- No abortions for convenience or birth control.
- First trimester abortions for rape, incest, or terminal birth defects (i.e. anencphaly) are permitted.
- The morning-after pill is OK.
The question is, is this acceptable, as an intermediate objective, while we pursue the eventual goal of not killing any of the unborn?
To me the answer is a conclusive "yes", because achieving a total ban on abortion will require the one-to-one changing of tens of millions of American hearts and minds, and I prefer to allow the killing of as few babies as possible while that process is underway.
Your scenario is quite possibly true, but I would hesitate to include “terminal birth defects” for two powerful reasons:
ONE:
I have spoken with women who have given birth to children with terminal defects, and their unanimous voice is that the experience was cathartic, and healing in spite of it being tragic. The chance to see, and hold, and cry, and grieve with that stricken child in their loving embrace gave them closure, and none of them would exchange those deeply-treasured moments for a king’s ransom. The medical community exerts great pressure upon women to elect abortion in such cases; turning one tragedy into two, and many OB-GYN’s will refuse to perform the delivery under such conditions. But the need to attain closure is absolutely central to the woman’s recovery afterward, and an abortion takes all of that away from her; leaving her bereft of the child, and cut off from the path to closure.
TWO:
I have spoken to women who have had children misdiagnosed prior to birth. While these incidents are few in number, in many cases, the actual health of the newborn is dramatically better than the diagnosis indicated. In one case of which I am aware, the child was almost completely normal. What a huge tragedy was averted because this woman insisted on having a live birth despite the evidence she was given!