Monday, January 15, 2007

A Right to Life

Are we all entitled to it? Somewhere along the line of the debate between the right to lifers and the right to choosers we lost sight of what the debate was really about. It isn't about competing values or competing rights. Its about one thing and one thing alone -- LIFE itself and the very essence of when one is entitled to it.

Life, at least to many in the world, means life from the time it starts to the time it terminates.

We all, allegedly, agree that from birth, we have this right. But does this right not spring to the front somewhere during a pregnancy? And, if so, how about at conception?

Where in fact does this so-called right begin? This is the rub. When are human beings really created? Is it when the sperm conjoins with the egg, is it some time during development in the womb, or is it when the laddie/lassie finally springs out on their own in what we all call "birth".

The law of the land, judging by the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision suggests it is when the law says it is and it isn't. According to the legal interpretation it is not at 'conception'. Accordingly, the little life bubbling around in a womb isn't human. It's kind of like that old pre-civil civil war spin that black people were not human beings, but less than, and therefore property to be bought and sold into slavery. We find the whole concept of this proposition so absurd that we wonder to this day how thinking people could have been so stupid.

Are we again stupid? Is the fragile life inside a woman's womb less than human and therefore her personal property. It seems some ideas are hard to die. The generally held opinion of those who are the 'property' believers are surrounded with the concept that asks "how could it be a human being, it is no larger than the end of a pinkie finger and looks just like a fish, gorilla, or any other animal at that stage? It can hardly be considered human."

Those who have an unwanted pregnancy to deal with and that could easily include rape victims, under aged children, women who aren't ready to have a family or don't want another addition to it, parents who think their kids are too young to be parents and so on and so forth. The list goes on. It even goes to the self styled true believers that suggest "it's got to be born before its human."

Human life for the mass majority of the world's population including citizens of the poorest of the poor countries believe life 'really' begins at conception. Not just life, but a human life. For them it is a miracle. When you think about the odds of it occurring, one can begin to grasp the logic to the "miracle" idea. It is overwhelming and when women do become pregnant it is like hitting the lottery.

Have doubts? Ask a childless couple. There are millions upon millions of them. To terminate a pregnancy before birth is therefore, in their eyes, nothing short of murder. This is, they believe, the moral high ground.

Apart from this overriding world peoples belief that human life begins at conception, an indisputable secularist fact remains. It takes two contributing resources that comes from a male and female of our species, who contribute human sperm and a human egg to combine to form the miracle of life, whether in a conjugal bond, or through some medical form of artificial means. However contrived, the combination initiates new human life. We know what the outcome will be so how is it we choose to believe it is otherwise at conception? The fact remains the product of this union is the creation of a human being, right there at that very moment of fertilization. We know with irrefutable evidence that new life as a human being in every instance emerges from the safety of its mothers womb, the result of that human contribution of sperm and egg combining at conception.

It was human at its start, it is human when it emerges from the safety of the womb. It didn't get there by itself. It did not suddenly emerge. It was.

So, how is it in an age of attempted perfection, the intellectual elite have found exceptions that permit abortion even if Roe vs. Wade did not exist. The law and the medical profession included consider the saving of the life of the mother from a troubling and life threatening pregnancy trumping an unborn infants. Also, if this new life doesn't look just right, act just right, or appear to have all its parts just right, the minimalist amount of grounds also exist to terminate an unborn infants life. These unborn humans can't seem to garner any respect.

Along the way a major consideration has been set by the wayside in the case of the threatened life of the mother. The mother, as callous, as this may seem, has already lived a life. The potential birthed child is about to begin theirs. What contribution would that child make to society and would that mother kill her own child to save her own life? Apart from the bereaved family, who would 90/10 choose the mother, the chances are 90/10 that mother would not have her own child killed to save her own life. But, that decision today is rarely left to the mother.

Today, the fetus is the modern day human property of old and the individual who possesses it, and the mother who wants to abort it, can do what she wants, when she wants, anyway she wants, with that property. Is this our modern day legal absurdity?

Our medical professionals have opted out considering the argument political and thus have permitted their authority to be usurped by the hedonists of our society who seek only to self-satisfy their own excesses. They go along to get along. Our courts are equally as spineless having upheld time and again this ability to let those with questionable and vested interests to determine when you and I and every other living human being actually become human. Stop for a moment and think how many of us would never have been born.

Thus, today, a human being does not exist until the state says so and those who desire to terminate the emerging life force, whether the medical profession or a teenage mother with an unwanted baby growing inside her can, on a whim, and for whatever reason they choose, including a bad hair day, terminate a singular human life so long as it is inside them. This unborn human being is afforded absolutely no right to appeal and no second chance by the very state created to protect human life and the right to it at all cost.

Our right to life is a basic value of our earth bound civilization. It is very sad indeed how human beings, who should know better, decide they can take a life anytime, for any reason, so long as they can convince those around them it is not yet quite human. The evidence and basic human beliefs worldwide suggest otherwise. From conception to death, a human being is a human being and endowed at least in America with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As a free society, it is up to us to protect that right. Up to now we haven't been doing a very good job. Perhaps its time to get political and push hard for the "right thing to do".