Determining Secular Guidelines

for Abortion

Few topics generate the emotional response that surrounds the argument over abortion. Whether they consider it an absolute evil or an unconditional right, extremists work to dominate the debate. One end 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 bear consideration.

Our country was founded on secular law - a nonreligious approach to the ordering of society that allows fair and just treatment for all people. While religious principles can determine personal choice, they have no place in government if we hope to exist peacefully in a multi-cultural society that includes divergent forms of worship. To work, this concept should be applied in a consistent manner across the social spectrum and remain unaffected by shifts in political power.

We all hold personal beliefs: there is no way everyone will be one hundred percent satisfied with any answer to the issue of abortion, or the many other subjects in public debate. Our best approach is a reasonable compromise considering 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 extremes.

The first factor to consider is determining when the fetus inherits the rights of a person and abortion is not longer legal. This sets that time when a mother’s greater responsibility goes to her child rather than herself. This point is reached when the fetus develops a reasonable chance of survival outside of the mother’s womb using the commonly available medical technology of the period. Today this point falls somewhere within the second trimester - months four through six - of a pregnancy. Realizing 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.

Compromise would suggest that if society can say when abortion is no longer legal - the third trimester - that there should 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 scenario that would be the first trimester.

Both the child and the mother’s rights have been met: the fetus has been granted a point at which it is recognized as possessing the rights of an individual protected by law, and 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 right to abort if she should choose not to.

Left to consider is the father. Few people would say that a man who rapes a woman and impregnates her should have any rights in the decision to abort. Conversly, 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.

If the mother has been granted the unconditional right to abort the first trimester, and society has determined that under no conditions can an abortion occure after the fetus is reasonably able to survive without the mother, then left for the father is that period of the second trimester before the medical determination of the fetus’s ability to surrive. During this period it seems reasonable to grant the father an equal say in the decision, and require his consent by law for an abortion to proceed.

While at times difficult to accept, our greatest responsibility resides with building a better world, not getting our way. Given the diversity of thought on the planet, and the technological ability we possess to destroy ourselves, learning the compromise necessary to live in harmony may be the only option we have left.