There has been a lot of controversy in recent weeks regarding the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) study “Coming to Terms with the Social Costs of Unequal Access to Safe Abortions” which advocated for: 1) a secret conscience vote of parliament to legalize abortion, 2) minors to access abortions without parental consent, and 3) taxpayer-funded abortion. These recommendations have been lauded and applauded by some who would have us forget about the morality of abortion and focus on the reality of abortion.
So let’s get real.
Some prefer the euphemism “termination of pregnancy” equating it with abortion; this is purposefully misleading. When I speak about abortion, I am referring to the deliberate procedure to kill a living, unborn child. An unborn child is not pre-human, neither does an unborn child become human. An unborn child is a human, endowed with inalienable rights including the right to life.
Let’s get real about “safe abortion”. Please recall there are two patients involved in an abortion procedure – the mother and the child. The result of every “successful” abortion is the death of the child previously living in the womb of his mother. In some cases, even the mother dies! No one would undergo an elective surgical procedure if they knew the mortality rate was over 100%!
That CAPRI, MP Cuthbert-Flynn, and others advocate the untimely ending of human lives completely defies the essence of our humanity – our morality. It is this very unraveling of our morality that has led to the social decay to which the CAPRI study points, to rationalize legal abortion.
The CAPRI study outlined various reasons women seek abortions, detailing the breakdown in family structure, poor access to education, intimate partner violence, poverty, low employment, high crime, minimal involvement of fathers in young children’s lives, and their solution to all these – even prevention of future crime – is abortion.
Abortion is no cure, but a symptom of a deeper problem – a moral problem. I would caution Minister Flynn that we cannot ignore “the morality issue” because it is the driving force that leads a woman to believe that her best option in a crisis pregnancy is to “kill them before they grow” (borrowing a line from the late great Bob Marley). Slapping the band-aid of abortion on the gangrenous wound of Jamaica’s societal ills is a poor attempt by politicians to shirk their responsibility to fortify education and social protections for vulnerable communities.
Dr. Brittanie Clacken
Love March Movement