Christian Philosophy: Everyone Has a Philosophy. It's The Lens Through Which They View The World and Make Decisions. (27 page)

This is what the whole debate on abortion comes down to: Is the baby a human being from the moment of conception, or not? The answer is yes, an unborn baby is a living human being, and once life is conceived, you don’t have the right to end it by abortion. It’s not a matter of choice, or convenience.

Pro-abortion supporters are trying to say that abortion is about a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants be a mother and raise a child—totally ignoring the fact that abortion ends a life no one has the right to take. A woman who becomes pregnant is already a mother, so anyone who wants to exercise their right to “choose,” should choose not to have sexual intercourse until they are ready to have a child.

As a society, we have been lied to. We’ve been told that abortion is only about a woman’s right to choose, but that isn’t true. Even if you don’t consider the Scriptural evidence, medical science has shown that an unborn baby has a beating heart within the first month of pregnancy. This means that within two to three weeks of conception—before the mother even realizes she is pregnant—the baby is already a separate human being.
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It isn’t accurate to claim that abortion is about a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body because unborn babies are not part of their mothers’ bodies—they are separate individuals.

I’m certain people would feel a lot differently about abortion if they could see the fingernails, eyes, feet, hands, and delicate details of the aborted babies. Seeing those pictures, you know instinctively that unborn babies are not just hunks of flesh; they are viable human beings who should be given the chance to develop and become the people God wants them to be.

I don’t think most people realize how quickly unborn babies take on mature characteristics. Scripture says that “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” so just the fact that a baby’s heart begins to pump its own blood within weeks of conception is a revealing truth (Leviticus 17:11). Here are some other developmental milestones:
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• Day 22: The baby’s heart begins to beat with the child’s own blood, often a different type than the mother’s.

• Week 3: The child’s backbone, spinal column, and nervous system are forming. The liver, kidneys and intestines begin to take shape.

• Week 4: The child is ten thousand times larger than the original fertilized egg.

• Week 5: Eyes, legs, and hands begin to develop.

• Week 6: Brain waves are detectable; mouth and lips are present; fingernails are forming.

• Week 7: Eyelids, toes, and a distinct nose form. The baby is kicking and swimming.

• Week 8: Every organ is in place, bones begin to replace cartilage, and fingerprints begin to form. The baby also begins to hear.

• Weeks 9 and 10: Teeth begin to form, fingernails develop.The baby can turn his head, frown, and hiccup.

• Week 10: The baby can “breathe” amniotic fluid and urinate.

• Week 11: The baby can grasp objects placed in his hand; all organ systems are functioning. The baby has a skeletal structure, nerves, and circulation.

• Week 12: The baby has all of the parts necessary to experience pain, including nerves, spinal cord, and thalamus. Vocal cords are complete. The baby can suck his or her thumb.

• Week 14: At this age, the heart pumps several quarts of blood through the body every day.

• Week 15: The baby has an adult’s taste buds.

• Month 4: Bone Marrow is now beginning to form. The heart is pumping 25 quarts of blood a day. By the end of month 4, the baby will be 8-10 inches in length and will weigh up to half a pound.

• Week 17: The baby can have dream (REM) sleep.

• Week 20: The baby recognizes her mother’s voice. (This is also the earliest stage at which partial birth abortions are performed).

I don’t see how anyone can look at these scientifically documented developmental stages and still try to claim that unborn babies are merely a part of the mother’s body—and it’s her choice whether or not the baby should live. No, unborn babies are separate, living human beings who have as much a right to life as any other living person. You can’t argue that the baby is a part of the mother’s body—unborn babies have their own blood type, finger prints, feelings, brain waves, dreams, and all sorts of things we know are unique to individuals.

The women who go to abortion clinics aren’t told any of this, but I think they would feel differently about abortion if they were. I think more people would see that abortion is not a matter of a woman’s choice—it’s about the right of an unborn child to live and fulfill God’s creative purposes. There is not a civilized country on the face of the earth that gives any woman the freedom of choice to kill another person. Unborn babies are human beings, and nobody has the right to take those children’s lives.

The abortion rate in the United States is alarming: 3,600 abortions are performed every day, which amounts to more than 1.3 million abortions every year—or one every 24 seconds. Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States in 1973, 54.3 million babies have been aborted.
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(This is the total at the end of 2011, but with 3,600 babies being killed by abortion every day, the total continues to grow at a frightening pace. These staggering numbers do not take into account the fact that not all abortions done in the U.S. are required to be reported. Therefore, the number is actually much higher). Right now, 22% of pregnancies in the U.S. end by abortion, and at current rates, one in four women will have had an abortion by age 30. Consider this: 42% of all yearly deaths
in the world
are from abortion.
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Those are some staggering statistics.

Despite all of the evidence proving that an unborn baby is a living human being, a lot of people aren’t letting facts get in the way of what they believe. Abortion is accepted in our society, and some people are going to support it, no matter what evidence you show them. In many ways, our society has become numb to the truth—which is that no matter what the circumstances are or how inconvenient the birth of a child might be, there is no justification for abortion.

We often hear abortion supporters defending the practice of abortion as a necessary option in so-called “hard cases” involving rape, incest, or medical issues. I’ll get to those issues in just a moment, but first I think we should keep in mind that rape, incest, and medical issues only account for 6% of all abortions—that’s a very small percentage. Recent research shows women give the following reasons for getting an abortion:
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• 74% said having a baby would interfere with their career, education, or ability to care for other family members

• 73% say they couldn’t afford a baby

• 48% don’t want to be single mothers, or are having relationship problems

• 25% don’t want anyone else to know they have had sex or are pregnant

• 1% were the victims of rape

• less than .5% became pregnant as the result of incest

The women involved in this study obviously gave multiple reasons for having an abortion, which is why the percentages don’t add up to 100. But when all of the responses were examined, the study revealed that 92% of women have abortions for social or “other” reasons. Not only that, but of the less than 6% who cited medical reasons, researchers thought many of those women seemed to be giving their own opinion, such as morning sickness, rather than indicating a life-threatening condition or diagnosis by a medical doctor.
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In any case, the vast majority of women admit to having abortions for the sake of convenience.

“Hard case” abortions raise some difficult issues, but they are still not a justification for abortion. To say that abortion is justified in cases where the child might be born with physical or mental disabilities is just wrong. It gives the impression that the value of human life depends on the health or condition of the person, as if our value is judged by what we can contribute to society—which is nonsense. Young people aren’t more valuable than old people, and healthy people aren’t more valuable than sick people. And nobody has the right to kill another person because they somehow judge the other person’s quality of life to be insufficient.

All human life is equally valuable because we are made in the image of God. It isn’t our place to decide who should live or die—even if we learn that an unborn child may have physical or mental handicaps that will make life challenging. The relative health of an unborn baby has no bearing on the fact that he or she is a living human being, and all human beings have the right to live.

History has shown the devastating effects of societies that start deciding who should live and who should die. It is not often discussed, but there is a direct link between the philosophy of evolution and the horrors of Nazism that erupted in Germany. In short, once people began to believe that humans were the result of evolution, they started to wonder which humans were the most evolved and what could be done to breed a better race—and which people should be removed from the gene pool.

Nazism was a philosophical blend of Social Darwinism and eugenics. Social Darwinism was the theory that humans were subject to the same forces of evolution that Darwin proposed for plants and animals. Eugenics was “the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.”
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Eugenicists thought that humans should take the same approach to reproduction that cattle ranchers take to breeding livestock—only breed the strongest and healthiest. Supporters of eugenics believed that Darwin’s proposed force of natural selection was moving too slowly and steps needed to be taken toward favoring the best and eliminating the worst. This was the same philosophy behind Hitler’s “master race” idea.

It’s worth noting that Nazi Germany’s first program of systematic murder targeted mentally and physically disabled children living in institutions within Germany or its controlled territories.
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The sole purpose of the euthanasia program was to kill people the eugenicists believed were not worthy of life. Notably, the Nazi’s first victims were infants and toddlers. The fact that they started killing the handicapped two years before they targeted Jews demonstrates that the evil of the Holocaust didn’t descend upon Germany overnight; it was a slow steady process. After society turned a blind eye to the killing of the handicapped, the Nazi government was emboldened to begin a more aggressive program of murder: the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews.