By: Scott Sutter
The right to life is the most basic of human rights. Life is
dignified and noble and it is not ours to take. The exact moment in which life
begins has been under debate for decades, most famously in the 1973 Supreme
Court case entitled “Roe vs. Wade” which legalized abortions. Abortion has
never been an argument of whether or not it is right to kill an innocent life,
but rather an argument of when life truly began. While those on the pro-life
side of the fence argue that life begins at conception, the “pro-choicers”
combat with varying dates for the beginning of life ranging from the first
heartbeat to birth. According to those who define themselves as pro-choice, it
ought to be the right of the mother to make decisions about the fetus. Both
arguments advance the rights of human life in their own regard. Recently,
however, the pro-choice movement has begun to shift.
Following
the 2013 March For Life in Washington D.C. this past January Mary Elizabeth
Williams, author for the online liberal news outlet The Salon, published an article entitled “So What if Abortion Ends
Life?”. The article, which can be found here,
details the author’s firm belief that life begins at conception yet firm
pro-choice stance. She condemns the pro-life movement for employing such strong
wording as life, after all, “Who wants to be on the side of… not life?”. She
continues, arguing that the pro-choice movement must speak in stronger terms.
It must recognize that the circumstances of individual pregnancies do not
change the definition of the life growing in the womb. She concludes stating
that she has no shadow of a doubt that a fetus is a human life, but it is a
“life worth sacrificing”.
The notion
of a life being “worth sacrificing” is potentially the most dangerous thought
to have arisen from the pro-abortion camp. While at the present moment the
title of “worth sacrificing” is reserved for those lives that are unborn, how
long before the designation is extended to the newly born or the elderly. After
all, if a child is a financial or physical burden to his mother, or if an
elderly person becomes a pain for his family do they not by the logic of the
pro-aborts become a “life worth sacrificing”. How long before children born
with mental disabilities are “discarded” as to not cause struggle for the
families?
Not only is
acknowledging pre-natal life as expendable dangerous, it is unconstitutional. The
constitution was founded upon the basic principles of life and liberty. If even
the most basic right of the human person—life—is denied, what else can we
decide? Will adults be denied a vote if they belong to a particular social
class or have only received a certain level of education? After all, their vote
is worth sacrificing as they are not educated enough to vote intelligently! I
think that what is needed here is serious consideration on a universal
definition of life. A legal definition of the exact beginning of life must be
in place to protect life. Whether conception, birth, or anywhere in between,
the beginning of life must be enshrined in the law before the dangerous concept
of a “life worth sacrificing” gets out of hand.
