Abortion is the number-one killer in the United States. Five thousand die each year from cigarettes, and twenty-five thousand from drunk drivers, but in just the first ten years of legalizing abortion, the country lost fourteen million lives. All the wars in the entire history of our country have killed a total of just under 1.5 million. Yet in a single year we kill that many babies by abortion.
1. "No one knows when human life begins."
Answer: If no one knows when life begins, it might begin at
conception. If it does begin at that point, then abortion is murder.
Can we justify killing what might be a human being? Should
we shoot at a moving object in the woods if we are not sure whether
or not it is human? Then neither should we kill babies if we are
not sure they are not human.
Actually, we do know when human life begins. It
begins at conception. A sperm, with just its 23 chromosomes, is not a
human being; nor is an ovum, with its 23 chromosomes. But when
they unite into one entity with 46 chromosomes, the result is a
human being. This is a medical fact. Genetically, the fertilized
ovum is a human being, with its own lifelong, characteristic code
and identity. From this point on, it is simply a matter of its
growth, not of its kind.
By the seventh day of its life, it is planted in
the uterus, its home for the next nine months. By day 17, the
blood cells and the heart are formed. By day 24, there is a heartbeat.
By day 30, it has grown 10,000 times its original size and has
millions of cells. By six weeks, its nervous system is
controlling its own body. It now looks distinctly human. By day 45, it
has its own brain waves, which it will keep for life. By seven
weeks, it has all the internal organs of an adult (though it weighs
only one-thirtieth of an ounce and is less than one inch long.)
By eight weeks, all external organs are formed. By nine to ten
weeks, it can drink and breathe amniotic fluid. From here on, it is
just a matter of growth. Before it is born, it can suck its thumb,
cry (if it had air), and recognize its mother's voice and heartbeat.
In short, it is a tiny, growing human being.
2. "The mother has the right to control her own body."
Answer: First of all, a baby is not part of its mother's body.
It is an individual human being, with its own separate body. To
be sure, the mother is "feeding" the inborn baby, but does a
mother have the right to stop feeding her baby after it is born?
This would be murder by starvation, and to cut off the source of
life for a preborn baby is also a morally culpable act.
Second, even if the unborn baby were part of its
mother's body, it would not be true that she has a right to do just
anything she wants to her own body. For example, she does not have a
moral right to mutilate her own body by cutting off a hand or a foot.
Nor does she have a right to kill her own body (commit suicide).
Seldom do abortionists properly complete the
sentence that they so glibly proclaim. "A woman has the right over her
own body. . . " A right to do what? A right to murder? This is
nonsense. There is no moral right to do a moral wrong. But if
the unborn baby is a human being, then the so-called right of
the mother turns out to be a "right" to do a wrong: to murder.
Of course, it is absurd to say that a mother (or anyone) has a
right to commit murder.
3. "The unborn baby is not really human until it is born."
Answer: First of all, if it is not human before it is born,
then what is it? It is not a mineral or a vegetable. It is not an
animal such as a dog or a monkey. In fact, it is not an animal
at all; it is a human being. Cows give birth to cows; horses
give birth to horses. No medical person has any difficulty
identifying an unborn dog as a dog, or an unborn pig as a pig. Why
should there be any question about an unborn human?
Does this statement mean they are human only when
they change their location and move outside the womb? Since when
does where one lives determine one's humanity? The difference
between babies that are born and those that are unborn is not their
essential nature; it is simply a matter of size and location.
Accidental or circumstantial characteristics such as size or place
cannot determine whether or not a being is human.
4. "Unborn babies are not conscious beings."
Answer: This objection assumes that one must have
consciousness in order to be human. But if consciousness determines
humanness, then sleeping adults are not human. And if consciousness is
the test for humanness, then whenever someone lapses into a coma,
they instantly lose their humanity. The logical conclusion from
this is that it would never be murder to kill an unconscious
person. And so all a killer need to do to escape murder charges
would be just to knock out their victim before shooting them!
Furthermore, babies in the womb
are conscious. By four to six weeks after conception, they have their own brain
waves, which they will keep for life. The absence of a brain wave is
considered a sign of death; why, then, is the presence of a
brainwave not considered a sign of life? And as early as three months
after conception, babies react to stimuli. They can consciously
sense pressure and pain.
Finally, it is not consciousness as such that
distinguishes a human being from an animal, but rather
self-consciousness. For higher animals are conscious too. However,
self-consciousness does not occur until a child is about 18 months old.
So by abortionist's logic, the killing of anyone under the age on
18 months could be considered justifiable "abortion." (While
this view is not yet widely accepted, some noted scientists are
already pushing for babies not to be given legal status as human beings
until they are several days old. By then, they argue, all the
tests for wholeness will have been completed, and it can be
determined whether or not this particular baby should be allowed to live.)
5. "Every child has a right to a meaningful life."
Answer: First of all, what are the criteria for a
meaningful life, and who decides whether or not a life is meaningful?
This kind of reasoning has already gone so far that some courts
have convicted parents for giving birth to children that they knew
ahead of time, from prenatal tests, would be deformed!
It should be kept in mind that this same logic leads
to the murdering of larger deformed human beings who live
elsewhere (that is, outside the womb.) The logic of abortionists leads
inevitably to infanticide and euthanasia. Even some
pro-abortionists (Joseph Felcher, for example) admit that the two issues are
logically tied together. In fact, there would be greater logical
justification for taking the life of someone already
known to be deformed than one which prenatal tests have simply indicated
might be.
6. "It is better to have an aborted child than to have an
abused one."
Answer: In the first place, this assumes that non-abortion of
unwanted babies leads to abuse. Statistics show just the opposite.
Child abuse cases have actually increased as the number of
abortions has gone up. Apparently, the disregard for human life
reflected in the acceptance of abortion is extended from the
prebirth to the postbirth attitude toward offspring.
Second, the objection assumes wrongly that abortion
is not in and of itself a real abuse. Actually, abortion is one
of the worst abuses that can possible be inflicted on a human being.
The abortion process itself is horribly abusive. One common
process tears the tissue of the tiny, defenseless unborn into
pieces, by violent suction; these pieces are then thrown into the
garbage can. The D&C method of abortion uses a sharp instrument to
chop the little baby into pieces; it is then scrapped from the womb
and trashed. The saline method replaces the amniotic fluid
surrounding the baby with salt water; the brine into which the baby is
immersed then eats it skin off, and when the baby inhales this
salt water, it burns up from the inside out. This process can
scarcely be called "responsible parenthood," as pro-abortionists
describe it.
Besides the abusive and cruel manner in which the
baby suffers death, there is the further (and final) abuse of murder
itself. Not only is the baby abused in the way it dies, it is
abused in losing the privilege of life itself. In view of this, it
is twisted reasoning which claims that abortion avoids abuse.
Abortion is abuseone of the worst abuses of all.
Finally, if we can murder the unborn to prevent
potential abuse, then why not murder the born who are undergoing
actual abuse? Or, to put it the other way, if we protect the born who
are undergoing child abuse, then should not we all the more protect
the unborn, who are even more defenseless? Abortion is child abuse
of the worst kind.
7. "We must stop overpopulation, or we will all starve."
Answer: Abortionists propound a false dilemma: We must
choose between abortion and overpopulation. There are other alternatives.
First, birth control can limit overpopulation without murder.
The real choice is whether to control population by killing the
innocent or without killing them. Here, as elsewhere, an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Furthermore, starvation is not the automatic result
of increased population. Starvation is not a simple problem
which would automatically disappear if only there were fewer people.
Hunger and poverty have not been eliminated in the US, despite
all our affluence and agricultural productivity. Nor is the
difficulty any shortage of farmable land. Studies have shown that
the farmable land of the world can sustain a world population
many times the present one. The real problems are social and
political, not numerical.
Finally, who would recommend that we kill all our
welfare recipients, just because they cannot earn the food that they need?
Why then, should we take the lives of people that we think
might turn out to be poor? Those who
are poor would be more likely candidates for our hit list. It is interesting to note that those
who suggest abortion as a means of combating overpopulation, seldom
offer their own lives as a means cutting down the population.
They are glad, however, to offer a sacrifice of innocent and
defenseless human beings so that they themselves will not starve! How noble
of them.
8. "We cannot legislate morality."
Answer: First of all, if this is so, then we should get rid
of all the legislated morality we now have on the books. We
could start by rescinding our prohibitions against murder,
cruelty, theft, child abuse, incest and rape. All of these are cases
of morals being legislated. We could also eliminate antislavery
laws, along with all civil rights laws, for these also legislate
moral behavior. It would be clearly wrong to do so, and few
abortionists would suggest that we do away with any of these laws. If this
is the case, then why should we not have laws to protect the
moral rights of the unborn humans.
Further, the present abortion-on-demand law itself is
an instance of morality being legislated. For it says, in
effect, that it is morally right to take the life of an unborn human being.
It is, in fact, impossible (and undesirable) to avoid
legislating morality. The aim of all good legislation should be put into
law what is just and right. And by no stretch of the imagination
can it be deemed right to take away an innocent human being's right
to life. For the right to life is the door to all other rights.
Without life there is no right to anything else.
Finally, changing a law can help to change public
opinion regarding a moral evil. In the United States, for example,
the outlawing of slavery helped to change the general attitude
regarding the morality of slavery. Today, even most descendants of
slave owners believe slavery is wrong.
9. "No mentally retarded child should be brought into the world."
Answer: It is worth noting that no organization of parents
with mentally retarded children has endorsed abortion on demand.
All families I have known with Downs Syndrome children regard them
with real joy because of their capacity for unfeigned love.
Retarded children are human, and killing them is
killing humans. Just because the unborn are smaller (and defenseless)
does not justify killing them. Again, the logic by which
abortionists justify therapeutic abortions would also justify infanticide.
Let's take, for example, two babies born in Austria
a number of years ago. One was a healthy boy for which the
mother was glad. The other was a girl. She had Downs Syndrome, and
her mother was grieved. Nevertheless, this mother loved the
little girl and taught her to care for herself. One day the mother had
a stroke, which left her helpless. Her retarded daughter took
over her care for the rest of her life. The boy that day also grew up.
The whole world later heard of him. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Now, which of these babies would the abortionist have done
away with?
10. "Why should a rape victim be forced to bear a child she
did not will to have?"
Answer: Rape is one of the worst indignities a person can suffer.
One must have great compassion for rape victims. However,
several things must be kept in mind. First, there is no way to
become "unraped." Becoming "unpregnant" (via abortion) cannot make
one "unraped." Second, justice cannot be obtained for the rape
victim by punishing the unborn baby resulting from the rape.
Further, two wrongs do not make a right. It will
not help the mother to burden her with the guilt of a murder on top
of the indignity of rape.
It is noteworthy that conception seldom occurs from
rape, so the percentage of babies born of rape is actually quite small.
But the few babies who are conceived by rape also have a right
to live.
Who has not been blessed by the music of that
wonderful gospel singer, Ethel Waters? Yet her mother was, at the age
of thirteen, a rape victim. Should we have aborted Ethel? Why
should we punish the innocent product of a rape? Let's punish the
guilty producer of rapethe rapist!
11. "People are going to have abortions anyway, so we might
as well legalize them."
Answer: Should we also legalize rape and child abuse,
since people are going to do them anyway? Should we add incest and
cruelty to the legal list because people persist in doing them?
Legalizing an evil does not make it morally right.
Some argue that anti-abortion laws are as wrong as
anti-drinking laws. However, legalized abortion does not fit into
the same category as legalized drinking. First of all,
legalized drinking, does not necessarily involve a crime against another
innocent person. Secondly, legalized drinking does not in
itself take the life of another human being, but abortion does.
So what argues against prohibition does not argue for
abortion.
Further, legalizing an activity does not necessarily
curb its abuse. Sometimes it promotes it. Such has been the case
with abortion in the United States. On the other hand, changing the
law can help change the general attitude toward an activity, as
the laws abolishing slavery have shown. Laws cannot in
themselves force people to be good, but enforcing good laws can help
restrain people from doing evil.
12. "We should not project our morality on others."
Answer: If this is so, then why are the abortionists
projecting their morality on the unborn? They are saying, in effect, "It
is my moral belief that you should not live." Actually, this is not
a projection of morality, but a projection of immorality. What
is needed in the case of abortion is that we do
project morality into the situation, because certainly it is better to project
morality than to project immorality. If those who are able to protect
the innocent in this way do not do so, then who will?
Contrary to what the abortionist says, what our
society needs most is a projection of morality. People need, for
example, to project moral concern on others whenever they get behind
the wheel. This would save many lives. In fact, if those who
drink would not drive, this would be a greatly appreciated projection
of morality for the 25,000 people who will otherwise fall victim
to drunk drivers this year.
What is wrong is not projecting our moral beliefs on
others, but destroying the moral rights of others, which is
precisely what happens with abortion. Someone is taking away the moral
right of the innocent to live.