Abortion Misdefined

THE SECOND DEFINITION of the intransitive verb, "abort," in Merriam-Webster dictionary runs as "to become checked in development so as to degenerate or remain rudimentary." One characteristic of "development," aside from being an act or a result, is that it is also a process. Any process begins at the point of initiation, but not the generation of an idea, or the planning stage. And "rudimentary" inarguably means "of a primitive kind," or being in its fundamental form.

This gives us a more fundamental definition of the term "abortion" as the "termination of the process of giving life to a human being through a natural, biological and developmental process of conception into a child ready for birth."

Now, this definition is entirely different from the standard medical definition of "abortion." Merriam-Webster's standard definition of "abortion" is "the termination of pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus." This definition of course results from the assumption that the development of a child ready for birth begins with the fusion of the ovum (female seed) and the sperm (male seed).

But is this the complete process that a child becoming ready for birth go through? Not apparently so.

A new perspective on the fundamental meaning of the word "abort" can be appreciated well using non-medical circumstances. In military operations, an order to "abort" an operation can happen anytime, at any stage of the mission. Even if the mission team has not reached yet the field of mission, but has left the base, the operation can be aborted anytime along the way. (Before leaving the base, the commander simply cancels the plan, not abort the mission.) And more importantly, that is so even if the order to "abort" the mission comes before the team is even inserted into the mission area. It simply means that the insertion itself is already part of the mission where routes and resources are part in the mission plan.

Now, when we analyze the birth of a child vis-a-vis the accomplishment of a military mission, an important insight into the issue will be brought to light, especially on the salient meaning of the word "abortion."

And that is, the goal of giving birth to a child goes through a process that is supported and initiated by the sexual act itself of the parents. Once the male seeds enter the woman, the act initiates the mission in the same way that the commanding officer approves of the plan of mission, gives the team (the male seed) the order to proceed, and leaves the base on its way to the insertion point (the female seed). That's the first step in the process of having a child. When the parents decided not to release the male seeds (not initiate the process), they merely cancel the plan, not abort the process. So the commanding officer can change the plan, and order the mission canceled before he dispatches the team. When the officer scraps the plan before the mission team leaves the base, he simply cancels the mission, not abort it.
But once the seeds are released, the process of giving life to a child also starts. And stopping the process at any point constitutes abortion, not scrapping of the plan anymore. It is akin to the mission team on its way towards the mission land, and the mission is already in the implementation, albeit in the insertion phase still. So when the commander of the mission calls the team to "abort" while being transportated to the mission land, and before insertion, that too is termination of the mission--an abortion. In this light, preventing the sperm (mission team) from reaching the ovum (mission land) already constitutes the abortion of the development of a child ready for birth.

When mechanical means are used to stop the sperm from uniting with the ovum it represents an intervention that thwarts (aborts) the process of giving life to a child ready for birth. In essence, this action of contraceptives aborts the process, and thwarts the natural means of giving life to a child. It deprives the child a life which nature guarantees that the child receives, and gets conceived. It did not kill the child, or take away the life that it already received, but it stole that life from the child. The right of the child to life is thus violated, taking that life guaranteed by nature away from him or her.

It becomes clear that destroying life and taking away the child's right to receive life--one kills, while the other deprives--these constitute the two faces of abortion. What the standard dictionary captures is only the killing face of abortion; it leaves out the taking away of that life guaranteed by nature that the child should receive once the initiation of the process of giving birth occurs.

It is this profound concept of giving the child its right to life that Manila 5th District Representative Amado Bagatsing obviously understood very well, and of which Iloilo Representative Edcel Lagman has no inkling about. 

At the end of the day, the issue in the presently debated Reproductive Health Bill (House Bill 4244) is not only about taking the life of the unborn but also of depriving the unborn child its right to have, or be given, life as guaranteed by nature.