Backtalk FATHER FRANK PAVONE/GUEST COLUMNIST
In the Abortion Debate, Who Has the Burden of Proof?
O
f all the issues that divide our nation, the one that is most often and most mistakenly identifi ed as simply a dispute over religious beliefs is the debate over abortion.
Yes, religion has a lot to say about it. But it is primarily
a debate regarding medical science — a debate, moreover, that most of the time gets off on the wrong foot before it even begins. That’s because the bur- den of proof is usually placed on the wrong party in the dispute. We who oppose abortion are made
to feel as if we are simply “consci- entious objectors” to a practice that the medical community, the legal community, and the average citizen almost universally accept as a normal and necessary aspect of healthcare in America. It’s time to turn the tables. It is not pro-life people who have to
do but is having trouble doing; rather, it stops the body from doing exactly what it is supposed to do and is doing very well. And that’s bad medicine. Now for the purposes of this argument, I’m talking
It’s time to
turn the tables. It is not pro-life
about elective abortion, that is, abortion performed in the absence of a medical problem. The default mode for abor- tions in America is elective abortion; the overwhelming majority of these procedures occur on healthy mothers carrying healthy babies. So even if you are going to cling
people who have
prove abortion is bad; it is the medical community that has to prove it’s good. This common presumption that abor- tion is part of normal medical practice fails to address the most fundamental requirement of any medical procedure — namely, that it be “indicated.” If someone is going to go into your body with medica-
tions, instruments, and machines, there has to be a medi- cal reason. There has to be some medical benefi t to the procedure or intervention; it has to be indicated by some kind of medical problem. You don’t amputate a limb if it’s perfectly healthy. You
don’t do a heart transplant just because you want a new heart. There has to be a problem with the existing one. A medical procedure helps the body to do something that it is supposed to be doing, and is trying to do, but is having trouble doing. For instance, we clear up or bypass blocked arteries through which blood is trying to fl ow but is getting obstructed. But in a healthy pregnancy, the body is doing precisely
what it is supposed to do. All physical and hormonal sys- tems are geared toward protecting, feeding, and nurturing that child in the womb. And abortion goes in and destroys all that. It does not help the body to do what it is trying to
90 NEWSMAX | JANUARY 2019
to prove abortion is bad; it is the medical community that has to prove it’s good.
to the scientifi cally backward idea that the child in the womb is just an appendage or part of a woman’s body, rather than a genetically distinct, uniquely developed and coordinated organism, you still need medical justi- fi cation to conduct an abortion. In fact, even according to Roe v.
Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court deci- sion that legalized abortion, “the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical
decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician.” [410 U.S. 113, 166] Now in the abortion debate, the pro-life community
has done a pretty good job of establishing why abortion is bad. Not only is it undeniable that it kills a baby (hence violating not only the medical principle that a procedure be “indicated,” but also the principle to “do no harm”), but the physiological and psychological negative impact of abor- tion on the mother is documented in peer-reviewed studies so numerous that just the bibliography of such studies fi lls entire volumes. And yet what I am saying is that even if none of that
were true, abortion “by choice” is simply bad medicine. There is no medical benefi t that abortion brings; there is no disease that abortion cures. Anyone who wants to assert otherwise is the one who has the burden of proof, not us who oppose abortion.
Fr. Frank Pavone is president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council and an adviser to President Trump.
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