(Caveat: The following article contains some vivid descriptions of abortion, that may not be suitable for all readers. But we should keep in mind that as the murder of the unborn has been removed as a ‘constitutional right’ in the United States, it is still being promoted across the land, and the world. The holocaust of the unborn is too grim a reality to ignore. We must continue to pray, work and sacrifice for the cause of life, supporting mothers, children and families in whatever ways we might and are able. Ad vitam!)
Let us be very clear about the subject being discussed. What is ‘abortion’ that activists want to legalise? Abortion is the willful destruction of innocent human beings in the early stages of their lives while they are still sheltered in their mothers’ wombs. That is, abortion is the name given to any process by which the baby is intentionally killed at any time during the first nine months of her life. It is usually done by a device like a vacuum cleaner when the child is small enough to be sucked out, or when bigger the child is cut to pieces while inside the womb and the pieces are taken out one by one. The final part is the head which needs to be crushed because it is too big to be taken out intact. If you are aborted, you die a gruesome death. If I was aborted, I would have died.
The fact that we begin our lives in our mothers’ Fallopian tube, and from then on continuously grow and develop until we come to the point we are at today, is indisputable scientifically. Embryologists know that we begin at our conception, when there is a fascinating transition at oocyte fertilization – in which paternal and maternal gametes unite and then cease to exist, and a new individual is generated who thenceforth directs and governs her own growth and development. The latest discoveries in science reveal that our heart starts beating during the third week after our conception, around when mother may be thinking that she has missed her period. By 8 weeks of age, we are so well formed, that apart from being smaller, there is little difference between the child in the womb and the infant outside.
The law needs to protect the right to life of every human being. Human rights apply to the child as much as to the mother. One certainly needs to love the mother, but not by facilitating the killing of her child. There will often be distress when a woman finds that she is with child and she does not at that time want the child. However, whether the child is wanted or not, the reality is that the child is now there, and the woman is now a mother, and the efforts should go into making the best of this reality, and not towards killing one of the party. A civilised nation does not destroy those they do not want, whether the other is unwanted because of their race or religion, or whether they are young and dependent, or old and senile. One does not kill an unwanted husband nor lobby for the legalisation of the termination of spouses, even when the person may be causing great distress. One needs to keep in mind that the unborn child is absolutely innocent and is not an aggressor. And we do not thus far lobby to euthanise parents who are no longer useful to the furtherance of our career, or who may hinder our social life.
It is not a religious or cultural point of view that in an abortion the physician, and the acquiescing mother who is nurturing the child, kills the helpless child, while the father abdicates his responsibility to protect his family. That the person we abort is a living growing human being like you and I is objective fact. That the child tries to avoid the abortionist’s instruments when he tries to grab her is known and the evidence documented. All that religion or culture can say is whether killing of the innocent is good or bad. If we take the view that innocent children should not be killed, but rather protected, then we cannot logically be promoting the legalisation of abortion. Culture may help to promote the need for upholding the value of marriage. Religion may help in teaching the value of chastity in youth, and fidelity in marriage, and respect for members of the opposite sex. Religion may help in understanding that the child is a gift to be treasured and not a burden to be eliminated by reason of poverty or inconvenience. However, the humanity of the preborn child and her right to continue living the life she has already begun transcends culture.
There is proclaimed also a special need for aborting disabled children. That type of thinking would only be ‘justified’ if we consider ourselves a nation that destroys not only the weak and the helpless, but also the sick the maimed and the malformed, whether naturally or during a war. Do we go to a child with Down’s syndrome and say they that they should be killed, or should have been before they were born? Down’s syndrome children are particularly targeted when the laws allow it. Does the mother of a disabled child wish she had killed her, even though the activists want to have done so? The sorrow of being parents of a special needs child is real, but it can be less than that of being parents of a murdered child.
Apart from disability, one needs to be aware that abortion promoters also start with children conceived under extreme situations such as rape and incest. If I was conceived in a rape, should I have been killed? What is the difference between a child conceived by incest and a child conceived in a natural marriage? Why should one live and the other die? Every country that slipped down the slippery slope to legalising abortion started that slide using the arguments of rape, incest and deformity. In the US, Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) lied to the courts that she was gang-raped, and it was her case Roe vs Wade that led to the legalisation of abortion that the US is suffering through today. The outcome has only been the escalation and liberalisation of abortion, not a reduction. When abortion is provided by law, there is less reason to penalise rapists, if the problem can be conveniently resolved, or sucked out as the case may be. When abortion is legal, men have more clout to force women to abort, and the mother has less reason to refuse.
The same arguments about back-alley unsafe abortions were used in the US and Europe over half a century ago. The reality is that abortion is committed quite openly in sanitary conditions no different from conditions when it would be legal. A renowned hospital in this country of Sri Lanka openly advertises rates for abortion, giving you the option for using a room or a ward when admitted for the elimination of uterine contents. D&C is one service offered – it means dilation and curettage. That means open the pathway (dilation), and cut the child to pieces (curettage). Furthermore, abortifacient pills are available at every pharmacy, even in those with statues of sacred and immaculate hearts, and lamps lit in prayer above the counters where these death drugs are sold.
Abortion not only kills the baby, it deeply harms the mother. Women die due to complications of abortion regardless of whether it was legal or illegal, whether in Canada or Australia or the Philippines. The mental anguish resulting from the violent deprival of maternity does not depend on the legality or otherwise of the fact that a mother killed the child in the womb. Abortion is never safe for the child, but fatal. If a woman was violated by rape, it only worsens her situation if she is violated once again by abortion. In practice, conception after rape is extremely rare and should not be the hard case used to justify change in legislation, but where it does occur the women who keep their baby have been found to be better off compared to those who aborted because in the long term they find some redemption through the child and in her maternity. The reasons for most abortions are not for desperate scenarios outlined by lobbyists but to preserve lifestyles that a baby is likely to change.
Social issues that lead to the demand for abortion certainly do need to be addressed. No one disputes that there can be grief and distress when baby has come unexpectedly. The way forward is change in behaviour, awareness and diligence, and concern and care for both the mother and the baby, in situations where there is the baby, and the baby is not wanted. Not wanting someone does not confer the right to kill someone. That may have been the law among barbarians. The efforts and lobbying need to be go into care acceptance and concern for girls and women who are pregnant and in difficulty, to promote adoption of children among the infertile and sub-fertile couples who have been longing for a child over years of marriage, and to make the husbands and fathers accountable and responsible. Legalising abortion actually empowers men to throw off their responsibility.
Abortion is the pinnacle of the culture of death, where the mother sacrifices her child on the table of the abortionist – the doctor who should be a healer but is turned into a paid assassin. We need to remember that the hard cases are merely the start of the slippery slope, and what the abortion lobbyists want is abortion on demand, and nothing less. This is what they euphemistically refer to as “reproductive rights”. In every nation, where abortion was legalised, the abortion industry, the foetal parts industry and the abortifacient drugs and devices industry flourished, and culture and family deteriorated. Sri Lanka and other nations that still preserve some legal protection for the child prior to birth are fortunate in some sense since they can look back on 50 years of the world’s history and see the consequences of permitting the destruction of the most vulnerable, the smallest, the children. The classic abortion lovers’ arguments were repeated in each of these nations as well, and was found to be exaggerated or fabricated. While the US is on its way to repealing Roe vs Wade, having surgically aborted millions of children by now, others need not make the same mistake and fall down the same precipice. We need to address the root causes and expend effort and money to provide support to the mothers and to strengthen values that promote right behaviour – and not take the easy way out of destroying the child. We need also to be aware that the funding entities behind local organisations that promote the culture of death have mandates to reduce population in the developing world, and to destroy marriage and the family by the corruption of youth, and to establish international abortion businesses locally.