Abortion’s Arguments: Pro-Abortionists in their own words, part 3 of 3

Herein, we conclude, from part 1 and part 2, allowing Pro-Abortionists to speak for themselves.

“Dr.” William F. Harrison wrote, “Why I Provide Abortions,” The Daily Kos, May 31, 2007:

I provide abortions for my patients and for any other girl or woman who feels this her best option after making what is, for most women and their families, a soul searing self-examination before arriving at the decision to abort a pregnancy…my mother always said to me, “the Lord has a special purpose for your life.” (I suspect that she told all her children that.) The longer I live, even though I am not a particularly superstitious man, the more I have come to believe that to be true for each of us – if we make it happen…

He exercised his special purpose by murdering “twenty to thirty” (who’s counting, right?) “safe, legal abortions a month” during 1972. Essentially, every single day, this guy murdered a baby. He also specifies that this daily dismembering of babies was “for mostly elective reasons” but also “a myriad of reasons, that carrying a pregnancy to term and delivering a baby was not in her best interest.” Precisely correct, all that they care about is, “her best interests.” One wonders when a reason becomes an excuse. Also, there is no such thing as a “safe” abortion as the very purpose of abortion is to take an innocent life.

William F. Harrison, the special purposed one (he will mention his “Lord” given purpose again below), continues:

But what of the concern for, as a ninth grader expressed it, “someone who is often forgotten, the little life who doesn’t even have a chance to live.”
No one, neither the patient receiving an abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at anytime, unaware that they are ending a life. We just don’t believe that a developing embryo or fetus, whose mother cannot or will not accept it, has the same moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice, that an adolescent or adult woman has.

Thus, he knows that every time he purchases lunch, pays his mortgage or donates to charity, he is using blood money. But what do you do, how do you live with the fact, how do you sleep at night, knowing that you are ending a life (or, ending 20-30 lives per month)? You simply talk yourself in believing that you can justify making a living by taking lives. Notice that he does not argue that a developing embryo or fetus (an “it” by his account) does not have moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice. Rather, his statement is that a developing embryo or fetus does not have moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice based on, if and when that baby’s “mother cannot or will not accept it.”

For him it is not about intrinsic moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice but it is about the mother’s (can such a person be referred to as a “mother”?) acceptance or rejection. Therefore, if the mother does accept “it” then the embryo or fetus does have moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice. But if she does not then “it” does not.

This is the ultimate in relativism based on personal preferences.

Oh, come on now, “personal preferences”? Indeed, William F. Harrison puts it this way:

…it matters not whether one believes elective abortion a good or an evil, for every abortion decision is made between self-perceived competing goods or competing evils, not between obvious good and self-evident evil.

In his, self-justifying of murder, view: it is not based on obvious good and self-evident evil but on self-perceived competing goods or competing evils.

“Dr.” Harrison makes note of, “only” he makes sure to emphasize, “two deaths from legal abortions in the state of Arkansas since 1970.” For some odd reason, he lays one of these at the feet of Bernard Nathanson who was the former leader of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and one time, the country’s top abortionist. For whatever reason “Dr.” Harrison states that one death was, “a result of complications of her heart disease, who had the abortion done by another physician at my hospital.” The other, “was probably a patient of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, an early abortion provider in New York state and maker of The Silent Scream…as a result of self-neglected complications of an abortion that Dr. Nathanson may have performed.” Thus, for whatever reason he names Nathanson via “probably” and that he “may have.”
Silent Scream is in reference to video footage of an ultrasound which shows a baby in the whom both attempting to get away from the weapons wielded by the abortionists but can also be seen to express pain.

He also wrote:

I was led into OB-Gyn by my love for delivering babies. Gynecology was really to be only an appendage to my obstetrical practice and I am sure that providing abortions, even thinking about abortions, would never have been a major part of my life had other physicians in my area continued to provide them as was being done prior to 1984.

So, he loved delivering babies but ended up personally ensuring that 20-30 babies per month were not delivered, born, because he murdered them. So why the shift? Some had to do it, right? Making a living by ending 20-30 lives per month became “a major part of” his life because other physicians were not performing abortions anymore. Follow the money.

William F. Harrison also notes:

I mentioned earlier that my mother always said to me, “the Lord has a special purpose for your life,” and that the older I get, the more I think she may have been right; not just for my life, but for all of us. (But we have to find that purpose ourselves.)
…a still, small voice asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” to which I was at last compelled to reply, “here am I, send me.”

This is precisely the point maid in the essay Atheism on Meaning and Purpose: with no transcendent, higher, purpose we invent our own. We, “Dr.” Harrison, Mother Theresa, Adolf Hitler, all of us simply pick and choose. When it is all about self-perceived competing goods or competing evils and since we have to find that purpose ourselves anything and everything is up for grabs. This includes knowing that you are ending 20-30 human lives per month and talking yourself into believing that this is something to which God has called you.

As for his reference to the text of the Bible. He may be quite right. The statement, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” was voiced by God to Isaiah (see ch. 6) and when Isaiah said, “here am I, send me” God told him:

Go and tell this people:
“Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

The Isaiah said:

“For how long, O Lord?” And he answered: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”

Thus, this is a text referring to spiritual blindness, desolation and dispersion of the people from their land. Spot on Harrison, spot on as it regards that which you do.

Actually, it is quite possibly true that the William F. Harrison hears such a calling:

…the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2nd Corinthians 4:4).

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BOOKS:

Bernard Nathanson, The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind

Randy C. Alcorn, Why Pro-Life?: Caring for the Unborn and Their Mothers

Randy C. Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded & Updated

Scott Klusendorf, Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively

ESSAYS:
“Sacred Abortion”

Richard Dawkins – On Abortion, Tadpoles, Rape, Cows, Murder and Sheep

The Exorcist’s Abortion and the Satanist’s Repentance

George Tiller, Abortionist Murders, and the Richard Dawkins Correlation

Is pro-life and pro-death penalty a contradiction?

Dan
Barker – His Views On Human Dignity