I usually avoid talking about this topic altogether, because being an anti-abortion liberal is not exactly easy and I know the sorts of arguments I will get into if I air my views.

But a recent piece on the Daily Show angered me enough that I feel I have to put my views and the reasoning behind them into words in order to clear my mind and let my emotions settle down again.

The first thing you have to know is that my position is, unequivocally, not a religious one. I can say this with total conviction because I have no religion, and I have never had one. Both my parents are atheists and I was raised entirely without religion.

So no, I am not against abortion because my church, my holy book, my religious leadership, or my God or gods tell me so.

I am against it because my conscience tells me so. It tells me that abortion is murder, or at least, something very close to it.

Now in order to illustrate the reasoning that led me to this conclusion, I am going to paint a somewhat harsh picture, and I apologize for that, but it is the best way to get my point across.

I want you to imagine the waiting room of a busy obstetrician’s office. On every chair sits a pregnant mother. All stages of pregnancy are represented, from the ones for whom the news is quite recent to the ones for whom birth could happen any moment now.

The atmosphere is calm and tranquil. The women smile to one another in mutual understanding. Tips and stories are exchanged, giving the newer mothers valuable insight into what it is like further down the line. They all make frequent trips to the bathroom, and laugh about it with each other.

Into this happy scene comes a young, ambitious abortionist, who addresses the room :

“Hello ladies! Sorry for interrupting, but I just wanted you all to know that if any of you want me to jab a surgical instrument into that inhuman growth in your womb so I can chop up its little arms, legs, heart, and brain and then suck the pieces out with a vacuum, I am just next door. ”

The women, of course, are shocked, horrified, and enraged. How dare he offer to do such a horrible thing to the precious lives growing within them? What kind of a monster would do that to a baby?

But that is just the problem. The only difference between these ladies at the obstetrician’s office and the ones next door at the abortion clinic are that they want their babies, and the ones next door do not. To a happily pregnant woman, there is absolutely no doubt in their minds that what is growing inside them is their baby , even if they have only been pregnant for days. But for the women waiting for an abortion next door, it is a part of their body, a growth, to do with as they please.

So it is a precious baby when the mother wants it, and an inhuman growth when she does not.

And that is absolutely unacceptable.

We would not accept that a child is a human being only if its parents want it, even in the case of a newborn baby still covered in blood from the trip.

So how can we call it a baby when it is still inside its mother if she wants the child, and go along with her naming it, finding out its gender, buying presents for it, and in all senses thinking of it as a precious human being growing inside her, and then turn our backs and pretend it is not murder if another woman at the exact same stage of pregnancy has an abortion?

Either no fetus is a human being, or they are all human beings, whether the mother wants it or not.

And what about premature babies? Were a deranged lunatic to kill all the babies in the premature baby ward with a knife, thee would be no doubt said lunatic was a mass murderer and guilty of infanticide.

So how is it different if an abortionist does the same thing while the child is still inside its mother?

And medical science continues to push back the time when a premature baby can survive outside the womb. Eventually, we will be able to take a baby all the way from conception to “birth” entirely outside of a woman’s body. And what then?

Will we draw an arbitrary line saying “Unplugging before this date is not murder, but after, it is?”

Or will we simply err on the side of humanity and assume that which will become human is human?

Ask a woman who has suffered the profound tragedy of a miscarriage if she feels that she lost her baby.

Ask a woman who has only recently gotten pregnant after many years of trying with her husband whether or not she feels like there is a baby inside her now or not.

Ask all those ladies in the obstetrician’s office “Who here has a baby inside them right now?”

No matter how you examine it, there is simply no way to rationalize the idea that it is fine to think of it as a baby if the mother wants it, and something else if she does not.

Women bear a unique moral burden because they can have another human growing inside them. This burden can be a terrible one in the case of unwanted pregnancies, especially in the case of rape or incest.

But surely the solution is not the murder of the child, the genetically, medically, and scientifically unique human being with its own fate and destiny, within her?

Yes this places a burden on women that is not shared by men, and that is unfair. But surely we cannot slaughter innocents in the name of fairness. What is more important, fairness or human life?

It is not for the mothers to decide whether their children live or die, inside the womb or out.

And that is why I am against abortion.