Everybody has a right to his or
her own opinion. But everybody does not have a right
to his or her own facts. One's own personal beliefs
do not change reality. I may sincerely believe, for
example, that I can walk through a wall without
harm, but if I try, I will not end up on the other
side of the wall. Instead, I will end up with a
headache.
There is a particular
application here to the problem of abortion. Some
people say that they do not believe that what
is in the womb of a pregnant woman is a human being.
They say that in their opinion it is
something else. But if two people stand in front of
a pregnant woman, and one says she is carrying a
human baby and the other says it is not a human
baby, they can't both be right at the same time.
What they may differ about is
the value of the life within the womb. But
the question of whether that is a human life
is not a matter of belief; it is a matter of fact.
Listen to what the experts
have to say: "To accept the fact that after
fertilization has taken place a new human has come
into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion
. . . it is plain experimental evidence" (Dr. Jerome
Lejeune, "Father of Modern Genetics" and discoverer
of the cause of Down's Syndrome). "By all the
criteria of modern molecular biology, life is
present from the moment of conception" (Dr. Hymie
Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at Mayo
Clinic).
The widely used medical
textbook The Developing Human, Clinically
Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition, Moore, Persaud,
Saunders, 1998, states at page 2 that "The intricate
processes by which a baby develops from a single
cell are miraculous.... This cell [the zygote]
results from the union of an oocyte [egg] and sperm.
A zygote is the beginning of a new human being...."
At page 18 this theme is repeated: "Human
development begins at fertilization [emphasis in
original]...."
Judge Michael J. Noonan ruled
as follows in a New Jersey case based on a man's
efforts to save his unborn child from being aborted:
"…based upon the undisputed medical testimony by
arguably the foremost authority in genetics in the
world, I found that human life begins as conception;
and that Roe vs. Wade permits a legal
execution of that human being." (Municipal Court of
New Jersey -- Law division, Morris County criminal
action docket no. C1771, et seq. State of New Jersey
v. Alexander Loce, et als., Defendants, April 29,
1991, Honorable Michael J. Noonan).
Even the "pro-choice" feminist
author Naomi Wolf has criticized the efforts of
abortion-supporters to obscure the humanity of the
unborn child. She asks, "So, what will it be: Wanted
fetuses are charming, complex REM-dreaming little
beings whose profile on the sonogram looks just like
Daddy, but unwanted ones are mere 'uterine
material'?" (Our Bodies, Our Souls, The New
Republic, October 16,1995)
These people are not speaking
about the Bible or some religious belief. They are
speaking from the basis of scientific proof. Every
medical text in the world, in fact, will confirm
that a unique human life begins at fertilization. If
science did not know that, how could it have
produced test-tube babies?
We have entered the 21st
century. This is the age of fetology (the study of
the preborn child) and fetal surgery (operations on
the preborn child). The medical textbook The
Unborn Patient begins by noting that modern
science sees that "the fetus is a patient, an
individual. . . " (p. 3).
Those who say, "It's not a
child" need to catch up with the times!
In a pluralistic society, a
world of many beliefs, the laws should protect human
life based on the objective and scientific fact that
the life in question is human, not based on
someone's belief that it is human. Otherwise,
if we can kill the unborn simply because some do not
believe they are human, what will keep us from
killing the newborn -- or anyone else -- because
some do not believe they are human?
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