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MY COMMENT:
Nothing that follows is intended to judge, accuse, condemn,
or hurt women who have had an abortion. According to the Holy Bible, Jesus was merciful to women in similar situations. (Luke 6:41-42,
Luke 7:44-50, John 8:3-11) One of the reasons that I am concerned about “a
woman’s right to choose” is that it places the bulk of the responsibility for
ending a pregnancy on the expectant mother, who may be under tremendous pressure
at the time she makes the decision.
The Declaration of Independence states that people have
the God given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution provides that a human life
cannot be taken without due process of law.
Consequently, to determine whether abortion should be legal we need to
decide when human life begins.
Conception occurs when an egg is fertilized by a sperm
cell in the fallopian tube. At that
point, the DNA from the man and woman involved is combined, and the genetic
code of a unique human person comes into being.
Immediately, the cells in the zygote begin to multiply, and each new
cell contains this newly created genetic code.
The genetic code determines the hair, eye, and skin color that the child
will have if the pregnancy is carried to term.
It determines some personality characteristics, and the genetic
susceptibility to certain diseases.
A viable pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg
continues down the fallopian tube and attaches to the mother’s uterus. If not interfered with, gestation will
continue until a live birth occurs.
Sometimes the pregnancy ends with a miscarriage:
A
miscarriage is the loss of a fetus before the 20th week of pregnancy. The medical term for a
miscarriage is spontaneous abortion,
but "spontaneous" is the key word here because the condition is not
an abortion in the common definition of the term.
According
to the March of Dimes, as many as 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage --
most often before a woman misses a menstrual period or even knows she is
pregnant. About 15-25% of recognized pregnancies will end in a miscarriage.
More
than 80% of miscarriages occur within the first three months of pregnancy.
Miscarriages are less likely to occur after 20 weeks gestation; these are
termed late miscarriages.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when the zygote attaches to the
fallopian tube, rather than the uterus.
Such pregnancies are terminated because there is no chance for the baby
to live, and the mother’s life is at risk if the pregnancy continues.
I will not belabor the various stages of pregnancy
further. Most readers are familiar
enough with it. It suffices to say that
as the fetus develops there are various milestones, beyond which some consider
it to be a human being. These
are typified by things like a heartbeat, the development of bodily extremities,
reaction to stimuli, ability to feel pain, and evidence of cognition.
Each of us must examine our conscience to find the point at
which we believe that aborting a pregnancy involves taking a human life. Then we are obliged to try to influence the
collective decision making in our society to ensure that other human beings are
not deprived of life without due process of law. I believe that terminating a pregnancy must
not be done for personal convenience, and abortion must not be just another
method of birth control. From following
the issue in the media, I believe most Americans oppose late term abortions and
so called partial birth abortions.
I believe that the unborn should be treated as human beings
at the time the fertilized and developing egg attaches to the wall of the
mother’s uterus. At that time, the
unborn child has human DNA in a combination that has never existed before, and
will never exist again. The pregnancy is
viable and will result in a live birth; unless ended by natural causes. Consequently, I believe that ending the
pregnancy after this point is taking a human life. The Lord is pretty clear about that when He
says “You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13 NIV) I believe that God will hold us
accountable for the decisions we make as individuals and as a society. Therefore, I believe it is wrong to use
public money to support abortion in any form or any agency that provides
abortion by any of its policies or practises.
I believe that a woman has the right to choose with regard
to her health and what happens to her body; before that choice
results in the taking of human life. I
believe that a woman has the right to self-defense. If carrying a child to term means a
substantial risk to the mother’s life, she should have the right to end the
pregnancy. If a pregnancy results from
incest or rape, and there is a risk that the mother will commit suicide or
suffer permanent psychological damage, (as determined by an independent,
licensed mental health practitioner), by carrying the child to term, then she
should have the right to terminate the pregnancy after receiving information about the long term physical and psychological effects of having an abortion.
Sometimes I think that modern medicine provides us with too
many choices. Testing can now determine,
with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, whether a child will be born
with birth defects or profound mental retardation. Prospective parents may have to decide
whether to live a life that involves caring for a special needs child, and
incurring the expenses that go with it, or ending the pregnancy. Occasionally, life is brutally unfair. Dreams of raising a healthy baby may be
shattered, and the parents may carry the emotional effects of terminating the
pregnancy for the rest of their lives. Nonethelesss, I will ask the question that must be asked. If the child is born alive, or if the child
is say five years old, do the parents or the community have the right to kill
it? I don’t think so. Therefore, I do not think the option should
exist to kill that child before it is born.
Society should have programs to assist the parents with the difficulties
of raising such a child, and programs to provide for the child should the
parents decide to relinquish it for adoption.
As
was demonstrated by the Prohibition Era, there are difficulties with
legislating morality. In the case of
abortion, the most obvious difficulty associated with making abortion illegal
may be deciding how to enforce it. When
abortion was illegal in the past, there were problems with an illegal abortion
industry that was unregulated and dangerous.
Further, women were injured, and sometimes died, when they attempted to
abort their pregnancies themselves.
After
watching the media reaction to Mr. Trump’s statement (which he subsequently modified) about prosecuting women
who have an illegal abortion, I believe there would be very little public
support for it. However, I believe
society could do a lot more to encourage women to carry a child to term, rather
than to end the pregnancy. Free birth
control for needy men and women, improved sex education for teens and adults,
counseling, shelter care, public service advertising, and readily available
adoptive services are some of the ways society could improve its support for both
men and women.
Certainly,
today there is less social stigma toward unmarried women, (or married women who become pregnant in adultery), who become pregnant than
there was in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
Hopefully, not as many women would now attempt to terminate their
pregnancies themselves. However, if
society provides support and education, the number of these attempts may be
reduced. Regardless, after society has
fulfilled its responsibility to provide support, there is a point where people
become responsible for their own actions.
Should
abortion become illegal, I would support the criminal prosecution of the
providers of illegal abortions. As
citizens of a representative democracy, we all bare some of the responsibility
for what is allowed, or prohibited, in our society. Therefore, I feel it is my responsibility to
do what I can, even though it isn’t much, to reason with others about abortion.
Freedom is the right to tell people
what they do not want to hear. (George Orwell)
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