Countering Pro-Abortion Arguments 6

Every baby should be a wanted baby. No child should be born unwanted.

• “Wantedness” is a subjective measure of another’s feelings. This means that the value of a human life is not inherent, but rests upon the wants or whims of others. Perhaps the homeless are not “wanted,” either. Should we do away with them?
  
• Contrary to the old pro-abortion promise that legal abortion would lower the number of “unwanted” children and thus reduce child abuse, the opposite has occured. Child abuse has increased since Roe vs Wade despite the fact that over twenty million preborns have been slaughtered and thus excluded as potential “unwanted,” supposedly abuse-prone children.
  The American Humane Association found, based on reported incidents, an increase of 121 percent in child abuse and neglect cases from 1976 to 1983. Abortion, the ultimate child abuse, has lowered our respect for life; the resultant increase in child abuse should not surprise anyone.Dr. Phillip Ney has found that Canadian provinces with the highest rates of legal abortion also have the highest and most rapidly rising rates of child abuse. In provinces with low abortion rates the opposite is true. Dr. Ney has proposed eight possible methods by which an increasing rate of abortion will lead to an increasing rate of child abuse:
  • Having an abortion may decrease an individual’s instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt toward those dependent on her care.
    
  • Allowing infants to die by permissive abortion might diminish the social taboo against aggressing the defenseless.
    
  • By lessening children’s confidence in their parents’ care, abortion may increase the hostility between the generations which may become violent.
    
  • By discarding nondefective unborn children wholesale, abortion may devalue children, thus diminishing the importance of caring for children.
    
  • When abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, the parent may displace it onto a child.
    
  • A woman’s choice for abortion increases the hostile frustration of some men, intensifying the battle of the sexes, for which children are scapegoated.
    
  • Abortion of the first pregnancy may truncate the initial developing mother-infant bond, thereby diminishing future mothering capability.
    
  • A previous abortion may result in depression which interferes with the mother’s capacity to bond to her newborn.
    
• Every baby should be wanted, for the sole fact that he or she is a human being. If he or she is not wanted, the problem is with the parents or society, not the innocent baby. Why is the baby held accountable for, and his or her death justified by, the selfish, unloving motives of others?