Thirty-five years and 50 million Americans while the horror of slavery fades from memory
By RightMichigan.com Posted in Abortion | Breaking News — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
Today's one of those big days that leaves me at a bit of a loss for what to say. On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court legislated a new "right" into the Constitution, legalizing the pre-birth murder of innocent human beings. In the thirty-five years between that day and this the United States has slaughtered 50 million children.
Abortion is a hot button topic. It's the sort of thing that isn't discussed in polite company. It's "history" and "just the way it is." But it's also my generation.
And I'll be honest, that doesn't sit well with me. I can get fired up about the subject. After all, we're talking about the organized extermination of 50 million children based on nothing more than their proximity to free air. Get your oxygen from an umbilical cord and you're somehow less human? Less worthy of love and a fighting chance?
I'm a child of the 1970s. Barely, but I just made it. September 18, 1979 my mom and dad decided that I was a little bit more than a blob of tissue and that I was worth a chance. Times were tough. The economy wasn't so hot. My folks were young. Newly married. My dad was working full time while finishing school, struggling to make ends meet. It wouldn't be tough to make the argument that I was a bit of an inconvenience. The argument has certainly been made by others.
35 years and 50 million of my classmates, church buddies, coworkers, street-hockey teammates and opponents, heroes, oncologists, doctors, nurses, ministers, football players, rocket scientists, cooks, artists, civil rights leaders and friends. Dead. Gone. Exterminated. Silenced. Murdered violently in the only home they ever got the chance to know. And here, on American soil.
My generation. My friends. My classmates. My church buddies. I take it personally. Every single person who claims the title "human being" should do the same. But so often we don't. We get caught up in the minutia. We talk about mental health and the horrors of rape and incest. We talk about gestation cycles and trimesters. We talk about "procedures" and "operations." But how often do we talk about the real issue? How often do we get past all the details and get down to brass tacks?
We're not discussing tissue and procedures and trimesters and womens' suffrage. We're talking about twenty-five-plus million murdered women.
That's what every last sub-issue and discussion topic ultimately boils down to. We're talking about human lives. Not potential, not possible but real, actual, breathing human beings complete with beating hearts and thinking minds.
Four hundred years ago as mankind sat atop, he thought, the heights of achievement and civilization a blight on the history of humanity took shape, festered and grew. For hundreds of years the coasts of Africa were raided by European traders, men and women stolen or purchased from their homes, stacked like cargo into the hulls of ships and transported for months over the open seas into the new world. Those that survived the voyage were sold to the highest bidder. They were human cattle. Property. They had no rights and no freedoms. They were mistreated, abused, tortured, crippled and forced to work until their deaths. But were they any less human?
The appauling norms of that period of American history still haunt us today, and rightly so. The thought that any man could be treated with such wanton disregard for his humanity shocks and appauls each of us. And yet the horrific truth of those centuries no longer spurs us to action. No longer pricks our collective conscience.
Are the victims of America's abortion holocaust any less human than the Africans traded for gold and silver centuries ago?
In both instances the victims of murder and oppression lack only the protection of man's laws. Their humanity cannot be questioned. Their value, our Nation's founding documents hold, is found not in any ascribed legal worth but in an inalienable and intrinsic worth derived from their divine creation. Created equal. Well before birth.
It took the United States eighty-seven years from the Declaration of Independence to the Emancipation Proclamation, finally acting to rid itself of the atrocities of slavery. I only pray it doesn't take that long to end the wholesale slaughter of continuing generations.
Thirty-five years and counting, today.
That's what every last sub-issue and discussion topic ultimately boils down to. We're talking about human lives. Not potential, not possible but real, actual, breathing human beings complete with beating hearts and thinking minds.
This is the difference between the hardcore pro-life supporter and someone like myself. You see, the fetus doesn't even begin to build the most rudimentary of brain structures until the neural tube closes - the brainstem - at aprox. the 7th week. And if taking breaths is important, that doesn't happen until aprox. the 10th week. Thus, when a fetus is aborted before their is a brain, I see that as the equivalent of a family deciding to turn off the life-support of a brain-dead relative. Also, there a procedures that can be labeled "abortions" that some may say should not be counted:
Blighted Ovum: Also called an anembryonic pregnancy. A fertilized egg implants into the uterine wall, but fetal development never begins. Often there is a gestational sac with or without a yolk sac, but there is an absence of fetal growth.
Ectopic Pregnancy: A fertilized egg implants itself in places other than the uterus, most commonly the fallopian tube. Treatment is needed immediately to stop the development of the implanted egg. If not treated rapidly, this could end in serious maternal complications.
Molar Pregnancy: The result of a genetic error during the fertilization process that leads to growth of abnormal tissue within the uterus. Molar pregnancies rarely involve a developing embryo, but often entail the most common symptoms of pregnancy including a missed period, positive pregnancy test and severe nausea.
I track the Saudi-backed expansion of extremist Wahhabi Islam
http://wahaudi.blogspot.com
A "family member on life support" pressumably needs that life support to continue living. No other realistic (sans the miraculous) hope of recovery. An unborn child is, at the period of development you mention, literally only a handful of DAYS away naturally developing one extra-maternal life sustaining physical attribute or another.
But if you want to get into the technical medical science, the most commonly used determinant of life, the beating heart, kicks into action at three weeks, before many women even suspect they are pregnant.
By every measure we're discussing living human beings.
--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com
I agree that the fetus is "DAYS" away - and that's the important moral difference between our points of view. Before that threshold is reached, we have a human fetus absent a mind. In that case, abortion idoes not end a sentient life. But if the fetus continued normal, healthy development, then those few days make all the difference in the world.
Bear in mind that if you use the future to protect the fetus then that standard can just as easily be used to terminate it. Consider an future wherein an advanced medical test could accurately determine miscarriages (naturally occuring abortions). Upon learning that a fetus will not survive another four weeks, some women - especially if they have been through a previous miscarriage-may decide to end the pregnancy as soon as possible rather than wait possibly encounter further complications.
Also, bear in mind that as technology advances, more and more women will learn of their pregnancies closer and closer to conception.
I track the Saudi-backed expansion of extremist Wahhabi Islam
http://wahaudi.blogspot.com
Take a look at the ultrasound, then come back and read what you have written. And then tell us again about this mindless, worthless lump of flesh. And try not to think about the future you might have together - throwing baseball, skinned knees, fishing, watching sunsets - because, as you say, the future should not be used to defend it.
Pretty poor reasoning, right? Flawed argument, emotion, all that. I know. But this is what it comes down to in the end, no matter how much you try and think or reason your way out of it.
It's just that way with miracles.
Chances are that the fetus you saw in the ultrasound was not mindless because neurological development is underway by Carnegie stage 23 (days 56 to 60) see image. Earlier in the pregnancy, however, the fetus doesn't resemble a tiny human.
In any event, while I don't believe in magic (miracles), I wouldn't characterize your reasoning as flawed. I do think you mischaracterized my position by suggesting that I think the fetus is "worthless" - mindlessness is not equivalent to worthlessness. However, this does reaffirm the old adage that reasonable people can disagree on reasonable grounds.
I track the Saudi-backed expansion of extremist Wahhabi Islam
http://wahaudi.blogspot.com
I will allow you to recant your statement about miracles.
And FWIW, my wife has had a miscarriage, and we wept for what might have been - Carnegie Stage notwithstanding.
I don't know if this will help or hurt, but I'm relating it in the hopes it will help.
At one point, my mother was about 4 months along with child when she miscarried. About 5 years later, when my sister was 3, and was way to young to have ever heard about this, she told me that she was "glad she waited to come this time because it was better." I asked her what she meant and she told me that she was glad that she had been born the second time she was in mommy's belly because this life was much better than that one would have been.
Far too young to have any idea what miscarriage would ever mean. It gives me hope.
" Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them..." --Frederick Douglass
Sorry to disappoint you, but I see nothing magical nor miraculous about conception or birth. It's the same old story repeated throughout the animal and plant kingdoms - sperm meets egg. So for the same reasons that I see a new crop of corn as a natural act of life, so to are the newborn. Certainly its impressive and fascinating, but not a divine creation (except for Jesus Christ, according to traditional Christian theology).
I track the Saudi-backed expansion of extremist Wahhabi Islam
http://wahaudi.blogspot.com
" Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them..." --Frederick Douglass
...and I would caution those who are against it: You made a choice in deciding to have the relation to create life, yet you are willing to deny the same right to the life you just created. Where is the justice in that? I understand the ethical statements to protect the mother, yet everyone deserves a chance, including the ones who can't speak for themselves.
" Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them..." --Frederick Douglass
Thank you for writing this piece. You are almost the same age as our oldest son, also born to near newlyweds with a less than rosy future. Yet here we are, and he is a wonderful, intelligent vital human being.
It breaks my heart to think of the 50 million lost from your generation.
Keep up the good work, we need writers and leaders like you.
Soldier's Mom - Golfer's Wife - Home alone a lot
For serving.
I've got a brother that joined the marines, a brother that's at West Point, three buddies from the neighborhood in the service, two guys I grew up with at church in the sandbox now and three more guys who are as close as brothers who shipped out with their guard unit two weeks ago.
Guys like that make me even more grateful for what I've got.
--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com
I'm happy that you came out alright.
I was born deaf, so one thing that makes me wonder, if my parents weren't Christians, but worldly liberals, would have they chosen to abort me if they didn't want to deal with deafness? If one aborts a healthy baby, then there is absolutely no reason to believe a baby with birth defects could be aborted as well.
I live a normal life despite the fact I am deaf, all abortions deny every child a chance to live out his or her life fully. That's flat-out wrong, period. No questions about it.
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Daniel 2:20 And he [God] changeth the times and seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.