Vote Pro-Life This November

This November, we as Catholics have an obligation to preserve the sanctity of life, and doing that means voting for candidates who are pro-life. Go to CatholicVote.com for more resources.

The following essay was written by myself. All sources are listed below.

In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided that a pregnant woman has the right to abort her unborn fetus and that the unborn fetus is not human. Thirty-five years later their decision has cost fifty million innocent lives to what Mother Teresa describes as being “the greatest destroyer of peace.” Abortion should be made illegal in the United States of America. Murder is not justified under any circumstances. An unborn child is a human being, making abortion murder and not justifiable.

The abortion debate centers upon the question of whether or not the fetus is human. If the unborn child is not human, then in accordance to general morality and laws, abortion is entirely permissible. However, if the unborn child is human, then abortion is morally wrong, and the government should take all the necessary actions to pass laws making abortion illegal in the United States. The claim that an unborn child is human can be proven on both a biological and philosophical basis.

Biologically, a fetus is a living human. In a body cell , there are 46 chromosomal units, but in a sex cell there are only 23. Through the combination of the male and female sex cells a child is conceived. It is only through this combination that the sex cells “attain the full complement of hereditary units” that define a human being. At conception, the genotype is established, that is the entire genetic identity of an individual, including the genes that do now show as outward characteristics, and will remain in effect for the entire life of the child conceived. “No other event in biological life is so decisive as this one” and no other set of circumstances is as vital in determining who you will become. Conception creates life and makes that life one of a kind: “the genotype does not merely start life – it defines it.” It is clear that at conception, the genotype is conferred, and will be in effect for the entirety of the child’s life.

At conception, a unique human is formed in the womb of the mother. Following the fetus’s formation, the development of the fetus begins to take place. Twenty-one days after conception, the child’s heart begins to pump blood, often with a different blood type than that of the mother. During the sixth week, brain waves are detectable, and the baby can begin thinking on its own. During the eleventh week, all organ systems are functioning, and the fetus has a skeleton, nerves, and circulation. During week twelve, the baby forms all the necessary parts to experience pain, such as nerves and the spinal chord, and during week seventeen, the baby begins to dream. At this point, most of the major development of the fetus has taken place. The fetus in the womb can think for itself, dream for itself, and can even experience pain. The majority of the development has occurred during the seventeenth week. The most common form of abortion is suction, where a tube is inserted and the contents of the womb are sucked out. Usually, the head of the fetus is too big to fit through the tube, so it must be crushed first in order for all the contents to go through the tube. Another form of abortion, which is almost as popular as the first, involves the removal of a fetus using a scraping instrument. Almost all abortions stop a beating heart. If the abortion is performed after the sixth week, then it also ends brain activity. And in cases when the abortion is performed after the child has developed a spinal chord, then there is a chance that the child feels every thing that occurs during the procedure.

From a biological perspective, it is clear that at conception, an unborn child is a living human. Furthermore, the claim that the unborn fetus is a human can be proved philosophically. If the Law of Biogenesis is examined, it is clear that spiders can only create spiders, birds can only create birds, and cats can only create cats. Therefore, humans can only create humans. So if you were to say that an unborn child is not a human, then what is it that the humans have created?

When speaking to any pro-choice activist, an argument that they present is the level of dependency that a fetus has compared to an already-born human being. They claim that because the fetus is not totally independent, and cannot provide for itself, that it should not be regarded as a living being. The problem with that argument arises in many cases in today’s society. We are not going to say that because a person who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s cannot provide for itself, and is dependent on other people is any less human than the rest of us, are we? In the same way, we do not assume that people who need a feeding tube in order to survive are any less human then we are. We do not say, like pro-choice arguments say about the fetus, that until they have become completely independent on others, will they “gain their humanity”. That claim seems to be absolutely absurd. Does the fact that the fetus needs the mother to survive make them any less human then if it were independent? No, just as an Alzheimer patient and those patients who require feeding tubes are not any less human because they aren’t completely independent.

When the Supreme Court declared that all laws protecting babies in the womb were unconstitutional, they imposed the theory that life begins at birth. But what actually happens to the fetus at birth. What miracle or transformation occurs at that moment that miraculously changes what was once a bunch of cells into a human? The answer is simple: the fetus moves eight inches. That’s all that happens. Pro-choice activists will claim that at this point, the baby can breathe and the umbilical cord is cut, making it independent from the mother, but in this case, the pro-life argument for the degree of dependency is applicable.

So on both a biological and philosophical basis, an unborn baby is a unique human, whose humanity began at the moment of conception. The fetus is not a useless clump of tissue, a parasite, or even, as some claim, a “potential human”, rather, the fetus, from the point of conception until death, is a human, and nothing less.

Completely contradicting the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973, the unborn child should receive the same rights that the already-born humans are guaranteed, and included in this list of rights is the right to life. Because the unborn child is a living human, the government should view an abortion as first-degree murder.

Murder is not justified under any circumstances, and since abortion is murder, abortion is not justified. However, regardless of this, many women seem to have “adequate justifications” for aborting their children. In fact, the justifications that women provide do not justify abortion at all.

The mainstream justification is the mother’s right to choose. The mother argues that since it is her body, she has the right to choose what she wants to do with it. However, does the mother have the right to abort her unborn child – a living human being? No. Biologically and philosophically, the unborn child is still a living human and should be treated as such. Even though the woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body, she does not have the right to do what is wrong or to go against the “moral law” and ignore a human’s right to life. In other words, the mother does not have the right to kill the most innocent of us all. As Mother Teresa once put it, “The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of an innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” For whatever reasons the mother may have, aborting her child is not justifiable.

Another issue is rape. A woman feels that abortion is justified in the case of rape. Any woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape is victim of a horrible crime, and there is no getting around the fact that pregnancy does occur in some instances. However, we wouldn’t punish a child for the crimes committed by their parents, so why do we still insist that it is justifiable to kill an unborn child because the father raped a woman? “The unborn entity is not an aggressor when its presence does not endanger the mother’s life. It is the rapist who is the aggressor. The unborn entity is just as much an innocent victim as its mother. Hence, abortion cannot be justified on the basis that the unborn is an aggressor.”

It is clear that abortion is never justified, because it is the killing – the murder – of an innocent child. The government should, in turn, take the necessary actions to make abortion illegal in the United States because, as the unborn child is guaranteed the right to life, abortion is murder.

“One third of our generation has been aborted.” One third of all the people who would have been born after the Supreme Court made abortion legal in 1973 are not here today. Since then, fifty-million innocent lives have been lost to this terrible crime. The unborn should be granted the same rights that the already-born humans are granted, and in that, they should receive the right to life. Abortion is murder, and it is never justified. The United States of America has to take a stand against abortion and must make a law that makes abortion illegal for our generation and for the generations to come.

Sources:

• The Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd edition.
• Diary of and Unborn Baby
• The Abortion Controversy by Carol Emmens
• Is abortion justifiable in cases of rape or incest?
• Are the Unborn Human? by Jonathan Krive
• Abortion Law in the United States: An Overview by John Schwenkler
• Human Life Begins at Conception by Shettles, Landrum, and Rorvik