After spending this past weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, I saw pink sign after pink sign along the sides of the roads, each proclaiming the words “Yes on 1.” After some research, I learned that these signs refer to an upcoming constitutional amendment vote happening next week in the state of Tennessee. Passage of this amendment would ensure Tennessee State Representatives of the right to make legislation regarding abortion, and this proposal is facing strong opposition.
In his article a few weeks ago that defended the lack of abortion regulations, Nathan James did little to intellectually debate the merits or flaws of laws that would enact restrictions on access to abortions, and instead just chose to conveniently write off the values of all pro-life Americans as insincere. While James did present many numbers and statistics, his article did not answer the question of why any dangers from an abortion procedure exist in the first place, or why states should not attempt to alleviate such dangers.
Many individuals fundamentally misunderstand the issue of abortion. This must be urgently clarified. Radical abortion advocates place politics over common sense when discussing abortion, and the amendment currently being debated in Tennessee reflects this sad reality. Abortion activists place ensuring “access” to abortion, at whatever cost, above actually safeguarding women’s health, which they claim to so passionately promote. For example, passage of this specific amendment in Tennessee would give state legislators the right to create legislation for licensing and inspecting abortion clinics, but to abortion advocates, any attempt to legislate abortion clinics is seen as an attempt to restrict abortion access and attack women’s health.
In many places, abortion facilities are inspected less frequently than tanning salons or vet offices. In Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion facility, bloodstained chairs and floors, or fetuses clogged in toilets or shoved in freezers, shoeboxes or cut up in jars, were common sights, and during his criminal trial it was revealed that he snipped the necks of numerous babies born alive after abortion attempts. Additionally, at least two women died as a result of Gosnell’s abortion attempts. To James and other abortion activists, these women are just statistics, part of the 0.015 percent who died from abortion, written off as insignificant to ensure protected access to abortion, at any cost.
It’s hard for me to take someone seriously who would prefer to cite Belarusian maternal death statistics to defend unrestricted access to abortion than explain the lack of attention paid to ensuring basic safety standards for women during a procedure they consider a basic human right.
Joe Puchner is a sophomore majoring in mathematics. His column runs biweekly.
