Once it was common to see the bumper sticker, “Abortion is not health care.” But over time, pro-abortion forces have turned the tables on anti-abortion rhetoric, as if saying something long enough and loud enough will make it normal. “Induced abortion is a simple and common health care procedure,” says the World Health Organization. “Abortion and contraception are essential health care,” says Amnesty International. The American Medical Association chimes in, “Reproductive care is health care.”

Part of the goal is to incorporate abortions into our mainstream health system. The National Institutes for Health published an article on “abortion as essential health care” that encourages all ob-gyns to offer abortion rather than relegate it to clinics where it is more easily restricted.

Typically we hear that elective abortions are necessary because of relatively unusual circumstances such as “contraceptive failure, barriers to contraceptive use and access, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, fetal anomalies, illness during pregnancy, and exposure to teratogenic medications” (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists). But women’s actual reasons for seeking an abortion fall into 11 broad themes (some women gave more than one reason), few of which refer to extreme or life-threatening circumstances: financial (40%), timing (36%), partner-related (31%), need to focus on other children (29%), interference with future opportunities (20%), lack of emotional or mental preparedness (19%), health care (12%—including things like their own drug use, 5%), wanting a better life for the baby (12%), lack of maturity or dependence (7%), influence of family or friends (5%), or, not wanting a baby (4%)(BMC Women’s Health).

The working assumption is that elective abortion is a right and a woman’s choice. Seldom is there mention of the humanity or rights of the fetus, or the possibility of ethically unacceptable reasons for abortion.

Surprisingly, other health care entities routinely recognize the fetus as a patient. “Pediatric care may begin periconceptionally and continues through gestation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood” (American Academy of Pediatrics). Different federal regulations, such as for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, define child as “an individual under the age of 19 including the period from conception to birth.”

Some people have gone so far as to acknowledge the dark truth about abortion and yet still favor elective abortion. “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss.…The fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing” (Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon).

We will never agree on the practices if we don’t agree on the ethics. Christians need to stand up for the inestimable value of human life even “periconceptually and gestationally.” At the same time we can help women and families reduce the other concerns to help them see better alternatives than abortion.