There has been a lot of talk recently of politicians like Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Kaine who claim to be “personally pro-life.” While they say they do not support abortion personally, mainly because of their faith, they refuse to allow their faith to impact their public policy position.
This bears a question…if not for religious beliefs, why is abortion wrong?
At the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, we are a non-religious organization. We have people of all faiths, and some of no faith at all, who are part of our organization. We believe that being pro-life goes beyond one’s religious beliefs and is a basic human right. We believe every human life, from conception to natural death, has value, and deserves to be protected.
So how do we “prove” the preborn child is a human being? The good news is, we don’t have to…modern science and medical technology have already done so. Ultrasound images have truly become a window to the womb, where we can see a pre-born child reacting to his or her mother’s voice, dancing to music, and responding to stimuli.
Unfortunately, those who support abortion choose to turn a blind eye to science when it comes to fetal development. They ignore the discovery by researchers at Northwestern University of tiny sparks that erupt from the egg at the exact moment of conception. They discount the Oxford study that found a pre-born baby’s heart begins beating just 16 days after conception. Day after day, week after week, there is more and more evidence that life begins at conception.
At the core of the pro-life movement is the science that a pre-born child is a human being. Once that is established, as science and medical technology has done, the question then becomes, which lives are worth protecting…and who makes those decisions?
Certainly the “less than human” or “not worth protecting” argument isn’t a new one…It is the same argument presented by Hitler and his supporters when they argued that Jews, and others of non-Aryan descent were “sub-human” and not fit to live. Not coincidentally it is the same argument used by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger when she referred to some as “human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization”. Hitler, Sanger, and other proponents of eugenics in general and abortion specifically argue that some among us are not fit for civilization and should be eliminated.
The question for those who are not pro-life is simple…who gets to decide? In other countries the life of a child of one gender is not worth the same as the life of a child of another. Certainly most of us, even those who support abortion, can agree that is barbaric. Yet many abortion advocates condone killing a child because he or she has an extra chromosome. Those who support doctor-prescribed suicide are fine with killing people who they deem don’t have what they consider a quality life.
This is why the question of human rights is so crucially important. Once we recognize the pre-born child as a human, the rest is simply a matter of semantics. Who decides what constitutes a “defect” in a child that makes him or her unfit for life and deserving of an abortion….red hair, green eyes, premature balding in older age? At the end of life, who decides what constitutes “quality of life”? Right now, the standard for euthanizing someone is if they have less than six months to live, but what if someone decides to make that 60 months?
The fact of the matter is, once we go down the slippery pro-abortion slope of determining which lives are worth allowing to continue, and which should be terminated, whether for the convenience of others, or for any other reason, we can’t turn back. That is why the abortion issue goes beyond an issue of religious belief and is a human rights issue. That is why those who claim to be “personally pro-life” should be fighting to protect all lives!