Safe, Legal and ..... RARE?

    Today when people talk about abortion, they often say "We want abortion to be safe, legal and rare".  The comedian, Louis CK, first brought this to my attention in one of his stand-up routines.   He said, 

"Why on earth, if it's safe and legal would you want it to be RARE?  I mean, come on!  If it's safe and legal it should be all over the place?". 

   What Louis CK is point out is that the only reason to make something "rare"  is because at the heart of the activity is something that is inherently wrong and a drain on society in some way.   If there is nothing wrong with it, then it should be common place.  

    Before Roe-v-Wade, abortion could be obtained from some physicians willing to perform it.  These doctors were not armed with coat-hangers as many would want you to think.   They were not sitting in some back alley next to a trash dumpster doing the deed.   They could be found for a price, but that price could be high because of its illegality.   After Roe-v-Wade there was an explosion of abortion providers and it has been an epidemic ever since.   It was already safe, it just wasn't legal yet.   

   So, what would it take for abortion to become rare?

   Today we have all the tools imaginable to prevent pregnancy.   We have multiple types of "pills", we have a plethora of condoms to choose from, many different IUDs and foams to reduce the risks.  So it's not that we don't have the means.  What we lack is the responsibility to use them. 

   So what drives a person to take responsibility?

   What drives a person to NOT do one thing and replace that with another thing is always Cost/Value.  A person becomes responsible when they simply recognize the cost involved.  This is what drives the person to become a responsible human being.   My daughter, for example, totaled 3 cars in 3 months’ time of receiving her driver's license.  Two of the cars were ours and the third was the other driver that ran into her when she thought it was her turn to take a left-hand-turn, when in fact it was not.  That night she stopped driving and would not drive for another 3 years.   That night she became a responsible human being because she saw she was not ready to be an automobile driver.  Because she valued her life, our cars, and the lives of other people on the road she stopped driving.  That was the RESPONSIBLE thing to do and it was that VALUE that drove her decision.    

    Value drives responsibility.   Low value yields low responsibility.  High value yields high responsibility.   Any person who as a child ever received a present from Santa will tell you they often took little care of those items as compared to things they had to save their own money for and purchase for themselves.  Think of it like balance scale.  One one side of the scale is YOU and YOUR NEEDS and on the other side is the COST to you (and others).   In the case of my daughter, her need to prove she can drive was outweighed by the cost to her of hurting other people and damaging our cars.  

    In the past, two things influenced young men and women to take their reproduction responsibly: Social-Pressure (value of your reputation) and Risk of Pregnancy (value of the child).   Social-Pressure has been effectively removed from the table in our society.   Hollywood has done a very effective job over the last several decades to turn the tables on social-pressure by making it almost a sin to not have sex before marriage.  For example, just look at how people like Tim Tebow (a self-professed virgin) are treated by the media.  This leaves us with the risk-of-pregnancy one as really the only factor to influence an unmarried persons choices to become responsible.   This leaves us only with the risk of pregnancy as the only real influential force on people to make better choices in regards to their sex lives.

   But therein lies the problem.  Abortion can only be made legal if the baby is treated as "thing" inside the mother’s womb.(Louis CK also pointed that out in his routine as well).  Instead of being treated as a human being, it must be treated as a cluster of cells reminiscent of a cancer growth that has no feeling and  ZERO value.  The null value of the pre-born yields zero driving force for men and woman to take their sexuality seriously and to take the precautions necessary to prevent pregnancy.  As long as this is the case, there will be many unwanted pregnancies.  This is why it's mutually exclusive ( you can't have them both at the same time).  To reduce the abortions, we must RAISE the value of the unborn from a cancerous-growth to a fully-viable-valuable-human-being with intrinsic value.  But doing so requires abortion to be viewed as murder of an unborn child and therefore cannot be made legal. 

 Abortion can only be illegal-and-rare or legal-and-rampant.