The most popular words of pro-abortion and pro-choice advocates are perhaps "My Body, My Choice."  On the surface, it makes sense and sounds rational and reasonable.  In fact, it's so sensible that even anti-vaxxers are using it to talk about their bodies and their choices.  Don't we all make decisions related to our bodies, especially medical decisions?

The person who composed or created that slogan hit it big, and credit is due for such a commonsense, clever phrase.  It seems difficult to debate.  How could anyone challenge such a recognized personal decision with a response, such as "no, you don't have that right" or "no, your body is not open to your choice"?

Wouldn't such a person or response be widely ridiculed?  After all, we all make decisions about having surgeries for appendicitis, cancer, broken bones, cysts, and even benign tumors.  "My Body, My Choice" certainly applies to these.

At the same time, however, the patient contemplating the procedure usually discusses the details with the surgeon.  If it's surgery for a broken bone, the doctor will discuss how complex the break is, that he plans to insert a pin, and the estimated length of time to recuperate.  If it's surgery for cancer, he may tell a patient how he intends to extract or excise the cancerous growth, what the recovery will be like, and what outcome to expect.  Will it lengthen the patient's life, or is it just a stopgap procedure to improve temporary well-being?  After all, it requires the patient's consent because it is the patient's body and the patient's choice.

It's different when it's an abortion.  When a woman is considering an abortion, does a physician or surgeon clearly explain the procedure?  It's doubtful that the abortionist explains to the patient that he will crush the skull of the alleged glob of tissue inside her uterus to suck the brain out.  And does he explain that the alleged glob will be dismembered to remove it — that is, that he will cut off its legs or arms before extracting the rest of the glob?

Again, it's highly doubtful that an abortionist would allude to either scenario — much less describe them — when speaking to a woman deciding whether or not to have an abortion, isn't it?  Surely, after such a gruesome explanation or description, she might recognize that the alleged glob isn't merely a glob after all; it's a body — another person's body.  It's not really her body.

Therein lies the crux of whose body and whose choice.  Abortion doesn't dismember the woman's body or crush her skull open to suck her brains out.  Those practices are aimed at another vulnerable human being: the baby carried in her womb.  That person's heart is beating, his arms and legs moving, and perhaps his thumb is in his mouth.  He feels pain.

In fact, surgeries to correct a problem are done while the baby is still in the mother's uterus.  Does anyone perform surgeries on undesirable or unwanted globs of tissue?  It may not be fully formed yet, but it is growing and changing just as the rest of us did and continue to do throughout life.

What does all this mean?  It means the most popular slogan "My Body, My Choice" can, and should, be challenged and debated.  The procedures utilized to achieve an intentional abortion (in French and, perhaps, other languages, natural miscarriages are medically called abortions) are brutal, horrific, and painful to the body and person a woman carries in her womb.  Such procedures cannot be considered good; they are pure evil against the objects of abortions.

Isn't it time to parse the slogan, not grammatically, but physically?  Isn't it time to turn the focus from a woman's body to the real body being aborted?

Legalizing the brutal snuffing out of innocent, dependent, vulnerable lives cannot be viewed as good; it is evil, costing millions of lives.  The major factor separating abortion from birth is defined by one word: "wanted" or "unwanted."  Not even an "unwanted" baby deserves such a fate.

Image: Protective hands by hhach.  Pixabay license.

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