The heart of gay opposition to abortion, of course, is the realization that the unborn child is a unique individual.
Gay pro-lifers, however, are not unconcerned about women's lives. Like feminist pro-life groups, they realize that the legalization of abortion does little to decrease the number of women who die from abortions. Government regulations currently do not require abortion providers to report deaths from abortion.
Thus the official statistics, which the National Organization of Women quotes to support the argument that legal abortions decrease women's deaths, significantly under-report the number of deaths from legal abortions.
ANYONE conducting a thorough newspaper search will find that the number of women whose deaths from legal abortion have been reported in the press exceeds the Center for Disease Control statistics. And that is just reported deaths. How much murder, rape and violence against homosexuals each year fail to make the papers? Quite a lot. Why should death from abortion, which can open a doctor to charges of wrongful death, malpractice suits and the revoking of his license, be any different?
If abortion is made illegal, the feminist and gay pro-life groups reason, those doctors and irresponsible fathers who ultimately are responsible for the deaths of women and children would pay the penalties for their actions. And, as the cutoff of state funding of abortion in Texas a few years ago indicated, making abortions more difficult to obtain decreases the number of abortions. But it does not necessarily increase the number of women's deaths.
Deaths from abortion occur most often because of infection, which is usually avoidable if doctors prescribe penicillin. In the pre-Roe v. Wade era, the number of mothers' deaths from abortion decreased for 30 years because of the advent of penicillin's use. It did not decrease, as pro-choicers argue, because of the availability of legal abortion. There is nothing inherently safer about a legal abortion. If there were, pro-abortion women who wish abortions to continue if Roe is reversed would not now be learning how to perform abortions.
Because pro-life gays and feminists recognize the dangers of even legal abortion, they would rather make abortions illegal so that women cannot legally be forced into the ghastly option of having to kill their own children--and possibly themselves. The activists wish to make their society more open to revering women who become mothers.
In wishing this, these liberal pro-lifers follow all those who have challenged the demoted place which women, mothers, unborn children and gays have all too often occupied in our society. Gays Against Abortion recognizes that, of all second-class citizens, unborn children are the most ignored and most oppressed of all. To be free, human beings must first be allowed to live.
If the ideals of liberalism still include liberation, then GAA should have a hallowed place in the liberal pantheon. True liberals should wonder why they don't.
Liam T.A. Ford '91-'92 attended a 500-person Feminists-for-Life-sponsored anti-abortion counter-demonstration on the West Lawn of the Capitol Sunday.