Determining Rational Guidelines for Abortion

Few topics generate the emotional response that surrounds the issue of abortion. Extremists dominate the debate, whether they are those who consider it an absolute evil or an unconditional right. One group refuses to submit religious conviction to secular law as required by the separation between church and state, while the other side is unwilling to recognize that not only the mother - but also the child, father, and society - all have rights and responsibilities that must be considered.

Secular law - a nonreligious approach to the determination of correct conduct - is necessary to provide a fair and just social order. While religious principles often determine personal conduct, they cannot be used to regulate civil law if we hope to exist peacefully in a multi-cultural society that allows for divergent forms of worship - including the right not to. When achieved at its highest level this concept is applied across the social spectrum, and not in a haphazard manner reflecting the unavoidable shifts in political power.

Regardless of a person’s willingness to submit themselves to the rule of law, we all continue to hold our personal beliefs: there is no way everyone will be a hundred percent satisfied with any answer to this, or many other subjects framing our public debate. Our best approach is a compromise based on a reasonable determination of the rights of all parties involved. For many people the idea that intervention at the beginning of pregnancy - such as with a morning after pill - is murder is difficult to accept: on the other hand, few people cannot see how a late term abortion of a fetus that looks just like a newborn baby cannot be considered the killing of a child. Our answer lies somewhere between these two end points.

The determining factor in setting guidelines for abortion resides with when the fetus inherits the rights of a person. This determination is for society to make, and it sets that time when a mother’s greater responsibility goes to her child rather than herself. Suggested here is that this point is reached when the fetus develops a reasonable chance of survival outside of the mother’s womb using the common medical technology of the period. Today this point falls somewhere within the second trimester - months four through six - of the pregnancy. Understanding that many variables come into play means this point may have to be determined on a case-by-case basis, and it may shift over time as medicine advances.

The compromise between the rights of all parties would suggest that if society can say when absolutely no abortions can occur - the third trimester - that there must also be a time when the absolute right to abort resides with the mother. Bringing a child into the world is a great responsibility and many times pregnancies are unplanned events. It is only reasonable that the person bearing the greatest hardship has a period of time to decide if she wishes to accept that burden: in this approach to the subject that would be the first trimester.

In this way the right of society to set secular guidelines that best address everyone’s needs has been met; the mother has been given a reasonable period of time to decide if she wishes to accept the responsibility of having a child and the unqualified right to abort if she should so choose; and the fetus has been granted a point in which it is assumes the rights of an individual and falls under the protection of the law. Left to consider are the rights of the father.

Few people would say that a man who rapes a woman and impregnates her would have any rights in the decision to abort the fetus or not. At the other end of the scale, many people would grant that a husband at some point in the pregnancy should have his feelings considered and his rights as the father protected.

Again this becomes an issue of compromise. The father’s rights are less than the mother’s if she has been granted the option to abort in the first trimester, and at some point during the second the rights of the child supersede all others. This leaves that period of the second trimester that leads up to the medical determination that the fetus has a reasonable chance of survival outside of the womb. This is the time it would be reasonable to grant the father an equal say in the decision to abort, and require his consent by law to do so.

As with many areas in our society, the correct way forward is often a compromise of what we as individuals think is best. While at times difficult to accept, our greatest responsibility resides with building a better world for our children, not getting our way. On a planet with such diversity of thought combined with the technological ability to destroy ourselves, learning the compromise necessary to live in harmony with one another may be the only option we have left.