Neil Steinberg on Abortion

Neil Steinberg wrote a piece in today's Sun-Times entitled "What's behind anti-abortion frenzy?". He raised some interesting questions for the anti-abortion crowd, and I'm going to respond to them from my personal point of view.

First, Steinberg thinks that those who believe abortion is wrong under all circumstances are "only willing to play a game where you are guaranteed to win at the end". I think that criticism is a bit short-sighted. I think those who belive that deserve a place at the discussion table just as much as anyone else. If there were those who believe that abortion should be allowed in all circumstances, even late-term abortions, I would want to hear their side of it as well.

Steinberg boldly says "Abortion isn't murder - well, not until the last stage of pregnancy, when it is." He doesn't support this opinion with any reasoning. Neil, I'm surprised. At what point does abortion become murder? At exactly how many weeks? If you tell me some number of weeks, I would ask for the reason why you chose that number. I would also ask what you would do in a case where we often don't know precisedly when conception took place. In such a case, I suppose we would have to err on the strict side and assume that conception took place at the earliest likely time and assume that the pregnancy is as far advanced as is reasonable in order not to be committing murder.

I come to this discussion with no compressed rage, anger, intensity or frenzy that Neil has apparently met with some other pro-lifers. However, he says he would understand those feelings if we felt them about other issues, such as:
Human Rights Watch - yep, I support that vehemently.
Opposing capital punishment - Amen!
Vigorous battling of AIDS in Africa - you bet. I support that effort as much as I can.
Anti-handgun - let's get rid of as many as we possibly can.
Anti-war - mhmm. Despite the objections of most of my friends, I'm an avowed pacifist.
In favor of contraception - yessir, teach them the right way to prevent the problem in the first place.

So, Neil, you need to revise your assumptions on who pro-lifers are and what they think on other issues.