Five ways abortion is destroying our society

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One of the most successful efforts of the pro abortion lobby has been to convince large numbers of people that abortion is nothing more than a matter between a woman and her doctor.

This idea isn’t simply trying to make us believe that pro-life people should keep their views to themselves, it is also trying to convince us that there is no meaningful harm to society from the normalisation and widespread acceptance of abortion.

We regularly encounter this sentiment in our pro-life advocacy work, and even though it manifests itself in various different ways, it is always aimed at one thing: downplaying the severity of abortion and its effect on the wider community.

There’s just one problem, and it’s a big one; abortion has ramifications that reach far beyond the relationship between a woman and an abortionist, and those ramifications are very serious for all of us.

Firstly, the normalisation of abortion is teaching our society that we have no obligation to protect and care for the most vulnerable members of our community. 

If we embrace the lie that deliberately ending the lives of our unborn children when they are at their most defenceless is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, we are, in effect, being schooled to believe that the vulnerable don’t deserve any meaningful consideration or protection from us.

Secondly, the normalisation of abortion is teaching our society that one of the most profound and intimate bonds that can exist between two human beings - the mother/child relationship - carries no obligation to make care for the child a priority.

In this regard, abortion is the ultimate violation of trust that could ever be perpetrated against a child by their parents.

As one pro-life bumper stick campaign, featuring the image of an unborn child, recently stated: ‘Child abuse. It’s not okay. Ever.’

The cold hard reality is that, despite the commonly repeated slogans about the importance of family and children, the widespread acceptance of abortion is actually forming us to believe that family and children are merely choices, and they are no more important than lots of other choices we could make in life.

Thirdly, abortion is an act of extremely barbaric violence that commonly involves the dismemberment of its victims.

Not only has this form of violence been normalised by our society, but increasingly we are being told that this should be celebrated and considered a tool of female empowerment.

Whether we like it or not, this is teaching our society that our personal happiness is more important than the wellbeing of others, and that using violence to achieve that aim is a perfectly good and acceptable thing to do.

As Mother Teresa of Calcutta once put it: “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Fourthly, the normalisation of abortion is teaching our society that not every human being is entitled to human rights.

This isn’t just a glaring hypocrisy, it also completely undermines the very foundation of our system human rights, which only makes logical sense if we respect the fundamental rights of all human beings.

The moment we accept abortion though, is the moment we act as if human rights do not apply equally to all innocent human beings.

What widespread acceptance of abortion does is teach society the dangerous lie that one group of human beings can violate the human rights of another group of weaker human beings if it suits the stronger ones to do so.

When we do this we are no longer professing a societal belief and commitment to human rights. 

Instead we have reverted back to a more barbaric practice of class rights - which is where one class of human beings (the born) are given the power to treat another entire class of weaker human beings (the unborn) as if they are not even human at all.

Fifthly, the normalisation of abortion is teaching our society that fathers don’t matter.

It would be bad enough if we believed the lie that abortion is a matter between a couple and their doctor, but we have taken things one step further.

By believing that abortion is a matter between a woman and her doctor, we have reduced the role and importance of fathers in parenting to being little more than contributors of biological material.

For decades our widespread acceptance of abortion has been teaching men that they should be noting more than passive bystanders at the most crucial and profound moment of their child’s life.

Is it any wonder then that relations between men and women now seem to be marred by a greater degree of acrimony, mistrust, division and dysfunction than any other period of human history?

No matter how the powerful pro abortion lobby might try and spin it, there is no escaping the fact that abortion involves a violation of basic humanitarian principles.

When violations of humanitarianism become widespread, normalised and even celebrated - just like abortion is in our country - this cannot help but have a corrupting effect on our entire society.

This is why abortion is never just a matter between a woman and her doctor, and why downplaying its seriousness or turning a blind eye will only make things worse for us all in the long run.

We are deluding ourselves if we think that normalising, institutionalising and celebrating such a serious act of inhumane violence does not have a flow on effect that leads to the increase and worsening of other social problems.

If we are serious about addressing child abuse, violence, family breakdown and other social harms then we simply cannot turn a blind eye to the destructive social impoverishment of abortion which fuels all of those other problems.

Kate Cormack