Is an Honest Debate on Abortion possible?

I have doubted it for a long time. Take the flap over a Superbowl ad in which the mother of Tim Tebow explains how she was asked to consider aborting her future son, but she didn't and she's glad she didn't. On the face of it pretty benign - certainly better than that truck you see occasionally with aborted fetuses on it.

Maybe they don't have that truck where you live - but yeah, it's a billboard truck, with a billboard of an aborted fetus. I hate it particularly because the first time I saw it, my brain didn't process what it was initially. I thought it was Mongolian Beef, and thought it looked kind of tasty - until I pulled a little closer. That was unpleasant.

At any rate, they have pointed out some potential problems in Pam Tebow's story, and in his latest article, Kevin McCullough takes them to task for it. Some pro-Choice people have suggested that Abortion in the Phillipines was illegal; he counters with illegal or not, up to 0.27% of women have abortions even today (he uses 27 out of a 1,000, but I put it into percents for you), and that as she had amoebic dysentery, it's likely that she would have been offered it.

I can't parse it myself, and don't see any reason too. I tend to doubt that the Tebows are making anything up, but they may have embellished it over the years as their opposition to Abortion seems heart felt.

What's frustrating about the debate however, is that the Tebows and McCullough pretending they don't understand the issue. All they want, apparently, is to encourage woman to think twice before having an abortion. But of course that isn't all they want. What the Tebows and McCullough would like to see is an America where Tebow didn't have that decision to make - they are very clear about that. They want an America in which Abortion is illegal, like it is in the Phillipines.

So behind that heartwarming story about Pam Tebow choosing to have her son is her belief that it shouldn't be a choice but a requirement.

In fairness there is a bit of this on the other side as well, since as the Pro Choice movements regular unwillingness to grapple with why, exactly, the Pro Life people are upset with the practice of Abortion. Rather some ascribe it all to a desire to control women, which I guess I can understand, since there certainly is an element of that in all of this.