The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: Opinion

While I agree that unwanted pregnancies are a severe problem, I absolutely cannot accept abortions as a part of the solution. I believe we should staunchly support reproductive health, choice, responsible sexual decisions, and an array of other initiatives to promote healthy families. However, I also believe that an unborn child is endowed with a right to life.

Thanks to the bickering between the extreme right and the extreme left, every position in the abortion debate is labeled as either "pro-choice" or "pro-life". I despise both of those terms, mainly because they frame the argument in a very inarticulate way. After all, I'm pro-choice. I support people's right to choose where to live, what to eat, what to do for a career, what political and ethical views they hold, you name it - I'm generally pro-choice when it comes to what people do to and for themselves. Here's the problem though - I believe that an individual's life begins at the moment of conception.

Consider these facts: at 18 days a baby's heart begins to beat, at 43 days the brain coordinates movements, at 8 weeks all organs are functioning, at 9 weeks a baby has individual Fingerprints, at 10 weeks a sense of touch, and at 12 weeks a baby can smile, suck his/her thumb and make a fist. While I understand that bearing a child can place severe limitations on a mother, I cannot automatically hold the mother's rights above those of the child. That's not anti-choice, it's simply defending the rights of an unborn child who cannot speak for him/herself.

To those of you who would define a fetus as "a bunch of cells" rather than life, consider this - most bunches of cells stay just that, a bunch of cells. Even when they multiply, they just become a bigger mass of cells. But the cells of a fetus are unique, they multiply, diversify, and form all the incredible structures of the human body.

Consider the fact that approximately 1.37 million abortions occur in the U.S. each year, of these, 13,700 occur after the 20th week. What's highly disturbing about this statistic is the fact that children have been born prematurely and survived with only 23 weeks of gestation (one child even survived at 21 weeks). I've heard many people justify abortion by saying that they believe in abortion "because the baby cannot survive independently of the mother". The fact that children have been born and survived ahead of 23 weeks challenges that argument. How many of those 13,700 children could have survived outside of the womb? Finally, many newborns are not capable of surviving independently of a motherlike environment - children born prematurely are placed immediately in incubators and given feeding tubes. Does the fact that they are dependant on such systems give us reason to terminate their lives? Certainly not. So why should their right to life be diminished if they are in a mother's womb?

Continued...

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