I could go on and on about how nowhere in the Constitution, let alone the Fourth Amendment, is the word "abortion" found, (or the word "privacy," for that matter) but a lot more is at stake than Constitutional arguments.
If you accept the premise that an unborn fetus is not a human life, the pro-choice's side of the debate is unequivocally correct. No government, state of federal, should have the power to mandate what you can or can not do with a "collection of cellular tissue". Accepting the premise that a fetus is not a human person, the notion that the government would restrict abortion should be as repugnant as the idea that the government would restrict someone's ability to receive cancer treatment.
But let's examine that premise. What magically changes that causes a "fetus" — that "collection of cellular tissue" — to become a human person? Does it become a human person the instant it exits the mother's body? (The only change being environment?) Maybe to become a human person, it must be severed from the placenta or begin breathing on its own? (The only change being degree of dependency on the mother.)
The only other two differences I can think of between a "fetus" and what everyone recognizes as a human person are size and level of development. And I agree with the fine people at Stand to Reason that none of these four criteria (size, level of development, environment, or degree of dependency) are valid criteria for differentiating between what is a human person and what is not.
If the "collection of cells" we are talking about isn't a human person, how do you account for it immediately having unique DNA from it's mother? Immediately having a gender? Having neural tubes and a primitive circulatory system in fewer than four weeks? Having lungs and its own heart beat in five weeks? Arms and legs after six weeks? Elbows, fingers, teeth, eyes & ears after seven weeks? And all of this is even before it's classified as a fetus (it's still an embryo)!
By the time it's a "fetus", the face is well formed, it can make a fist with it's fingers, it's liver is producing red blood cells. ... And pro-abortion groups want me to believe this is something that is just as discardable as a hangnail?!
In the last 34 years, by very conservative estimates, there have been more than 50,000,000 abortions in the United States [1]. That's nearly 1.5 million abortions per year. Three thousand military deaths in Iraq is a number to take seriously. What would the world look like if the energy being spent — if the debate being waged — to stop these deaths occurring at a rate lower than 1,000 a year instead went to stopping those 1.5 million abortions per year?
May, over the next year, the United States stop killing the unborn. May January 22, 2008 be a much less somber day.
Update: Quite relevantly, Breakpoint spotlighted National Geographic's "In the Womb" today.
They provided some excellent "further reading" at the end of the text version of their commentary that I thought I'd also highlight here:
- National Geographic's website for In the Womb
- Gina Dalfonzo, "Journey into the Womb," The Point, 12 January 2007
- Denise Morris, "Sanctity of Human Choice," The Line, 10 January 2007
- YouTube videos of babies in the womb
- Susan E. Wills, Esq., "Ten Legal Reasons to Reject Roe," Public Square
- BreakPoint Commentary No. 050818, "Getting Wise to theLies: Why Young Women Are Choosing Life"
- BreakPoint Commentary No. 050608, "What's Right in Our Own Eyes: Between a Woman and Her God"
- Scott Klusendorf, Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively (Stand to Reason Press, 2002)
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