Whose Rights Are More Right?

First I am going to warn you, this is outrageous and I know it.  I am not making a case for or against abortion.   I am going to draw a parallel to illustrate something. Bear with me, I am not trying to change anyone's views on women's rights.  I am trying to make a point that there are many people in the United States that truly believe to their core that abortion IS murder.  Just for a moment try to put on glasses that allow you to see through their eyes -- for a moment. It won't kill you!

Let's examine two really emotional topics and I will draw a parallel just to see if you can try it on, if even briefly to gain perspective.  I am hoping that maybe if you read this and really try, that you might at least get an idea of how "the other side feels".  The outrageous comparison? 

 Guns and abortion…

I know, pretty raw stuff.  Ironically, these two issues are often diametrically opposed to one another in our society -- a person who staunchly believes what a woman does with her own body is her right is more likely to support gun control measures.  A person who believes in the right to own and bear arms is more likely to believe that life begins at conception.  Interesting yet impossible to truly correlate and the two don't really correlate but they can be compared and contrasted to attempt to understand why people feel the way they do.  It also shines an interesting light on our society's hypocrisy. 

From the perspective of "one side" to own and bear arms is a Constitutional right.  It is endowed by our Founding Fathers and clearly stated in the Constitution. This group feels as though they should not be punished for the bad behavior of others and it opposes any added gun control measures; guns don't kill people; people kill people.  It was not them involved in Newtown, Aurora or Idaho.  This group is also more likely to look at abortion as murder, that life begins at conception and if not that, at least at viability. They view abortion as murder. Let that sink in for a moment. This isn't a judgment on their part it IS what IS for them. When they demonstrate and picket a clinic they are doing it to save lives -- it for them is no different than a left-wing group picketing a horrible factory that is guilty of human rights violations and works children 18 hours a day. Therefore, as they see it, there is a complex hypocrisy in the "other side" wanting to "protect their children" from guns but also being willing to "murder" well over a million babies every year. They don't understand why you don't protect the child's right to life before it is born but will enlist the World Health Organization if you hear of a factory in Bangladesh that uses 8 year old girls in a sweat shop. A child is a child is a child…to them.

We are all familiar with Roe V. Wade.  In it "Jane Roe" fought for the right for women to legally terminate pregnancies - she had been raped and did not want to bear the child that was conceived as a result of that rape.  The battle lasted longer than 9 months and she did have the baby but she continued the fight. Until then abortions, when they happened, were illegal and at times done in horrible places with little or no medical training and women attempted at times to do it themselves.  In part the argument to legalize abortion was to support and save women from "back ally" procedures.  They argued regardless of the legalities involved, horrible abortions would continue to happen and women would die or be damaged for life.
The stats (with estimates because several large states including California refuse to report abortion stats to the CDC) are as follows:

Total number of abortions in the U.S. 1973-2011: 54.5 million+

 234 abortions per 1,000 live births (according to the Centers for Disease Control)

Abortions per year: 1.2 million

Abortions per day: 3,288

Abortions per hour: 137

9 abortions every 4 minutes

1 abortion every 26 seconds

Equals the population of Dallas, Texas (2010 Census)

1% of all abortions are "late term" abortions.  Late term is generally defined as over 24 weeks. At this stage the fetus is viable -- meaning it can survive outside its mother's womb.  This equates to 12,000 abortions of viable fetuses.

We are not as familiar with the 1938 ruling of United States vs. Miller or the more recent District of Columbia vs.HhHe Heller. In this case, the plaintiff in Heller challenged the constitutionality of the Washington D.C. handgun ban, a statute that had stood for 32 years. Many considered the statute the most stringent in the nation. In a 5-4 decision, the Court, meticulously detailing the history and tradition of the Second Amendment at the time of the Constitutional Convention, proclaimed that the Second Amendment established an individual right for U.S. citizens to possess firearms and struck down the D.C. handgun ban as violative of that right. The Supreme Court further strengthened the 2nd Amendment with McDonald vs. City of Chicago in 2008.

When gun control measures are suggested often we hear "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".  In essence, like abortion, regardless of the legality of it, people who want guns will still get them.

Let's look at gun deaths in the United States.

Guns kill approximately 30,000 people annually in the United States. Just under 11,000 are homicides, roughly 19,000 by suicide and about 750 are accidental shootings.

.00009 people per 1000 people

Gun deaths per year: 30,000

Gun deaths per hour: 3.42

Gun deaths per minute: .057

Gun deaths per second: .00095

Less than the population of Bozeman, Montana

Guns kill 2.5% of the "population" that is being aborted.

(Note: There are roughly the same number of gun-related homicides as there are late term abortions.)

The socially conservative right sees women "murdering" (their words not mine) 1.2 million babies every year.

The socially liberal left sees guns (not the people holding the guns) kill 30,000 people every year.

A pro-life person -- doesn't see a vast difference in the death of an aborted fetus and the shooting death of a five year old.  To them, they were both people and both are tragic.  The pro-choice person sees a huge difference and does not see the fetus as a life when it is still within the walls of a woman's body.  It is her life to either give birth to or abort --  it is not "alive" although it has hands, feet and a heartbeat. There isn't an across the board agreement of when "life" begins.  It is her choice.  Each side will not accept that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the rights for each of them. 

If one argues against abortion the pro-choice side automatically goes to Roe v. Wade and says "the Supreme Court already decided". We are done here and it is carved in stone.  But when the 2nd amendment supporter argues for the right to bear arms the anti-gun person (who is more likely to be pro-choice) dismisses the multiple times in the last century that the SAME Supreme Court has upheld the right to posses and bear arms.  They act as if it is undecided.  Roe v. Wade is untouchable but Miller, Heller and all the other 2nd Amendment cases are somehow written in pencil and are subject to continued challenge.  Hypocrisy? Yes. Again, I am NOT arguing for or against abortion here -- the hypocrisy is that when the pro-choice person is challenged they rely on the Supreme Court decision.  When that same person pushes for gun control they dismiss the Supreme Court decisions.  Why is the Supreme Court only right when you agree with the decision? It doesn't work that way.  We can't pick and choose.

As is made clear in this outrageous narrative, this nation is populated with people who have hugely divergent beliefs.  One cannot get more divergent that pro-life/pro-choice and pro-2nd amendment/gun control.  But we all have to live together.  One side feels that "our children are being slaughtered."  The other side feels that "our children are being slaughtered."  Interesting huh? So what is the answer?  Are one group's rights more right?  They each seem to think so.  But the fact is that they are not.  The US Supreme Court has upheld each group's rights and those rights affect the population. Each right should be used wisely.