Abortion. Can we really afford to be wrong?

My personal journey to an answer for this difficult question has been neither one of religious discovery nor a form of moral evolution.  It is this conclusion--which, while difficult to come to for me personally as a former pro-choice advocate, has been as inescapable as it has been wrenching:

It isn't necessary to argue religion.  It isn't necessary to examine moral systems of thought.  From a purely scientific and medical standpoint, there is absolutely no point in the development of the human being that it is possible to identify it as anything OTHER than a human being--and the MORE we know about the unborn, the LESS possible it becomes to distinguish between the born and the unborn.  Supporting this absolute unquestionable assertion is the fact that the MORE capable that medical science becomes with respect to intervening in the medical problems of the unborn, the LESS possible it becomes to say how early in the stages of development a human can be supported outside the womb.

The vert term "fetus" has a certain very limited formal definition.  But, I am ashamed to admit that pro-choice forces have hijacked this term in a deliberate, cynical effort to brainwash unthinking people into believing that there must be some fundamental difference between the born and the unborn human. 

After all, if we use two different labels for things, they must be two different things, right? 

Wrong, and a complete misunderstanding of the formal distinctions (between "fetus" and "baby") that in fact do not amount to a difference in the underlying reality--at least, for the purposes of deciding this question in your own mind. 

A woman unknown to hospital staff rushes into the Emergency Room in precipitous labor.  No time for scans.  It's yank down her pants and pass the bucket.  The doctor waits like Johnny Bench for the pitch to be delivered.  He's wondering what it will be because after all, he's never seen this woman before.  A sea turtle, perhaps?  Maybe an aardvark.  And if biological fate of the embryo means nothing, it could be anything. 

Or, wait! Considering how big she is, could it be a Volkswagen Beetle?  Let's see - Apgars for a VW bug consist of checking the headlights, horn and turn signals, right?  He tries to remember the pages from Chilton's Manual For the Repair and Delivery of VW Beetles.

That doctor knows very well what's coming down the chute, doesn't he?  He doesn't need scans.  He doesn't have to guess.  He's not going to be surprised when a buzzard flies out and perches on his shoulder.  That's because this unborn being was, from the very beginning, a human being and nothing else.

We have no reason today to argue on behalf of casual abortion as a means of birth control.  We have no reason to cast this as a matter of choice (unless we would like to take the position that it should also be a matter of "choice" for a mother to kill her born children as well when they become inconvenient...just like a "fetus" can be killed for the sake of convenience).

A fetus is a human being, and the deliberate termination of its life is very, VERY rarely a matter of choice between one human being and another.  That we can delude ourselves into believing that we're doing nothing more than scraping some garbage out of the mother's uterus is nothing more or less than horrifying and disgusting.

You want choice?  How about THIS choice: You have the choice between using birth control OR NOT SPREADING YOUR LEGS when you cannot or have not used it.  THAT is the ONLY "choice" that science (not "God" or some high-minded moralist) leaves you. 

And every one of you knows it.