Afford Unborn The Same Rights As Newborn
Pastor Wade Mobley • Living Word Free Lutheran Church • December 1, 2008
If your child asks you, "Daddy, can I kill it?" you dare not answer until you know what "it" is.
One pivotal question continues to receive little attention in the abortion debate: Just what is it that we are aborting?
We often hear, "No one knows when life begins." But even if this was correct, it does nothing to advance the argument in favor of abortion rights. If we don't know what "it" is, we must protect "it."
So what is the object of abortion? Let's consider the facts:
While philosophical debates continue, modern embryology overwhelmingly affirms that biological life begins at conception - the time when an organism with completely unique DNA arises from the union of sperm and oocyte (Moore and Persaud, "The Developing Human," page 310; Nilsson and Hamberger, "A Child is Born," page 86; Rugh and Shettles, "From Conception to Birth," page 217).
Frequently, though, when someone asks, "When does life begin?" the person is not referring to biological life but to some definition of legal and moral life. Our indistinct language causes us to talk past each other and makes it appear that we have fundamentally different convictions about who possesses basic rights.
For example, a majority of voters support current abortion law, but most people oppose some abortions protected under that law such as:
Having an abortion because you are pregnant with a girl and would prefer a boy.
Having an abortion because you would prefer certain physical traits your fetus doesn't have.
Secondary birth control (multiple or repeated abortions).
Late-term abortion (currently legal for broad reasons even after the baby could survive outside the womb).
For the sake of argument, I will assume that everyone reading this letter opposes the killing of just-born infants, agreeing that newborns possess all the legal and moral rights of adults (with the exception of rights reserved for the majority such as voting and contractual obligations). There are four differences between the unborn and the newborn:
Size: We protect the basic rights of small people just the same as bigger people.
Level of development: An elderly human is a human, an adult human is human, a child human is human, a newborn human is human, and an unborn human is human. We protect human rights independently from stage of development.
Environment: Our human rights are unaffected by our changes of location.
Dependency: A toddler who falls into a pool in your presence is completely dependent on one person - you - for his or her survival. Yet you would deem that child worthy of rescue.
These differences are insignificant, and apart from these differences, a newborn and an unborn child are identical beings.
Pictures of unborn children and those who have been aborted make this painfully evident. You can find them at www.abort73.com.
All people should reply with compassion to those in difficult - even tragic - circumstances. Yet the tragic circumstances of a child's conception should not consign that precious unborn human person to death.
As Steve Wagner, author of "Common Ground Without Compromise," says: If the unborn is growing, it is alive. If it has human parents, it is human. And human life is precious, isn't it?
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