Laura Hermer inhabits a strange universe, one in which establishing an absolute right to an abortion is somehow “a clear legal solution that should satisfy all sides” in the abortion debate. Worse, in her world, killing a child is “pro-child.”
Hermer, a Minnesota law professor, wrote in MinnPost that:
Advocates for life presumably desire viable pregnancies that give birth to babies who will be loved and cared for. Pro-choice advocates do, too. In the absence of any effective programs that support mother and baby, what sense is it to inadvertently doom infants to poverty and neglect?
Doom them? This side of the pro-abortion argument really hasn’t advanced since the days of Margaret Sanger. It’s still about eugenics, in this case a social eugenics.Imperfect family and social arrangements, just like imperfect genetic development, can and should be headed off with abortion.
Hermer cited the Turnaway Study, “which compares long-term outcomes in families with babies born to women who were denied an abortion versus those who were able to obtain one.” It found “poor maternal bonding” financial hardship and other problems for unwanted babies. But, as LifeNews.com’s Micaiah Bilger pointed out, it also found that “96 percent of women who were denied abortions later no longer wished that they had had one.”
That’s inconvenient, but Hermer doesn’t mention that part of the study. This would make it more difficult for her to get back at the core of her argument.
The person responsible for caring for, loving, raising and providing care to the child is the only one who has the authority to make a decision about whether or not to keep a pregnant woman’s pregnancy. This is the person who is pregnant. This is the decision of a competent adult, not an activist, religious institution or court.
That, Hermer says, and a raft of government programs, is the best way to “ensure that babies have loving homes and do not suffer from undue emotional or economic deprivation.” She doesn’t mention adoption. It’s got to be all one thing or all another. A child is either “wanted” or he or she is better off dead.
Someone who was really “pro-child” would find another way.
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