THIS year Americans are mourning fifty-one years of abortion from 1969 to 2020.There is hardly any statistics on abortion in the Caribbean but it is recorded that one in five pregnancies in Canada ends in abortion.
Tragically over the last fifty years since the law prohibiting abortion was amended, society is moving towards seeing pregnancy as a threat to personal freedom and not a blessing. As an illness requiring intervention rather than a cause of joy. In order to promote abortion, activists use slogans to advance their anti-life agenda, example: “My Body My Choice” and “A Woman Has A Choice”. However, behind the slogans is a mentality that sees the gift of human life in the womb as a threat.
The abortion activist will use other slogans such as: “Abortion is a private matter”. “My body my choice”. “The foetus is not a person”. We have to be very careful not to be carried away into the world of darkness and deception through the use of slogans. Abortion is not a private matter. It involves more than a woman and her doctor. Even more directly and intimately involved is a third human being. The mother’s unborn child, the doctor’s unborn patient and the father of the baby. No doubt the father most times has no say in the fate of his child. Privacy is important but do we allow partners to abuse their children as long as they do so in private? Think for a moment: a child developing inside a woman’s body is completely distinct from the mother and his or her own DNA. To say yes to an abortion a woman is exercising control over someone else’s body. The desire and will to control her body does not include a right to have her unborn child killed by abortion. Her child has just as much right to life as any other human being.
Many of them will argue that the foetus is not a person but this is incorrect. Words such as embryo or foetus serve the same purpose as calling humans infants, adolescents. children or adults at other stages of their growth or development or lives. These are considered to be simply, scientific terms used to indicate where a human being is in his or her development. In no way do they mean that the unborn child is not a human being.
Human experience in addition has taught us that every child is wanted by someone. Witness the countless couples yearning to adopt a child. Once we accept the ethic that every child must be wanted before the child can live. Otherwise the society may decide that the elderly, the mentally or the physically challenged person should be wanted in order that they may be permitted to continue living. We should not reduce children to objects with a right to exist only if someone wants them more than they desire other things.
Medical experts have advised that abortion is never required to save the life of the mother or to treat complications that may arise in pregnancy. More than 1000 medical professionals signed the Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare which states in part:” As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynecology we affirm that direct abortion…the purposeful destruction of the unborn child….is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.
Rape is also another reason used to justify an abortion. But the woman who has been raped has undergone a terrible trauma and her well-being should be of concern. Abortion cannot change the fact that the woman was raped and it certainly will not erase the trauma. Can a horrible act of violence(rape) on an innocent woman be redeemed by performing another act of violence (abortion) on an innocent unborn human being? Can you think of any other circumstance where we would kill one innocent human being for the benefit of others? It is the rapist who must be punished not the woman and her unborn child.
If we are God fearing, we should oppose abortion, but this does not mean that morality is forced on anyone or the majority of people. Because morality is the very basis of law and order in any society. Actions can be judged objectively right or wrong. This is why we have laws against stealing, abuse and murder. Some people who oppose abortion do so on religious grounds but the right to life is the first and most important right of all. Religion did not discover when human life began, science did. Opposing abortion is not a religious issue but a matter of human rights. The laughter of a baby brings a smile to many faces and much joy to the family. Doctors have counselled patients with chronic pain to watch videos of laughing and giggling babies. A child’s delighted mirth lifts the human spirit. Truly children are a gift from God.
Modern science has irrefutably proven that human life begins at conception. The DNA of a human being is contained in that single embryo. It is therefore impossible to pretend that the developing embryo is not human when we see how promptly recognizable human features emerge.
Harvard graduate and professor Harold Brown warned:” Since 1973 we have killed between 1.3 and 1.5 million unborn future Americans yearly. The price in blood has now exceeded 40 million ten times more than have been killed in all our wars. Whatever you think about abortion about all the potential hard cases, can it be right for a nation to kill one quarter, sometimes one third of every new generation? Can we ask God to bless us while we exterminate ourselves?”
“We have reached a point in our society where one of the most dangerous places for a child to be is in the mother’s womb. The widespread rejection of children has caused seismic changes in our society and to the family structure. Fewer children means shrinking kinship groups. Aside from a few exceptions fertility rates worldwide are in steep decline. Many women are choosing not to bear children. Having only one child is becoming the norm for those who choose to become mothers. Two or more children is an exception to the rule in many developed countries.”
Paul Ehrich, in 1968 in his bestselling book” The Population Bomb,” predicted that in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds and millions of people would starve to death because the earth would be overpopulated. The United Nations (UN) bought into this false population theory. Many UN officials mistakenly believe that limiting population was and still is the answer to most of the world’s problems including poverty, disease, discrimination against women and more.
Contrary to the above Robert Bailey in Earth Report 2000 summarized what has really happened in the following conclusions: as the world’s population quintupled the world’s economies grew 40 folds. In other words due to technology we are doing much more with far less. There is literally too much food in the world and plenty of land. Starvation is a political disaster not a natural one. Meaning that the real problem is the allocation and the distribution of food, not its physical availability. Demographic researchers believe that the entire world population can be moved inside medium size homes and they would all fit in Texas. Yielding a population density similar to that of Paris capital of France.
Let us now refer to a few scripture verses on the subject of life. Deuteronomy 30:19.“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” Exodus 23:1.Do not cause the death of the innocent or the upright and do not acquit the guilty. Exodus 20:13.Thou shall not kill. Romans 13:9. All these: You shall not commit adultery. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. You shall not covet and all other commandments that are there are summed up in this single phrase: You must love your neighbour as yourself.
God Bless You!
Deacon Peter Fevrier
Family and Life Secretariat, Chancery Office,
Vigie, Castries.