The Eight Most Common Pro-Abortion Arguments in Jamaica

1. “Many women are dying or being injured by illegal and unsafe abortions, so we must change the laws.” ANSWER: Even if official numbers are reliable, only about six women die of illegal abortions each year, and this will increase if the laws are changed. As far as injuries are concerned, the only studies that show large numbers of injuries have been done by the people who want abortion legalized -- so they are not impartial studies [see footnote 1].
2. "The law is at fault for the high number of abortions in Jamaica." ANSWER: The law is not to blame for people breaking it; lack of enforcement is the problem. If the government really cared about the lives of women, it would arrest and stop the people who are injuring women. Everyone knows who they are! [see footnote 2].
3. "The proposed changes to Jamaican law will not constitute abortion on demand." ANSWER: The "Final Report of Public Opinion Survey on the Legalization of Abortion" of June 2006 says that "Legalizing abortion will find public favour in special circumstances such as rape or if the mother's health or life is threatened." According to North American and European law and the World Health Organization, this constitutes abortion on demand, and the Abortion Advisory Group knows this [see footnote 3].
4. "It's not a baby/It's just a blob of tissue/It's part of the woman's body, it should be her choice." ANSWER: Every medical textbook in the world says that this opinion is wrong (see footnote 4). Are we going to make changes to a law based on erroneous and biased opinions -- or based on medical and scientific facts?
5. "We must have separation of Church and State." ANSWER: The actual translation of this phrase is "The Church must shut up." But the Church is an organization made up of individuals who have just as much right to speak as any other group of people. We don't hear about "separation of Church and State" when the Church speaks against racism, the death penalty, poverty or war, do we? To say that the Church must shut up when speaking of abortion is pure hypocrisy.
6. "You can’t legislate morality." ANSWER: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that "Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless." Of course we can legislate morality! We do it all the time! Name one single law that does not legislate morality in one way or another.
7. "Every child should be a wanted child/safe abortion will cut down on child abuse." ANSWER: This is a horrible thing to say and treats the unborn human being as property. As the Public Theology Forum has said, "In this instance, the perpetrators of the crime against another human being [abortion] must be placed in the same category as the masters during slavery.” As for abortion lowering child abuse, this has never happened -- because when you can kill the child before it is born, why not after? [see footnote 5].
8. "Condoms are the answer. Use them more and abortions will go down." ANSWER: According to the "family planner's bible," Contraceptive Technology, condoms fail -- they break, tear or slip off -- one time in twelve uses. This means that the average condom user will have eight failures in a single year and will have a 99 percent chance of having five or more failures [see footnote 6]. As we have seen in the United States and all over Africa, the more condoms are used, the more HIV/AIDS cases and pregnancies occur. Condoms have been available everywhere in Jamaica for many years, so why does the HIV infection rate continue to go up? Obviously condoms aren’t working, and to insist that they are the answer is pure blindness.

Footnotes

[1] Let us look at the numbers: According to the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), the Jamaican maternal mortality rate is currently 87/100,000 births (Jamaica Observer, November 19, 2007). 24% are due to hemorrhage, 15% due to sepsis (infection), 13% due to high blood pressure and 13% due to abortion (2001 2003 study done by Dr. Affette McCaw Binns of the UWI Department of Community Health and Psychiatry. "Abortions Soar, High Rate Alarms Medics" (Jamaica Online Star, January 10, 2005).

Now, there are currently 54,000 births annually in Jamaica, according to the United Nations Population Information Network at www.esa.un.org/unpp.

This means that (54,000/100,000) X 87 = 47 women die of all maternal reasons in Jamaica, and 47 X 13% = six women die of illegal abortions in Jamaica annually.

As for injuries caused by illegal abortions, the most common number mentioned is 641 women being injured by botched abortions at just one hospital during the period March 1 to August 31, 2005, or six months. This number was generated by the Abortion Policy Review Advisory Group ("Advisory Group Wants Current Laws Repealed: Botched Jobs Put Strain on Public Purse." Jamaica Gleaner, January 15, 2008).

There are two big problems with this number. The first is that the details of the study were never released, and were carried out in secret. The second is that the Advisory Group is stacked with pro-abortionists. In virtually every nation where abortion has been legalized, pro-abortionists grossly exaggerate the numbers of deaths and injuries caused by illegal abortions in order to generate sympathy for their cause. For example, pro-abortionists claimed that 400,000 women were killed by illegal abortions in Brazil annually, when the true number was less than 200 (Reuters, November 13, 1991).

If we want a true picture of the damage that illegal abortion is doing, we must have an uninterested and neutral party do the study – not people with a pro-abortion agenda.

[2] "The difficulty, the group [Abortion Policy Review Advisory Group] argued, is largely due to the country's restrictive and punitive laws that lead to people developing a tendency to conceal facts and veil intentions which could be considered illegal" (Jamaica Gleaner, January 15, 2008).

Of course if you never enforce a law, people will flout it. This is true of illegal abortion, drug use, rape, murder, and any other crime you can think of. But we don’t just legalize drug use, rape, murder and all other crimes. After all, if we use the logic of the Abortion Advisory Group, the law is to blame for all of these rapes and murders, carjackings and burglaries.

In its "Terms of Reference," the Abortion Advisory Groups alleges that "Our law of abortion is unenforceable. It is ineffective in protecting foetal life and it imperils maternal life." This is an outlandish statement. How can we know if the law is "ineffective" or "unenforceable" if it has never been enforced in the first place? Dr. Wynante Patterson, the head of the Abortion Advisory Group, admitted publicly that "since 1861, nobody has been prosecuted under the [abortion] law because a report has never come to the courts" (Eulalee Thompson. "Abortion It's Time to Take a Decision." Jamaica Gleaner, January 23, 2008).

[3] Pro-abortionists all over the world use the definition of "maternal health" set by the World Health Organisation (WHO): "A state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (Jodi L. Jacobson. "Coming to Grips with Abortion." Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 1991 Report [London: W.W. Norton], 1991, pages 114 to 131. Also issued as Worldwatch Paper #97, The Global Politics of Abortion.)

The United States Supreme Court defined maternal health to include "mental health" in its United States v. Vuitch decision (402 U.S. 62, 71 72 (1971)), and expanded this to say that virtually all factors of any type are relevant to the mother's health, saying that "... the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs ..." (Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 192 [1973]).

So a "health" exception for the mother is abortion on demand, according to the World Health Organisation. But the pro-abortionists never tell people this, because people do not want abortion on demand.

One tactic the pro-abortion people always use is trying to give the impression that they will be a lot of restrictions on abortion, when in reality the law represents abortion on demand, as it does in Barbados. Look at this quote by Howard Campbell:

"In Barbados, women can terminate pregnancies once there is medical proof that the operation will save her life, preserve her physical health, preserve her mental health, in cases of rape or incest, when the unborn child has medical problems or birth defects and for social and economic reasons. Abortion on demand is not legal in Barbados" (Howard Campbell. "The Legal Aspects of Abortion." Jamaica Gleaner, January 10, 2005).

If you study this list of exceptions, you can see that any woman can get any abortion she wants at any time in pregnancy -- in fact, there is no limit on abortion at all, so the Barbados law certainly does represent abortion on demand. The pro-abortionists just don't call it "abortion on demand." This is dishonest and deceptive verbal trickery.

[4] We agree that a woman does indeed have the right to control her own body. However, the right to privacy and control over one's body does not in any way imply the right to destroy another person's body. And a woman has already procreated when she has conceived. The only question that remains is whether or not the law will grant her a right to kill.

It is true, of course, that the baby is inside the mother's body. But this no more makes it a part of her body than being inside a car makes one a part of the car. Even other living creatures inside a woman's body and entirely dependent upon it -- parasites for example -- are by no stretch of the imagination part of her body. They are physiologically entirely separate and distinct living creatures.

In order to highlight the fact that the baby is a separate being, consider these facts;

• All mothers are obviously female. About half of their children are male. How can a human being be both male and female?
• The mother and baby frequently have different blood types.
• The baby can be a different race from the mother.
• Every cell in the mother's body has a set of chromosomal characteristics that is entirely distinct from every cell in the baby's body.
• When the fetus anchors itself to the uterine wall, there is a concerted attack by white blood cells to defeat it, and the fetus must defend itself. The mother's immune system recognizes it as "non self." Therefore, it is not part of her body.
• The baby can die without the mother dying. The mother can die without the baby dying (the baby can be rescued if he or she is viable).
• The baby initiates a process that culminates in its leaving the mother's body. Challenge a pro abortionist to name any other part of the body that does this.

As to the question of when life begins -- If anyone says that they don't know when life begins, they are admitting that abortion might be taking life, but that they really don't care one way or the other. After all, if a moral person is uncertain of whether or not an action will take human life, he will refrain from taking that action. As an example, if a person who is out hunting in the woods sees a bush moving around, he does not say “Well, I don’t know if there is another hunter behind that bush, so I will shoot at it.”

In Jamaica, leading pro-abortionists are saying over and over again that they would shoot at the bush, and this is not a safe, moral or logical view. The head of the Abortion Advisory Committee, Dr. Wynante Patterson, said "I don't know what rights the foetus has. Is the foetus a legal person and a citizen? But while this debate is going on, we need to protect our women." As another example, Dr. Errol Daley, President of the Medical Association of Jamaica, said that "I don't think that anybody has the answers to these questions. Everybody is right. We are not God" (Eulalee Thompson. "Abortion It's Time to Take a Decision." Jamaica Gleaner, January 23, 2008). We must ask of Dr. Daley: How can everyone be right on an important moral question? This is simply very muddled and unclear thinking.

The pro-abortionists also like to say that the unborn child is just a "blob of tissue." However, every embryology and fetology medical textbook tells us the following about fetal development:

• At the moment of fertilization, the entire genetic package of a unique human being, different from the mother’s and the father’s DNA, is determined.
• 24 days after conception: The unborn baby's heart begins to beat.
• Six weeks: The unborn baby's brain waves can be recorded.
• Nine weeks: All organs are present and functioning, and the unborn child can suck his or her thumb.
• Eleven weeks: Fingerprints, fingernails, toeprints and toenails are present.
• Three months: Sex of the unborn baby can be determined.
  

[5] Abortion has never led to a decrease in child abuse, because it turns the child into a disposable object. For example, in the USA in 1970, the pro abortionists promised that legalized abortion would lead to less child abuse because it would eliminate unwanted children. For example, in its 1974 "A Speaker's and Debater's Guide," the National Abortion Rights Action League (now NARAL Pro Choice America) claimed that "Legal abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, battered children, child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction, and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful parenthood."

But the rate of child abuse in the United States is now three times higher than it was in 1973, when abortion was legalized. There were 418,000 reported cases of child abuse in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. In 1995, there were more than two million, an increase of more than 300 percent. 356 children were killed by abuse in 1972, and 1,125 died from abuse in 1988, an increase of more than 200 percent in just 16 years (United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1997. Table 353, "Child Abuse and Neglect Cases Reported and Investigated, by State: 1994 and 1995").

So the pro-abortion promise that more abortion leads to less child abuse is simply not true.

For the Public Theology Forum quote, see: "Pro Life Pro Choice: Abortion Debate Rages." Jamaica Gleaner, April 1, 2007.

[6] Unfortunately, 61 percent of Jamaican men say their most commonly used method of birth control is the condom, and 81 percent consider it the "most appropriate" method (Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. "Digest: Among Young Jamaicans, Sex and Childbearing Often Begin During Adolescence." International Family Planning Perspectives, December 1999, pages 206 and 207).

Contraceptive Technology, the "family planner's bible," lists fifteen major studies that show that condoms break 4.64 percent of the time and slip 3.44 percent of the time, for a total failure rate of 8.08 percent, or one out of twelve times. This is why there are one million pregnancies due to condom failure in the United States alone every year.

A person who uses 100 condoms in a year has a 91 percent chance of having five or more failures. How is this supposed to stop unwanted pregnancies?

As far as HIV/AIDS is concerned, those who debate the merits and demerits of condoms should remember that the head of a human sperm cell is approximately 50 microns (0.002 inches) in diameter, and the head of an HIV virus is about 0.1 microns in diameter. This means that a sperm cell, which is effectively blocked by an unbroken latex condom, is about 100 million times more massive than an HIV virus. This contrast in size is proportional to a five-ton bull elephant standing next to a small housefly (C.M. Roland, Ph.D., Editor, Rubber Chemistry and Technology and Head of the Polymer Properties Section, Naval Research Laboratory. Letter entitled "Do You Want to Stake Your Life on a Condom?" Washington Times, April 22, 1992).

As expert Bruce Voeller, M.D., researcher with the Mariposa Research Foundation, said, "Condoms have been widely rejected as a method of birth control because they frequently fail, and say the devices may be no better -- in fact, may be worse -- at curtailing AIDS. They warn that sexually active men and women should not assume that they are protected simply because they use prophylactics ... The safe-sex message just isn't true. You're still playing a kind of Russian roulette. Instead of having six bullets in the chamber, you have one" (Lindsey Gruson. "Condoms: Experts Fear False Sense of Security." The New York Times, August 18, 1987).