When it comes
to legalized murder by a state, almost nothing can approach it – not in its
size, not in its breadth and not in its virtually incomprehensible bestiality.
- Richard Cohen[1]
The most basic duty of government is to defend the life of the
innocent. Every person, however frail or vulnerable, has a place and a purpose
in this world. Every person has a special dignity. This right to life cannot be
granted or denied by government, because it does not come from government, it
comes from the Creator of life.
- President George
W. Bush
Constitutional Mayhem
In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United
States ruled in the case Roe v. Wade
– a ruling that Bill Pryor, the attorney general of Alabama rightly called “the
worst abomination of constitutional law in our history” – that laws forbidding
abortions in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy are
unconstitutional. This was the defining
moment in the history of abortion in America – the floodgates had been opened.
It all started when, “in 1965, the Supreme
Court invented a ‘privacy right’ guaranteeing married couples the right to
obtain contraception. It seemed
churlish and hypertechnical to object that there was no such right in the
Constitution. Thirty years later, the
right of married couples to use contraceptives had transmogrified into a
‘constitutional’ right to abortion-on-demand.”[2]
Incredible! And to think that nearly
two centuries of constitutional debate and scholarship had failed to uncover
this amazing, invisible privacy right.
The above case, Griswald v. Connecticut, established the right to bodily privacy,
which laid the stepping-stone for the Roe
v. Wade decision. The landmark case
began in 1970, when Norma McCorvey, under the name “Jane Roe,” sued the Dallas
Country District Attorney Henry Wade for the right to abortion an
abortion. Based on the aforementioned
“privacy right” (which has now been used by the court to legalize sodomy
nationwide in Lawrence v. Texas), the
court ruled on a 7-2 vote that a woman had the exclusive right to make
decisions about her own body. In its
ruling, the court struck down the Texas law and the abortion restrictions of
every other state in the union. It ruled
that the state could not interfere with a woman’s right to an abortion in the first
trimester of pregnancy, that the state could regulate abortion in the second
trimester only to protect a woman’s health, and that the state could choose to
ban abortion in the third trimester unless a woman’s health was threatened.
The Supreme Court primarily based its
decision on the 4th amendment to the Constitution, which reads:
“The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.”
Now you may be mystified as to how they
got “abortion-on-demand” out of this amendment. It’s very simple actually.
You just play it backwards, and a deep voice says, “I KILLED PAUL –
ABORTION IS GOOD.”
Since there is no right to bodily privacy in the Constitution – only a right of
protection against unreasonable searches – the entire basis for the Roe v. Wade ruling is gone. Even if the court justices personally felt
that a woman had a right to her own body, they would not have the jurisdiction
to rule on the issue. According to Article
III of the Constitution, “The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law
and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United states, and
treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority.” Judicial review
stretches no further than the pages of the Constitution.
Furthermore, the 5th amendment clearly states: “Nor shall any person
be…deprived of life…without due process of law.” As far as I know, no unborn
person has ever been convicted in criminal court. Therefore, if it can be shown that an unborn person is actually a
person, they are protected under the
5th amendment, and abortion is unconstitutional. Which leads to my next argument…
Life and Death
The general basis of the pro-life position
is the belief that abortion is murder, because it ends the life of an unborn
child. A logical starting point for the
pro-life position is to determine whether or not the human fetus, is, in fact,
alive.
The conception of a human embryo is
indisputably the beginning of human development. At conception, a unique genetic code is formed from the
combination of genes from the gametes of the parents. An independent life form begins.
It is not an extension of the mother’s body; otherwise, the fetus and
the mother would share the same genetic code.
As Dick Gephardt said (before
he became savagely pro-choice), “Life is the division of human cells, a process
which begins with conception.”[3]
From conception through adolescence, the human body is in the process of
development. All people can count the
months of pregnancy as months of their life.
I did not come into existence on my birthday, June 28, 1988. That’s just when I became visible to the
outside world. I – and by I, I mean the
genetic code and physical body through which my soul exists in the physical
world – have been in existence since 1987.
There is more. At two weeks, the unborn child has a heartbeat and pumps its own
blood – sometimes a different type than the mother’s. At six weeks, the fetus is less than an inch long, but its body
begins to form, including fingers. At
just 43 days, it has detectable brain waves.
By 6½ weeks, the child is moving.
At 9 weeks, the child has its own unique fingerprints, which will stay
with it for the rest of its life. Its
gender is discernable and its kidneys are functioning. By 10 weeks, the gall bladder and thyroid
adrenal glands are working.[4] Finally, at 12 weeks, all of the unborn
child’s body system’s are completely functional. It squints, swallows, can make a fist, can cry, sucks its thumb,
and is sensitive to touch, light and noise.[5] The fetus probably feels some semblance of
pain 16 weeks into pregnancy.[6]
In Roe
v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that this unborn child is not truly living,
a “potential life,” and that the state could not regulate its destruction. Yet the pre-born child of 12 weeks has a
beating heart and a functioning brain – the “vital signs” of human life. Anyone who claims that this child is not
living has an odd definition of life.
Morally Meaningful Life?
Obviously, the human fetus is alive. There is no way around it. I have a model of a 12-week pre-born child
sitting on my bookshelf. It looks
exactly like a born child, just smaller.
Unborn children cry, move, feel, hear, see, grow and have brain
activity. They are alive, and no amount
of gobbledygook about woman’s rights will change that. The true issue in the abortion debate is
whether or not unborn children have the right to live.
It should disgust anyone with a conscience
that “civilized” Americans even have to discuss whether or not an innocent
human being has a right to live. One
would hope that in a nation so divided as our own, we could come together on
the importance of defending the life of innocent humans. Apparently not.
As Arkansas abortionist Dr. William
Harrison has said, “The real issue in the abortion debate today is not when
life begins, but is it morally meaningful life? Well, I don’t know.” He doesn’t know??? This doctor performs 700 abortions every
year – and he’s not even sure if he’s committing murder every time? This just makes it clear to me that
Americans have lost the respect for life.
You’d think that if this doctor thought there was any possibility, any
possibility at all that abortion was genocide, he wouldn’t do it. That’s not a risk normal people take. But no.
This doctor has adopted a “Don’t know, don’t care” attitude to the
humanness of the unborn – along with 80% of our nation.[7]
Some Americans believe that only
self-aware, thinking humans with the ability to love have human rights. Therefore, unborn children would be
excluded. A few noteworthy points:
·
Newborn
infants cannot love or think either.
Yet the killing of a newborn baby is classified as “murder” and very
rarely does one see a politician advocate the fundamental right of a woman to
commit infanticide.
·
Catatonics
and people in comas cannot love or think either. However, once again, society avidly defends their right to live.
Why does society defend catatonics and infants? The reason is clear – they both have the potential to love and think and do – and
so do unborn children. Abortion might
end a child’s life before it has a chance to realize it, but the child’s life
is ended all the same. A pro-life
demonstrator who changes the mind of a pregnant girl about abortion has truly
saved someone’s life – their future, their hopes, their dreams, their chance of
having thoughts and family and friends.
Indeed, the idea that unborn children should not be
protected but born children should is inconsistent beyond belief. According to the World Book Encyclopedia article on abortion, “People who favor an
unrestricted right to abortion during early pregnancy often separate human life
from personhood. They argue that personhood includes an ability to experience
self-consciousness and to be accepted as a member of a community. These people
believe fetuses are not persons and thus should not be granted the rights given
to persons. Such pro-choice thinkers consider birth the beginning of
personhood.” An unborn child is no less a “person” than a born one, even using
the pro-choice standard! Newborns are
no more able to “experience self-consciousness” than unborn children. Uninformed pro-choice Americans seem to
think that birth is a magical moment at which a baby suddenly becomes worthy of
life, but this idea is woefully inconsistent – the only thing that changes at
birth is the baby’s location.
Answers to Pro-Choice
Arguments
The abortion movement thrives on arguments
that make no sense once you try to think through them. For example,
·
“Behind the partial-birth
abortion ban is simply a mistrust of women as moral decision-makers.”[8] Let’s try to think through
this one. What this pro-choicer is really
saying is, “Behind the partial-birth abortion ban is simply a mistrust of women
to make the decision to kill their child.” Well, yeah! Of course the government doesn’t trust
women with the decision to kill their children – that’s why they’re outlawing it!
·
“If you can’t trust me with
a choice, how can you trust me with a child?” Once again, you need to translate through
the code words in pro-choice jargon to get at their real meaning: “If you can’t
trust me to kill my child, how can you trust me with a child?” The pro-choicer
is expecting to be trusted with the
decision of whether or not to kill her child?
·
“We don’t want to go back to
the days of coat-hanger abortions!” Translation: “We don’t want to go back to the days
when women killed their children with coat-hangers, instead of having their
doctors do it with knives!” The “coat-hanger” abortion is analogous to the
argument that we should legalize crack cocaine to drop the death rate from
contaminated crack. Legalizing murder
is not the answer! The coat-hanger
argument also fails to take into account the fact that women still do die from abortions, although
admittedly not as frequently.
We can multiply pro-choice arguments by the
thousands, but all of them share the same underlying fallacy – they don’t take
into account the fact that abortion is murder!
The Bottom of the Slope
The
inspector shrugged. “Of course. It was
obviously an organ farm.”
Tears came to Sister Carlotta’s eyes. “And that’s the only
possibility?”
“A lot of defective babies are born to rich families,” said the
inspector. “There is an illegal market in infant and toddler organs. We close down organ farms whenever we find
out where they are.”
“Where do the organ farms get the babies?” she said.
The inspector shrugged. “Late-term abortions, usually. Some arrangement with the clinics, a
kickback. That sort of thing.”
What do
you think? Is this excerpt from an
dark-tinted science fiction novel?
Actually, yes. It is from Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card. In many cases, though, truth is stranger
than fiction. The organ farming from
unborn infants Card describes has already come to our nation. The only difference is, in Card’s story,
it’s illegal.
So far, abortion has gained
widespread acceptance through ignorance.
It is hard to rally a cause around the rights of a life form that you
can’t see or hear. I suspect that very
few people know just how human an unborn child really is; otherwise, abortion
would never have even been considered in society at large. But no society can become apathetic about
defending life without serious consequences.
The bottom of the slope is visible from where we now stand – a Nazi-esqe
horror chamber of euthanasia, human cloning, organ harvesting, etc.
In some forms, the horror of Auschwitz is
already here. 44 million babies have
been aborted in America since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Compare that to the elimination of “only” 11
million Jews and other undesirables in Nazi Germany, the murder of only four
million civilians by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, etc. In Oregon, well over one hundred people have
committed suicide under the new physician-assisted suicide law there. Across the ocean, an estimated 3,300 people
were euthanized in 2002 in the Netherlands – one-third against their will.
Even more horrific, on the east coast of
our own nation in New Jersey, the organ harvesting has begun. On January 4, 2004, New Jersey governor
James McGreevey (D) signed into law Senate Bill 1909/Assembly Bill 2840, which
allows cloned human embryos to be implanted in a womb and gestated for up to
nine months, and then destroyed. In one
fell swoop, organ harvesting, human cloning and legalized murder came to one of
the 13 original colonies in our union.[9]
On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court
pushed America off an ethical cliff – as a nation, we no longer recognized the
absolute value of human life, which is fundamental to all moral judgments. Now, unless we turn around soon, we face a
long slippery slide down the slope of Auschwitz. Roe v. Wade handed the
USA a horrible inconsistency – unborn children do not have the right to life, but newborn children, the sick and the
comatose do have the right to
life. That inconsistency will be resolved – one way or
another. Unless decent Americans – and
especially the church – intervene, the course our nation follows will not be a
good one.