Abortion and the idol of the self

For quite some time we’ve conducted the abortion debate as if people weren’t fallen, as if mankind’s nature weren’t inherently sinful. So we convince ourselves that if only mothers and their pressuring families or boyfriends knew that the child was a child and not just a “clump of cells,” then they’d make different choices. We’re heartened in this belief by some improvements on the margins, by slight changes in polling numbers — changes that coincide not just with patient pro-life advocacy, but also in astounding leaps forward in medical science, leaps that allow us to see inside the womb, to understand undeniable medical facts (that Kevin Williamson articulates) of the unborn child’s separate genetic identity from his or her mother, and to even watch a tiny child reach from the womb to cling to a doctor’s finger.

Yet abortions still happen, on a massive scale.

Why? Because people love themselves so much that they’re willing to kill another person to keep a boyfriend, to maintain a standard of living, or for many, many other reasons — none of which would ever justify killing another person outside the womb.