"Choice" Vs Unborn Rights

As Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister once said, “If you tell any lie long enough, often enough, and loud enough, people will come to believe it.”

That has certainly been the case with abortion lobbyists and their incessant advocacy for killing unborn children. They repeat certain lies over and over again, and in doing so think they have made their case. But they have not. All they have done is peddled falsehoods ad nauseum, ad infinitum. 1

The ‘right to choose’ catch cry is one such lie. This has been marketed so intensely by abortion advocates that almost everyone is aware of the phrase. However, we must look below the surface of the slogan to appreciate the full impact of this so-called ‘choice’.

Whilst the ‘right to choose’ sounds desirable, the freedom to exercise that choice must be tempered by its impact upon the fundamental rights of other people. The fact is the woman is not the only one affected. What about the child’s rights? Abortion kills an unborn child and removes the body from the woman’s womb. It is not the woman’s body. This is observable.

But advances in the medical sciences have also proved beyond doubt, at every stage of development, the unborn child is a unique separate living human being. So, while most of us believe in equal rights, we certainly cannot condone the taking of unborn child’s life in the name of a one-sided exercise of just one person’s ‘right’.

A society that allows abortion is denying the most basic human right – the right to life – to one group of human beings, unborn children. Both the woman with an unplanned pregnancy and her baby within the womb are of equal importance and need love and genuine support. We cannot measure a person’s importance and value by age or size as that is discrimination. A society in which every human being has equal protection should be enshrined in our laws.

A woman is pregnant with a living human being from the moment of conception. Nothing more can be added to this new unique individual. As an official US Senate inquiry into ‘When does human life begin?’ concluded:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being – a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings. 2

However, it is indeed an indictment when our society is not willing to help a pregnant woman or teenager through her time of crisis with life-giving compassionate alternatives other than helping her kill her unborn child. Yes, it takes an incredible amount of our time, to give genuine care and emotional support. But every woman deserves that commitment especially when she is at her most vulnerable.

It is ironic and tragic that women who have laboured so long and so hard for equal rights with men, are now prepared to turn around and totally discriminate against their own unborn children (many of whom are female) and count their lives as worthless. It is also a senseless and violent act to turn on one’s own flesh and blood in the sanctuary of the womb. To turn on those who cannot yet speak for themselves. Women are able to cope with whatever comes their way, if they desire to do so, because they, as women, have proven they are not inferior or of less worth than men.

Rosemary Bottcher, Feminist For Life and environmental chemist, in 1985 said,

"Pro-abortion feminists resent the discrimination against a whole class of humans because they happen to be female, yet they themselves discriminate against a whole class of humans because they happen to be very young.

"They resent that the value of a woman is determined by whether some man wants her, yet declare that the value of an unborn child is determined by whether some woman wants him or her.

"They resent that women have been “owned” by their husband, yet insist that the unborn are “owned” by their mothers.

"They believe a man’s right to do what he pleases with his own body cannot include the right to sexually exploit women, yet proclaim that a woman’s similar right means that she can kill her unborn child.

"No-one has the ‘right’ to kill another human being. A woman has no ‘right’ to kill her ‘terrible two year old’ and has no ‘right’ to kill her ‘terrible teen’. Why should a ‘right to choose to kill’ at any stage of human development be given? The fact that the unborn child is small – silent – out of sight – does not mean this child is disposable in the name of ‘choice’."

The fact is, abortion – synonymous with a woman’s right to kill her unborn child – must have no place in our society or in our legislation. On the contrary, while the rights of the mother must be protected, women’s rights must not be to the exclusion of the natural rights of her unborn child. The Australian and State Governments should legislate to ensure every woman is provided with appropriate support during and after an unplanned pregnancy, and that every unborn child is given the most basic of all human rights – the right to life. 

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NOTE: Whilst fetus is simply Latin for ‘offspring’, we do not refer to a pregnant woman as gravida – which is Latin for ‘pregnant woman’. Why? The word fetus is regularly used as a deliberate attempt to dehumanise the preborn. Other phrases , such as “product of conception”, “a piece of tissue” and similar, are employed when the child in the womb is not wanted.

References
1   Bill Muehlenberg Even More Abortion Myths
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/09/09/even-more-abortion-myths/
2   Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981, p 7