A Personal View on Abortion, Roe and Voting Decisions

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, and was approved by Congress on July 4, 1776, a day that has forever been christened Independence Day here In the United States of America. 

Granted, the language includes the pronoun “men,” and although it was intended to be a universal term to describe everyone in the country, it was descriptive of the sex of all the authors at the time and consequently its universality has been debated through the ages. Confounding those debates are the organizing documents that followed it in the ensuing 13 years – the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States – which contained language showing that although everyone may have been created equal per the Declaration, not everyone had an equal part to play in the government. Those organizing documents singled out enslaved people, women, paupers, vagabonds, etc. for exclusion or reduced involvement in government, and caused many equality issues over the centuries.

However, here we are almost 250 years in the future with numerous amendments made to the Constitution to address those inequities. And the central tenets of the Declaration of Independence that we are all created equal, are all endowed with certain unalienable rights – one of which is life – are understood and agreed by most people in this country.  

It was with that in mind that on one of my daily jaunts around the internet last month I learned that at 1:17 PM MT on April 4, 2022, the governor of Colorado signed a law that included this provision:

A FERTILIZED EGG, EMBRYO, OR FETUS DOES NOT HAVE INDEPENDENT OR DERIVATIVE RIGHTS UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS STATE.

I had been a newly-minted teenager for only a few months when on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. Better known as Roe v. Wade. Although Roe v. Wade’s effect of allowing abortions is essentially the same as the intent of the Colorado law just signed, the Colorado law was the first time in my life I had ever seen it written so clearly, so definitively, and so codified that something promised in the Declaration of Independence was no longer valid.

Today is primary election day in Pennsylvania, and across the commonwealth voters have the opportunity to cast ballots to determine the November election candidates for U.S. senator, U.S. representatives, governor, lieutenant governor and members to the state General Assembly. Each of the candidates has a number of issues to consider and take a stand on during this primary election – the economy, crime, healthcare, education, COVID-19, immigration. And abortion. Recent document leaks from the Supreme Court have created a fervor over this issue and again brought it to the forefront of our national consciousness – if it ever left. 

My opinion on abortion has changed greatly over the years. 

As a young adult I was sure it was not my place to tell a woman what she could or could not do with a pregnancy. It was, I assured myself, a gallant, noble and fair decision. If two people weren’t ready to take on the bonds of parenthood, how could you bring a child into the world in such an unloving way. Not to mention the horrors that were publicized about illegal abortions with life-threatening consequences for the women. Legal access to abortion was a societal good and one which should be available to anyone needing it.

Then as my wife and I started a life together and went through difficulty conceiving, we experienced a number of ectopic pregnancies. An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants outside of the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancies are rare but dangerous and need to be removed because their growth is life-threatening to the woman. Not to mention the pregnancy can’t survive and become a fetus.

The catch is that, although most people will not refer to it as such, you can make a case that removing an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion. The generally accepted legal and medical definition of abortion is, “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus…” And each time my wife had to undergo surgery to remove an embryo from her fallopian tube it could certainly fit that definition.

In addition, we have friends who had pregnancies that progressed well, until the fateful day when a number of tests and sonograms resulted in their doctor having to deliver the terrible news that, “Your pregnancy is incompatible with life.” This is followed by the decision to either terminate the pregnancy or allow it to resolve itself. Again, perhaps few people would refer to a decision to terminate a non-viable pregnancy as an abortion, but it certainly fits that definition.

Then, after a number of years of failed attempts at getting pregnant, my wife and I were down to our only option for pregnancy – in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF uses drugs and medical procedures to help sperm fertilize eggs, and then assists the fertilized eggs to implant in the uterus. 

Being a relative medical crapshoot back in the early 1990s when we first underwent IVF, the best way to accomplish getting pregnant was to harvest as many eggs as possible, fertilize as many as possible, get as many as possible to begin dividing and become embryos, and then transfer three with the hope that at least one will implant. The result of this game plan was the first decision IVF patients needed to make: what to do with all your embryos if more than three were created. This was never a question for us; we committed to giving every embryo created a chance to become a baby.

One of the lesser-known aspects of IVF is that the fertilized eggs grow outside the woman for a time before they are transferred to the uterus. This is how the medical team sees which fertilized eggs are becoming embryos and are implantable. The small bonus is that we were allowed to view what the physician was seeing:  our forming embryos. In our case seven embryos were growing and considered implantable. They chose three to transfer and froze four for later use.

Many of us are aware of a psychological process known as projecting. It is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal or object. Within the psychological realm, projecting usually has negative connotations, but in this case, that projecting was a positive experience. Both on the initial implantation which resulted in our daughter, and five years later when they thawed the embryos that would result in our son. Both times as I watched the embryos divide on a screen in front of me I cheered them on and exhorted them to do their best. I projected an entire life for each of them while sitting in the rooms at the medical offices. 

It was after those experiences that I realized those embryos were my kids. Real kids. Ones that had been created and endowed with the right to life. And I did not have the right to tell them no. In fact, if anything, I had at worst the right to be ambivalent, but I also certainly had the right to help them and be happy for them. They weren’t, nor could they ever be, anything but human lives. 

Which is why, as I go to the poll today, my belief that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses have rights may play a part in the decisions about whom I choose to cast my ballot. 

Now, we can expect that someday the entire topic of abortion will be academic – we can already conceive outside the womb, and 21 weeks and a day of gestation is currently the limit for a baby who has born and survived. This is weeks ahead of where viability was when Roe was decided. So it’s completely conceivable that science may in the not-too-distant future close that viability gap to the point where it is non-existent.

In the meantime though that’s the beauty of democracy. You can disagree with me and you get to make your choice too. For almost 50 years we’ve lived in a country where abortion of viable pregnancies has been legal under certain circumstances. And for part of that time I have found it offensive. That may change soon, or it may not. But the process of democracy makes it possible to live in a country where you find something offensive but don’t have to leave because there is a majority who believes otherwise. As the sentence in the Declaration of Independence immediately after “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” says: 

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…”

So, get out to the polls today and do your part to make sure those doing the governing have your consent.