We’ve all heard it: women should have the right to choose. Nobody can wholly refute such a loaded statement. Indeed, women should have the right to procrastinate, grow armpit hair, smoke marijuana and practice abstinence. Government shouldn’t abridge these non-aggressive lifestyle choices.
Like most political language, however, the pro-choice idiom is rife with misnomers designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. No one should possess the right to murder. Non-invasive personal decisions differ from the choice to abort the unborn.
The former deserves de jure protection in a free society, while the latter deserves de jure repercussions. For example, the government should not throw homosexuals in jail for sodomy, but the state certainly should lock away mass murderers. The pro-choice movement essentially betrays such common sense as they support the legal precedent of Roe v. Wade to execute others without due consequence.
Only in Alice’s Wonderland is abortion not tantamount to murder. Given the continuous nature of existence, the sole logical demarcation of personhood – at which one holds inherent human rights – is the moment when sperm meets egg. Any claims about trimesters or physical appearance must be capricious. Conception is the only precise point when a life comes into existence. This is not a religious estimation – it is irrefutably true.
Beyond pure logic, the bulk of scientific evidence contradicts the notion that the developing fetus is not in any sense human. Most abortions occur months after the fetus’ heart starts beating and brain waves form. Determining the status of life based upon how closely a fetus resembles a developed human stinks of arbitrariness and irresponsibility. Far from being analogous to growing bacteria or fruit, it’s time we adopted a more responsible view of the fetus in the womb as it exists: a developing human being.
American criminal law has neglected its due process obligation to secure the sanctity of human life equally and absolutely. If we really regard the truths in the Declaration of Independence as inalienable, we will protect the lives of the unborn notwithstanding their inability to vote, make campaign contributions, stage demonstrations or even speak on their own behalf. We must not continue to depersonalize the fetus as we depersonalized the Abu Ghraib prisoners, African-American slaves on Southern plantations and Japanese-Americans in WWII internment camps.
All persons possess intrinsic human worth and therefore have the same intrinsic rights to life and liberty as everyone else, regardless of theirpolitical expediency.
American criminal law contradicts its own jurisprudence on abortion and fetus personhood. If the mother can kill a growing fetus without being charged with murder, why was Scott Peterson charged with a double homicide for murdering his pregnant wife?
Those who defend abortion on the grounds of personal freedom only tell half of the story. They have no problem denying the right to life, liberty and choice to the unborn child, not because of biological, philosophical or moral reasoning, but usually based on political or sociological arguments.
According to Planned Parenthood’s 1998 “Family Planning Perspectives,” some 93 percent of abortions are obtained for social, not medical, reasons. It is morally and intellectually unfair to make unwanted children bear the chief burden for others’ negligence.
Much like the fight to end Nazi genocidal practices and suppression of women’s suffrage, repealing abortion sanctions will be a strenuous but necessary endeavor. Despite prevailing sociopolitical climates, the noble and principled struggle to liberate the oppressed should never be discounted.
Junior ought to have rights, regardless of whether his conception resulted from bad timing or not. Human worth and freedom should not be selectively doled out, but universally applied.
