively barbaric in its practices when viewed against other progressive, liberal countries like Italy, France and Germany, where abortion is generally restricted to 12 weeks, unless mitigating factors are present, and particular criteria are met (http://bit.ly/164hsVg).

I contend that we should be just as viscerally disturbed by the purposeful death of any fetus, irrespective of gestational age, for what it actually is:  the violent killing and expulsion of a living human being - from the most perfectly tuned life-nurturing environment ever conceived, into a literal trash heap.  But we are too little disturbed.  Most of us sit blithely on the sidelines as millions of holocaust trains - stuffed with future Melvilles, Edisons and Martin Luther Kings - whiz by in sterile silence.

Abortion has become a steamroller that has flattened us as people, and left generations maimed in its wake.  Today we live among young adults whose entire lives have been shaped by a culture in which the destruction of one life for the convenience of another is viewed as normative, and that cannot occur without consequences.  

It is beyond tragic that in span of 40 years, what for millennia was revered as the wellspring and cradle of life, has been transformed into a literal war zone.

Lucky is the child who makes it out alive.