Abortion Doesn't Matter Anymore!

It doesn't matter.  Abortion has been legal since Roe v. Wade in 1973; that's 43 years.  The law has been on the books too long to change at this point, it is ingrained into our culture.  It certainly doesn't matter in regards to presidential politics.  There are other more relevant and pressing issues we need to deal with as a country.  At least that is how the argument goes.  Is it true?  Is that how we should be thinking about it?

This was the argument presented to me yesterday on Facebook.  I will admit, the abortion issue has been around my entire life.  There have been marches, web sites, political debates, campaigns, rallies, and much more.  It has been the rallying cry of the "Moral Majority" which has come and gone.  Still today there are t-shirts, bumper stickers, memes, #hashtags, and much more.  It feels like an old issue that has been settled and if you are pro-life it didn't go your way, so get over it.  

I want to agree and just get over it, but I can't.  It isn't just because I'm emotionally invested or I'm caught up in a bygone political era, it is because it would be as much an error as the original ruling on the issue in 1973.  Here is why:

1. It's a life issue.  In other words it isn't about "abortion" it is about how we as a culture view and understand life.  This has far reaching affects beyond whether or not a woman can abort a baby.  In fact, this November Colorado will have assisted suicide on its ballet.  There will be a vote on whether physicians can help people commit suicide.  Colorado already has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, but instead of fighting for life, we are considering legalizing it.  No, this isn't abortion, but they are both life issues and they are deeply connected.  A candidates view on abortion is likely based on the same principals that inform their view on assisted suicide.  
2. It isn't really settled law.  It is true that the supreme court has not budged, but the supreme court is not the only law one should consider.  Planned Parenthood has made the news a lot in recent years because they have been selling aborted baby body parts.  Yes, it sounds disgusting, but that is an accurate way of describing their practice.  They have not been convicted of any wrong doing, but the debate in congress, which is the law making body in our country, about government financial support has been lively to say the least.  This is not only true at the federal level, but 10 states have defunded Planned Parenthood specifically because of their abortion practices.  
3. The science is now settled, abortion kills a human being.  Early on in the debate, there was some question regarding when life began.  Still today I frequently hear people bring up the question of when life begins, but they are uninformed on the issue.  Those who are informed talk about other things like viability because they know that science has conclusively proven that as early as the first 48 hours the zygote is a living human being with its own human DNA that is unique.  It is not the DNA of the mother or the father, so it is not just a glob of cells, it is a human interacting with its environment, taking in nutrition, converting that nutrition to energy, and growing.  The science is settled.  As a result those who are pro-choice have done everything they can to redefine and and change the focus of the discussion.  Unfortunately they have been pretty successful.  
4. It's the greatest injustice of our time.  Many are upset about the number of black people killed by police every year.  In 2015 there were 258 black people killed by police in the United States and in 2016 there have been 175 black people killed by police at the time of this writing.  This has been seen by many as a great injustice.  It has caused protests of all kinds, some have been violent and destructive.  Every day there are approximately 870 black babies aborted.  If you do the math that is more than 316,000 black babies killed every year.  If you add in all ethnicities it adds up to over 700,000 innocent lives extinguished every year.  There are certainly other injustices in the world that deserve our attention, but the greatest injustice in the United States right now is abortion, and there is definitely a racial aspect to this injustice.
5. Slavery was legal for millennia.   For thousands of years people engages in slavery.  It was not only settled law, it was common practice.  In many cases slavery was viewed as charitable because of the false perception that black people were intellectually inferior and they wouldn't know what to do with their freedom.  Even writing such a thing makes me sick, but the same argument is often used for abortion.  People will often say, "it is better to abort a baby than bring it into poverty (or a corrupt world, or whatever)."  Those babies wouldn't be able to experience the goodness in life, so we should show compassion and kill them early.  Of course that sounds ridiculous, but that is the argument.  Just like slavery had been common practice and settled law and still hailed as the greatest injustice of its time, so to, abortion is the greatest injustice, the greatest civil rights issue of our time.  Yet, we somehow find the wherewithal to ignore it.  

I will admit it, the abortion issue trumps all other issues for me.  That doesn't mean I don't consider other issues, but it does mean I cannot and will not vote for a pro-choice candidate.  I will not ignore the greatest civil rights issue of our time because its old news.