What’s wrong with Abortion?

I wrote this post about 5 years ago, marked it private to review and edit. And, obviously, I never published it. It represents an appeal to reason and conscience rather than to scripture or some other ancient teaching. I’ve edited for clarity, but left it pretty much as is, because any rewriting at this point would radically change it:

Last night I had the pleasure of watching Spielberg’s newest cinematic piece “Lincoln”.
I also read a rather dry piece on the Amendment itself, here: The Dangerous 13th Amendment
I do not think it takes much energy or thought to see why a follower of Christ Jesus would argue against abortion. Jesus repeatedly heals and cares for all whom he comes in contact with. He also miraculously raises Lazarus from the dead. As followers of Christ he instructs us to act and Love as he did. We are to provide care and comfort to the hurting and lost.
As Americans we speak incessantly of rights and freedoms. Our children do this also. I remember trying to evade my fathers authority over me by invoking whichever freedom or right seemed to best fit the situation. Nothing doing, in my dad’s eyes. As a child I did have certain inalienable rights, just lacking the freedom to exercise them. More freedoms were granted to me as I matured. Now, we all may disagree on the method, but I think we we know deep down that children must be taught and at times corrected. Now, if my father had decided to take out a butcher’s knife and cut off my hand because I stole something, I think we could agree that would be a gross violation of my rights. I was his child, not his property. If my father had decided to cut a piece of paper in half, I think no one would have objected. If it wasn’t his paper, then yes. But a child is not property to be disposed of in whatever manner a parent may choose. That would be making a child a chattel slave, reduced to bondage and gross subservience.
Similarly, I do not think shaking a baby to death is an exercise in good parenting skills either. Nor, I think, would we condone suffocating a baby to get the crying to stop. I may desire freedom to enjoy the silence, but how can I steal that child’s life to attain it?
Now, the womb may lay uniquely in the body of a woman, but the life growing inside her is inexorably human. That life is not her slave anymore than an already born child is. Now, some argue, that mother has become a slave to the unborn life that resides within her. What right has the state to force her to carry the child to term? The same right that the state has when it would have punished my father for cutting off my hand. My rights and freedoms are not wrecking balls to be swung around at my slightest whim. They are powerful gifts, to be used with caution and wisdom. We live in a glass house, this Constitutional Republic of ours. Destroying life at its very inception does great damage to those who are involved and the fabric of society around them. Both our actions and inactions have consequences, even unintended ones (i.e. sex always has consequences, even if we wish the more difficult ones away). But to be free politically is a great gift in our world (as wonderful as that is, I do recommend bondage with Christ, true freedom results from a rebirth in Christ Jesus and reunification with the Living God).
Life itself is a gift. All who read these words are benefactors of it. To legalize the destruction of life at its most innocent stage is barbaric and not in keeping with the higher ideals of our Constitution. Abortion is slavery.