By Daniel Boland, PhD

When we say that women have a “right” to choose, what is it they are choosing? What are the consequences of their choice, a choice which is surely not medically or morally neutral, a choice for which someone pays a price?

In the world of pro-choice logic, women have the choice to abort a “fetus” just as they had the choice to conceive. Pro-choice persons take responsibility to rid themselves of the outcomes of their previous choice to conceive or to risk conceiving. But when all is considered, the phrase “pro-choice” is really a soothing way of saying–benignly and discreetly, with the skewed linguistic intent to offend no one—that  a woman chooses to take a human life, an innocent human life, a life which is medically and morally totally dependent on her good will in every way imaginable; a life entrusted to her (by God or Nature or both) which is linked to her very own life in such a manner that there is nothing in creation to rival the measure of dependency, intimacy and nurturance which exists between that forming human being and its mother.

“Fetus” in this context becomes hygienically preferable but evasively dishonest, as is so much speech these days.

Does that human being, that child, that unique individual, have no right to live? Surely giving birth may be a difficult moment in the life of a woman who is unready to be a mother, a woman not yet ready to face the demands and sacrifices inherent in conception and birth. But who in this world is ever truly prepared to face all the challenges we are called upon to face, let alone the challenges we bring upon ourselves? Who of us is so lacking in courage that we are justified to protect ourselves from challenge by taking the life of another for our own relief?

What is missing in these discussions is the reality that a “fetus” is in fact a human being, a baby, a growing and already-maturing child of woman, entitled to all the rights and privileges (such as they are) of being born and living life. For anyone to step forward and unilaterally say about or to another person, “Yes, I did indeed conceive you and give you life. Now I choose that you be killed so I may go on with my life as I choose, without you,” This “choice” is always and ever to me an astonishing, barely credible reality. That we should canonize this choice by law is beyond rational comprehension.

Sacrifice? Of course. Challenge? Of course. But to destroy a living child for want of the courage to accept responsibility for what one conceives? Such a “choice” is no choice, but the fact that it happens is beyond sadness for those of us who have held their own children and grandchildren and paid the price of giving them life, of sustaining them through the years of their lives, who have stood the tests and challenges of anxiety and wonderment and endless ambiguity—and have seen those lives grow and blossom beyond all previous doubts.

Sacrifice? Of course—but what is life for, if not to be given and shared together?

Conception highlights the unique dignity of women. To bring life to this earth is the unique calling of woman. To kill a child for any reason is perhaps the saddest idea we humans have wrought.

Thus, in truth, abortion is more than simply a woman’s “choice.” It involves at least one other human being who is given no choice whatever.

Thus, I speak for the child, as one would wish every man and woman would do.