What Abortion Does To Us

Charles Krauthammer raises a striking point in his discussion of the Planned Parenthood videos:

Abortion critics have long warned that the problem is not only the obvious — what abortion does to the fetus — but also what it does to us.

It’s the same kind of desensitization that has occurred in the Netherlands with another mass exercise in life termination: assisted suicide. It began as a way to prevent the suffering of the terminally ill. It has now become so widespread and wanton that one-fifth of all Dutch assisted-suicide patients are euthanized without their explicit consent.

Abortion dehumanizes the fetus, interpreting a human child as mere “tissue” so that it can be easily disposed of. Abortion also robs the abortionist and the culture that supports abortion of ordinary human pity, compassion, and the instinct to protect the young.

(Those of you who believe in abortion, I know what you are going to say: How terrible pro-lifers are. That may be, but stick for now to the issue of what the abortionist does to the unborn child. You perhaps think that in the early stages, the fetus is just a group of cells, but do you also believe in late term abortions, when the fetus is no different from a baby that has been born? Can you speak about this without recourse to euphemism or dehumanizing language?)