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Commentary

So What’s Wrong With a Health Exception?

February 20th, 2023

Back in the dark days of Roe, the Abortion Industry and federal courts made broad use of a “health” exception to inflict untold carnage on babies in the womb.  Despite the scientific fact that abortion is rarely the necessary therapy to treat a woman’s health condition – the legal and medical community continue to use “health” as an excuse to kill babies in the womb.

Idaho Chooses Life has always opposed such “health exceptions” – which is really a license to kill.  Our moral objection to “health exceptions”, no matter how “narrow”, is that it undermines the fundamental principle of the pro-Life movement.  AND JUST WHAT IS THAT PRINCIPLE?  That a baby in the womb is fully human from conception.  It doesn’t mystically become a human being at some later point of development – like a heartbeat or brainwave or “viability”.  The baby is as much a human being from conception as any one of us with the ability to write or read this blog. 

It is one thing to accept that there should a legal allowance for situations – like ectopic pregnancy – when the mother’s life is at legitimate risk.  That is a life-for-a-life circumstance in which the State has no appropriate policing role.  But destroying one life to protect the health of another is a different matter altogether.  Such a license to kill necessarily means that the baby’s life is worth less than the mother’s comfort or happiness. 

One person might need an eye transplant, another a limb replacement.  But hardly anyone would argue that such a person has the right to kill another in order to obtain the desired organ.  We rightfully see that situation as evil and barbaric.  So why do some people have such an easy time holding the belief that it is okay to destroy the baby in order to protect the mother’s health?

We submit that part of the answer to that question is that we have unknowingly ingested some of the thinking and values of the Abortion Industry.  After all – we have been pounded by abortion propaganda for many decades now.  Almost on a daily basis.  And then there is the fact that this innocent life is hidden away in the womb, so that we rarely have to confront the consequences of our decisions.

The God-gift of Life must be vigorously defended from conception.  It is our duty as Christians. We must challenge our friends and neighbors to carefully consider that babies in the womb have a right to live – a right equal to that held by the rest of us.  In fact – if anything – the baby in the womb is entitled to special protections because of its inability to defend itself.