Posted by
Dave Perkins on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 4:48:50 PM
This is the perfect anecdote. I'm sure it represents many millions of Americans who confront this issue at some point in their lives.
Kathy Ireland was a supermodel.
Sports Illustrated covers, bikinis, then movie roles, the whole deal. She was her generation's Christie Brinkley or Cheryl Tiegs. She had it all, including the requisite liberal Hollywood viewpoints.
But something happened to her when she 'grew up'. This guy people call Jesus Christ managed to get her attention, and she was 'born again'. There is a reason He chose that metaphor to describe the process of becoming Christian; the change is so total, so absolute, that no aspect of life is left untouched by it.
In Kathy's case, one of the notable changes was in her view of abortion. She came to realize there was
no proof that 'a bundle of cells is not a human being', as the pro side claims. She put her mind to work, did her research, and most importantly, asked every pro choice person she could find to prove or demonstrate rationally that a fetus has an early stage at which it is not a human being.
And she was shocked to find that even the scientists, in whom she had placed her faith as a young person to have the 'settled answers' to this kind of issue, had no clue what makes a human human. Those few people who took her challenge seriously ended up offering the Bill Maher answer, "a clump of cells that doesn't look like a person can't be human, right?"
Kathy asked herself the scientific question; does a clump of cells already 'represent' a complete human being in any way? The answer is yes, of course. DNA, the genetic code, the 'genome', is already there, from the moment the fertilized cell begins to split into two cells. A person's hair color, eye color, height, pattern baldness, weight gain tendencies, individual mental capacity, physical responses to allergens, inclination to become addicted to some substances, blood type and athletic ability and strength and longevity and a whole lot of a person's
personality; it's all in the code. There is a sound and solid argument just on available evidence that a fetus, even a very small one, is 'human'; it has all it needs to complete the entire process of a human life, right down to its likely natural cause of death.
I recall a story I heard in Twinsburg, Ohio, the town that hosts the annual Twins Festival. Twin brothers, aged 67, were outdoors one sunny Sunday. One played golf, the other cut the lawn at his home. The two awoke on stretchers, side by side, having suffered heart attacks in the exact same hour, possibly the same minute, of that afternoon. At age 67, then, they knew their bodies were far more pre-programmed than anyone realized. The Genome is nowhere near being completely unlocked in this way. Nobody knows what's in there beyond the most basic of instructions. But we know from this story and many others that genes can carry instructions for far more aspects of life than anyone had previously thought.
Kathy concluded (
as I did) that science can't prove a fetus is, at some early stage,
not human. On its own, science cannot even identify what
makes us human. We are animals with extras; "spirit, soul, imagination, self-awareness, abstract thought" and so forth. These things are not quantifiable in any scientific terms. This means science cannot give the day, the hour, the moment when a fetus gets that magic pixie dust of humanity, goes from the 'clump of cells' to the 'baby person'. Without that knowledge, then, we must take the reverse timeline approach-- if a baby newly born is human, then the same baby one day before is
also human, and one month, and six months, and eight months before.
There is in fact only one point in time when the 'existence' of the human being can clearly be delineated.
The day before conception there is no person. The day after, there is. It is from nonexistence to existence. No other 'stage' in the process of fetal maturation is identifiable as the stage at which 'humanity', whatever that is, arrives.
That's why nobody on the pro choice side ever goes within a country mile of this argument. They know it's a losing proposition. If they try to prove a fetus is not human, they'll fail, and anyone listening will realize
THEY ARE WRONG, and abortion is murder.
So they put everything in the terms of
women's rights. But nobody has the
right to murder a human being. Any woman doing this will be sent to prison, just like any man.
But now you know, beyond doubt, that a fetus IS a human being. All logic and rationality demand this be acknowledged, and one need not know exactly what MAKES a human human, whereas the other side must point to a moment at which humanity arrives in the already living fetus in order to justify abortion 'before' that moment.
Simple logic shows the fetus must be human, as nobody can prove, or will even attempt to prove, that it is not. Proof is required here. We're talking about killing. We can't be lazy or disinterested in answers; we MUST know! And their side will not tell us. We are supposed to flinch and withdraw at the words "women's rights".
Almost all abortions are for for the sake of convenience. I realize the word can seem flippant, but putting aside its emotional overreach it simply means that a person is unwilling to go through all the enormous life changes a baby brings. The money, the school, the relationship with parents, the respect of family, the unfortunate permanent tie with the baby's father (
often a man who is best forgotten)-- serious as all these are, they still add up to 'convenience'. If you would recoil from killing a human being standing in front of you, then rationality compels that same revulsion to apply to a human being not yet born. Placing aspects of your own life ahead of another human being's RIGHT to be alive is, plainly, wrong.
Unless you can prove a fetus isn't human.
The inconsistency in the expressed views of that pro side gives their game away. Some say 'it doesn't look human', implying that when it does, then abortion is wrong. Yet others on that same side, including our esteemed President for life Barack Ogabe, believe you can kill it with impunity right up until natural childbirth is COMPLETE. Obama fought for and voted for the kind of measures which permit the insertion of scissors into the skull of a child whose body is still inside the birth canal. The scissors break open the hole and in goes the vacuum to suck out the brains of this little person. Such is partial birth abortion, and I don't hear Bill Maher saying the 9 month old fetus 'doesn't look human'.
Because it DOES look human. IT IS human. The Maher argument carries an implication that its adherent is open to the idea that at some point a fetus
does become human. If Maher's 'clump of cells' isn't a baby, then he must be willing to acknowledge that a fetus which DOES look like a baby IS a baby. But interestingly, I cannot recall any pro choicer who uses the 'clump of cells' argument having any comment on partial birth abortion. Even NARAL has a problem with partial birth abortion! But not Our Dear Leader, The One, The Saviour, El Presidente por la vida, Barry Ogabe. He's all for killing babies that are lying on cold steel counters, alive, healthy, survivors of botched abortions, by simply leaving them on that cold steel counter until dehydration, starvation and exposure do their civic duty.
(
Aside-- I have run across one or two people with a malfunctioning or insufficient sense of humor, and if you're the third, here's why I call him Ogabe. Zimbabwe's president for life Robert Mugabe is famous for seizing private property, and for the million percent inflation that results from printing money like newspapers and going into massive national debt. I suspect Mugabe is a role model for Obama, so I've synthesized their names to communicate my sense of the similarities between the two men. Hence, Ogabe.)
I await with interest the argument from that side which points out clearly at what stage a fetus becomes human. Science, perhaps, can do it. Science disappointed Kathy Ireland in that respect, but maybe she didn't ask the right people. I mean, they're out there, ready with the answer, just waiting for the right person to call on them... right? Surely people who are so loud and insistent in defending this 'right to choose' can explain rationally, for the peace of mind of any sensible person wishing to pursue their path, how a 'fetus' isn't human...... ???
After all, we don't want to be guilty of 'choosing'
to kill somebody. If there is doubt, then it should be explained by the smart people, so we red state rednecks can be free of guilt when we bow to their superior wisdom.
And surely those who fight so hard for the woman's right to abort would know when a fetus becomes human, right?
.....
Kathy asked them, and came away with nothing. Same thing happened to me, probably about the same time. When I was young I voted for Mondale, I supported abortion rights and other liberal causes, not because I was convinced or even interested but because I was trying to impress a girl who had those views. I had no idea what it all meant, but I knew what I had to say to impress the girl. And yes, it worked. I found out later that she, as many full throttle abortion rights supporters,
had one herself not long before.
I knew her later in life, and I happened to be around one day when she saw a group of children at recess in the schoolyard. She actually broached the subject with me, tear in her eye, saying "my child would have been this age now". Not the words of a woman who had a medical procedure to remove an annoying clump of cells. She knew what she had done, and felt guilty all these years later. But at the time, she was fully committed to the cause, believing she was on the side of right, of 'women's rights' to be specific. I wonder how many of the tens of millions of women in this category are experience that sadness, that guilt, that fear of God's retribution, over having killed their own children. I wonder how many are lying awake at night, and are contributing to America's all time record for sleeping pill consumption.
If a hunter in a forest had his crosshairs on a visible patch of brown fur, he'd shoot, right? Even if he thought it might be a brown jacket on a person picking truffles under a tree, the hunter ought to shoot... right? Because a little doubt shouldn't stop him from killing. He needs food for his family, and there is a patch of brown fur in his sights. He has a
right to provide food to family! Who cares if it might be a person, SHOOT!
SHOOT!!!
In the real world, any hunter hesitates and holds his fire when he thinks his target MIGHT be a person.
But not the pro choice crowd. Even though they cannot offer a shred of evidence to prove a fetus is NOT a person, they skip right past the 'benefit of the doubt' and go
straight to the killing.
Sensible people, of course, give the benefit of the doubt. Nobody wants to be guilty of killing a human being, even if they 'didn't know' it was human. Just the thought that it might be, just that little shred of doubt, ought to be enough to stop the act of killing, at least for long enough that the doubt can be erased.
But nobody who sets out to have that doubt erased will achieve their goal, will convince sensible people that a fetus is not a human being. Nobody is making the argument at all, let alone a cogent and compelling argument, to demonstrate that an unborn fetus is not human.
What are the arguments FOR abortion? Why, they're all about the WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE.
She has a right, we're told, to decide what happens with her body. So do we all, actually. But the question is, does the fetus constitute 'her body' or is it a separate human being? If the latter, then the fact that it's temporarily residing inside her body does NOT give her the right to kill it, anymore than I would have the right to kill someone who is in my car or in my living room. A pregnant woman is in the position of
hostess here, someone who has a high level of responsibility to care for and nurture this little guest. That responsibility continues to apply after birth and up through age 18, legally speaking.
And in a real sense they've already exercised their right to choose when they chose to participate in the
activity of reproduction. Perhaps they used protection; perhaps they took
great care to prevent pregnancy. But they chose to do what they did, and knew at the time it carried the risk. Only the rape victim can claim otherwise.
You might think I'm going to make an allowance for a rape victim. No. If a fetus is a human being, it's a human being. It has no responsibility for its own existence, and cannot choose its father. Killing the fetus is as much a murder as in an abortion of convenience. It is NOT about the motive, it's about the result of the act itself. An abortion kills a human being. Once the human being has been killed, no reason for having made that onerous choice is going to pass muster. I can be overwhelmed with sympathy for victims of rape, but why would the rape of one victim prompt anyone to make a second victim, one who won't even survive these events? If it weren't for the difficulty of being certain what actually happened in most rape cases, I'd support the death penalty for rapists. That is the extent of my revulsion for and hatred of rapists. No human being should have to submit unwillingly to that total domination and control from another, under any circumstances. But there are women who have abused the privelege of womanhood and made false accusations of rape in order to harm the life of a man toward whom they are ill disposed. Because there are rarely witnesses, the truth of any such event is very hard to fully learn. For this reason only, I"ll withhold my blessing from executions of rapists.
But as for the fetus, if it's a baby and it didn't do anything wrong, you shouldn't kill it. Period. And needless to say, infants in the womb can't really do anything wrong, let alone anything wrong enough to provoke the taking of their lives as a measure of
justice. They are innocent in every sense.
There is no middle ground. A person is a person is a person. "Thou shalt not murder" is the eighth commandment. To murder is to kill a person. And yes, this means a rape victim must give birth to the rapist's child or be complicit in murder. Life is unfair, and we have no guarantees that people will always respect our rights or treat us well, or that our lives will go as we wish them to go.
I have no stake in this. I have never caused a pregnancy, I have no children, and I will never have them. I'm well aware that my contribution to this debate, such as it is, means nothing to some. I can't understand it, they'll say, because I can't experience it. My view will be rejected with a howl of anger from one quarter at least. Telling the truth has never been easy, least of all to the people who are suffering and who desire deeply to partake of the comfort of the lie.