The American Spectator

br> Ever so helpful, Ms. provides a form, “Women’s Petition for Safe, Legal, and Accessible Abortion and Birth Control.” Just check the box “I have had an abortion,” and then decide whether you want your name in the magazine or on the website, or both. And, yes, there’s also a line for you to make that generous donation.

In short, celebrate your decision to eliminate the life growing within you. Don’t just celebrate it. Broadcast it to the world.

HOW LONG WILL IT BE before Ms. announces contests for the youngest and oldest abortion recipients? The person with the most abortions within a set period? And, of course, the most prolific aborter?

Ms. magazine offers no Clintonesque rhetoric about abortion being an unfortunate choice, a tragedy that should be minimized. Let the world know what you’ve done and demand that it stand by as others make the same decision.

Set aside the legal and political issue for a moment. Objectively, abortion is bad. Even the would-be mother pays a price. There’s some evidence of a higher incidence of breast cancer among those who have an abortion. And there certainly is a psychological cost to abortion, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

More important, abortion kills.

We can quibble about when life begins. We can argue about the moral status of an embryo before implantation. We can discuss special justifications: life of the mother and rape, for instance. And we can respond compassionately to women caught in difficult circumstances who feel they have inadequate alternatives.

But once we’ve entered the continuum of life there’s no obvious moral difference between a fetus at one month or eight months, or a child at one year or eight years. Surely an abortion is not something to celebrate. “I didn’t feel like having another child, so I killed my baby,” seems to be what signers of the Ms. list are saying.

Although the magazine expresses outrage that government might ban abortion, the state’s most basic role is setting the rules for issues of life and death. True, there are few more intimate decisions than that to bear a child. Having government intervene is a second best for anyone committed to individual liberty and limited government.

But there is no liberty if the right to life is not respected. And liberty requires accountability. You must be responsible for the results of the free choices that you make.

Pregnancy is never a surprise. Absent rape, pregnancy cannot result other than by choice. To have sex.

Thus, most people having an abortion are cleaning up the mess resulting from a voluntary sexual encounter which they now regret. Abortion is not the only option, however. One reason adoption, foster care, and orphanages exist is because some people don’t want to become parents. Carrying an unwanted baby to term is a significant imposition, but still a modest burden compared to ending a life. In this case, the law appropriately says: have sex if you want, but be prepared to take responsibility for any life that you create, even inadvertently.

OBVIOUSLY MS. MAGAZINE DISAGREES with this assessment. Still, the editors could couple their plea to keep abortion legal with advice to reduce its incidence. For instance, Ms. magazine might run a list of the names of people warning others against engaging in “unprotected” sex, and sex with someone other than one’s partner. “We ignored the consequences of our actions and made a bad choice,” they could say. Don’t follow our bad example.