Abortion Interview and Response

            I recently interviewed a man on the subject of abortion. His name was Randall and he supported abortion. The reasons he gave in defense of his position are not new or reasonably thought out. They are just slogans that have been repeated enough times which individuals have based a very important ethical issue on. In this paper I will respond to his arguments and replace misinformation with truth, using logic and the Bible.

            The first argument Randall gave in support of his position was, “It’s not a baby in the womb, but a fetus, and it is just tissue”. Now, an unborn child will be called many names by pro abortionists in order to dehumanize it. Pro abortionists will call the baby in the mother’s womb a human zygote, blastocyst, an embryo, fetus, tissue and clump of cells, anything about a baby. It is a biological fact that life begins at conception. Even pro abortionists know this. Faye Wattleton, who was the president of Planned Parenthood, said in 1997:

“I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.”

Naomi Wolf, a prominent abortion supporter and feminist author wrote:

“Clinging to a rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions. And we risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being: callous, selfish and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life...we need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death.”

Randall is wrong when he says that the fetus is just tissue and not a baby. At conception, the new organism has its own DNA distinct from its mother and father. As the new life grows it develops its own circulatory system, its own organs and the heart begins to beat. Keith L. Moore is a world-renowned embryologist. Most medical students will study from his textbooks. He writes in ‘The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology’:

“A zygote [fertilized egg] is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

At six weeks the embryos have measurable brain waves, at three weeks the embryos have a beating heart. Just hours after conception the new life has all of the attributes in its DNA that it will carry for the rest of its life; boy or girl, eye color, skin color and facial features. The life is a person because human embryos are individual human begins from fertilization.

            I would also like to point out that if the fetus in the mother’s womb is just human tissue, the tissue must come from some human being. Where is the human being that this human tissue came from? It’s not the mother’s tissue, since it doesn't have her genetic fingerprint. The fetus is a complete human being who has its own unique genetic fingerprint.

            Randall said the fetus is not a person but a potential person, just as a seedling is not a plant; neither is a fetus a human. Anyone who uses this type of argument I would encourage them to look at photos of an aborted child and still say that is was not a person. The unborn is alive, a distinct human being and a valuable person from the moment of conception. Now I will respond to his plant argument using the example of a sunflower. A seedling is a plant at the infant stage, a sunflower plant is a plant at the adult stage, and both are plants. A seedling (the infant) can potentially become a grown sunflower (the adult), but it never becomes a plant. It already is a complete plant, even in its embryonic (seed) stage. In the same way human beings at any stage of development are still complete human beings. Saying a seedling isn't a grown plant only means that an infant isn't an adult, which I don’t deny.

            Randall said that the fetus wasn't a baby until it is born. Location has no bearing on who we are. If we are valuable human beings, do we stop being valuable because we move locations? If I was to cross the street, or move to another state or walk into a closet, does who I am change? If it is wrong to murder a human being at one location (outside of the womb), then it is wrong to murder the same human being located six inches away. Nothing has changed except the child’s location. One’s environment cannot be the deciding factor; it does not determine who we are.

            Lastly, Randall claimed that we have no right to intervene in the business of the mother who wants to take her child’s life. He claimed the issue is between her and her doctor. Randall is wrong; the issue is between the mother, her doctor and a defenseless human being. The mother does not have the right to take the life of her child. The child is not a part of the mother’s body, but is a separate distinct person as I have shown. Randall said, it is none of our business what goes on behind closed doors. Randall’s logic is flawed, if a child was being molested privately and someone knew about it, wouldn't that person have the moral obligation to stop it? Most heinous crimes are done in private. The murdering of defenseless children is our business and should be stopped.

                The Creator of the universe is the one who sets the rules. He is the only one who has the right to take life because He created life. In God eyes, the unborn children are valuable. David in Psalm 139:13-17 declared about God, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”