Is Abortion Murder?

The abortion issue was just about the hottest issue in the presidential electional of 1980. Right-to-life groups all over the country exerted their influence upon candidates and made it clear that they would oppose any candidate who endorsed the abortion ideology. They were successful in their efforts. They proved that most Americans want to protect the rights of the unborn.

It isn't easy, however, to completely rout the forces of so-called Liberalism, so it seems now that the Right-to-lifers are going to have to lock horns with their adversaries on the question of when life begins. As David Brinkley's NEC MAGAZINE put it on August 20, 1981 in a derogatory report about Sen. Jesse Helms: "He (Helms) wants to begin life at conception; that would make abortion tantamount to murder."

Actually, it is almost absurd to have to debate this issue because it really is self-evident that the growing entity within the uterus of a woman is alive. Strange, isn't it, that one who has begun work on the foundation of a building can prosecute anyone who destroys his handiwork — but the living, growing foundation of a human being can be destroyed without legal ppenalty.

We do not believe that abortion-on-demand activists really want a scientific answer to the question of when life begins; it appears that what they want is their own way, the way of self-indulgeence. Nevertheless, it behooves us to keep within the bounds of correct attitudes and to satisfy the minds of reasonable people.

Therefore, let us consider the question honestly.

First, the definition of life found in several dictionaries is this: The quality or character distinguishing an animal or a plant from inorganic or from dead organic bodies, which is especially manifested by metabolism, growth, reproduction, and internal powers of adaptation to environment.

Secondly, what do scientists say? Gairdner B. Moment, in his GENERAL ZOOLOGY (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958, p.23) puts it this way: "The central difference between the living and the lifeless is a difference in organization. Only when atoms are organized into the largest and most complex of molecules proteins and nucleic acids — and only when these in turn are organized into that colorless viscid material called protoplasm and the structures of the cell does the constellation of characteristics known as life emerge . . . The constellation of activities that characterize life is familiar enough: respiration, assimilation and excretion, growth, reproduction, and sensitivity."

Does the human embryo meet the above criteria? Yes, unless one wants to argue about its reproductive capability, and obviously that argument would be senseless when the overall lifespan is considered. From the moment of conception, when the sperm unites with the ovum, all of these processes begin. Moment (author of the above text) states plainly: "Fertilization, the union of egg and sperm to form a single cell, known as the zygote, is customarily taken as the starting-point in the life of the new individual." (p. 130) To which we would add: It has been customary to define life in those terms until political activists arbitrarily confused the issue, without scientific or lawful logic.

The sperm alone, or the ovum alone, does not meet this definition of life as given by science. Some scientists simply shorten the definition of life to "organized protoplasm", and, although any cell in the body (including sperm and ova) is organized protoplasm, such cells cannot perform some of the requirements such as reproduction and independent existence.

Some people will immediately claim that the human embryo cannot reproduce and cannot exist independently, and therefore does not meet the scientific definition under consideration, but this argument is merely a grasping at straws.

Some science texts even claim that life cannot be defined because it is unique; incapable of being compared to anything else in its category. (See Moore & Schultz, BIOLOGY, A SEARCH FOR ORDER IN CCOMPLEXITY, Zondervan, 1970, p. 14).

Joseph Wood Krutch, at one time professor of Dramati erature at Columbia, and later a noted nature writer, has given us some interesting comments regarding life. Noting that by the time Chaarles Darwin came on the scene interest was shifting from ORIGINS to the DEVELOPMENT of life, it was easy for speculators to assume that the tiny one-celled animalcules (protozoa) were nature's first experiment with life. "The bridge between them and the merely chemical ought not be too difficult for the imagination (sic) to bridge and once you had got across it the story would be complete. Evolution could tell it 'from Amoeba to Man.' "

However — ! The more they learned about the "simple" protozoa, the more they realized the explanation was not so simple. Krutch continues, "Simple, indeed! If the first living things really were like them, then the sudden appearance of a protozoan was a phenomenon almost as astonishing as the sudden appearance of an elephant would have been." (See THE GREAT CHAIN OF LIFE, Houghton Mifflin, 1956, pp. 3-5).

 

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