On Choosing Life

With the conventions over, we now have a taste of the party platforms for the coming years. There's one issue I would like to dive into regarding that.

You see, the Republican platform, like previously, seeks to end the practice of abortion in our country. What caught the media's eye was that there was no exceptions for rape or incest. It was immediately jumped on, supporters of abortion claiming that the Republican position on abortion was “extreme” and “against women's rights” and their “health” and their “reproductive choices.” Of course, they would have said so with or without the exception.

The following week, the Democrat's presented their platform. In it, the party spelled out a desire to end all restrictions on abortion and to make available through taxpayer funding. In a country in which half of its citizens find abortion morally wrong and a vast majority believe that some sort of restrictions should be codified in law, this position is naturally the opposite extreme of the Republican position.

The media, ever the careful watchdog, reported on it...oh, right, this is the mainstream press we are talking about. Which means that, instead of reporting on it, they glossed over it, so that only the part country that has the time to pay close enough attention to the platforms is actually aware of it.

Nice.

Personally, I'll take that Republican platform over anything the Democrats present.

You see, I'm against abortion in all of its forms. I believe it is just as wrong at conception as it is on the day of birth, whether natural or induced. I believe it is wrong no matter how the child was conceived. I believe it's wrong no matter how much feminists and progressives preach to me about the “rights” of women to do what they want with “their own bodies.”

I think those arguments are false, plain and simple.  The fetus, no matter how old, is a human being. It isn't just some clump of tissue nor is it, at any point, dead or inert. Once, you and I were both that small, that helpless. Now we've developed into fully functional human beings. Yet those who favor abortion favor the ending of those lives, whether they openly consider it in those terms or not.

They favor the deaths of people long before they ever take their first breath of fresh air.

Before they can see the face of another human being.

Before they can smile, cry or speak.

They are for the right of the mother to consent to the death of their child, but not for the right of that child to live.

Pro-child, eh?  Only if lying in a puddle of one's own blood is in its best interest.

Since the legalization of abortion in the United States in 1973, nearly 55 million babies have been killed in abortion procedures. In context:

• Though estimates vary widely, World War II killed somewhere from 50 million to over 70 million people in the war itself.
• The Holocaust killed somewhere between 11 million to 17 million people.
• The famine created by China's first Great Leap Forward killed between 15 million and 43 million people.
• The Rwandan Genocide killed anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million people.
• The Darfur Conflict has killed approximately 400,000 people.

How can we call ourselves a moral and civilized society when we have killed more defenseless, innocent human lives than some of the most violent wars and horrendous violations of human rights in recent history?

The short answer: We cannot.