it's so heartwarming to see an expecting mother excitedly anticipating the birth of her child. the kicks here and there bring joyful reminders that she is carrying a life inside of her. once the child is finally born, it is the object of much love and affection by most everyone and anyone, from the father to random strangers in the streets.
this morning, i heard a very powerful message on the radio about abortion that moved me to write about it. though i have always been pro-life, the speaker's strong, well-thought-out arguments caused me to think a bit deeper. pro-choice vs. pro-life... is undoubtedly a very controversial issue. and because of our society's growing acceptance of premarital sex and number of rape cases and what not, which can result in more unwanted pregnancies, authorities are placed under more pressure than ever to come up with an agreeable answer to this endless controversy. the problem, however, is that the views are almost equally divided. why is it that more and more people are becoming so accepting of this "right"?
before we answer this question, let's take a look at the big picture. i, as a human being, am given the choice to murder anybody who gets in my way of things. but we aIl well know that this choice doesn't give me the right. i don't even believe that pro-choice is the correct terminology... isn't pro-choice more like pro-murder? if we can say give the mothers the right to kill their own babies, how can we tell others that murder is immoral?
needless to say, it's obvious that those who support abortion don't believe that fetuses are human. therefore, they are not granted human rights. the speaker i heard today laid out four differences in a fetus and a born individual in order to prove their moral irrelevance in determining the "unhumanness" of fetuses. these differences included size, development, environment, and degree of dependency. his arguments were presented in such a strong manner that i cannot do justice by writing a blog after hearing it only once while driving. but here goes my best shot.
1. size: many people believe that because fetuses are so tiny, they cannot be considered human. if you are one of these people, listen to this. is hillary clinton less of a human being than shaquille o'neal because she is smaller in size than him? (hmmm... i guess that was a bad example... hehe) but the point here is that size is an irrelevant factor.
2. development: this is a popular argument. because fetuses' parts and organs aren't even fully developed, they are not human. if you really think about it, a four-year-old girl's uterus is not fully developed until she is in her teens. does this make her less of a human being to you? i hope not.
3. environment: the difference of environment... a fetus lives inside the mother's womb until birth and then is exposed to the environment we live in. some may argue that the baby must come out in order to be human. but if you think about it, how does 8 inches of birth canal make such a huge difference?
4. degree of dependency: a fetus is completely dependent on the mother. without her and the nutrients that she provides, the young one cannot exist. this may sound like a viable argument, but consider those with certain diseases that require similar dependency on either medicine or machine. just because their lives cannot exist without outside help, again this does not make them less of a human than others who are healthy.
with all that said, if there's one
true difference, it is that fetuses are absolutely defenseless. but i do not believe that this allows us adults to take advantage of them and deprive them of their rights. let it be that
we take the stand to act as defenders of the precious lives that God has entrusted us with. i pray that everyone who happens to read this will choose life.
"The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters... Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else... " -Mother Theresa
"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
