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Martin Card, the winner of the 2009 Michigan Right to Life Student Essay Contest, spoke at the dinner for which AFL President, Georgette Forney was the keynote speaker.
Good afternoon my fellow Americans, our country is in a crisis; this crisis has nothing to do with economics or terrorism and it has everything to do with the legal massacre of helpless children.
My goal is to convince you that abortion is tremendously evil and cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.
I will argue from three perspectives: The simple truth about abortion; Arguments from the Bible; Arguments from secular science and principles.
The Simple Truth About Abortion
All people are instilled with a basic sense of right and wrong, people know when something is terribly wrong. That is why the simple truth is the single most powerful argument against abortion.
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” John 8:32
The truth about abortion is:
There are 1.2 million abortions every year in the U.S.
Half that number, .6 million U.S. soldiers have been killed in all warfare ever.
But that number is small relative to what happens throughout the world; globally, there are 50 million abortions every year.
What can we compare this number to? Global deaths! The World Health Organization estimates that 58 million people died in 2005. So we have 50 million abortions and 58 million deaths. That means that almost every time you hear about a death, anywhere in the world, whether it be from AIDS, cancer, or terrorism, there is the slaughter of a completely innocent child to match.
But is abortion a simple medical procedure? Here’s abortionist Dr. Warren Hern describing what he does: “ Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and grasped the head of the fetus, which was still alive, as we do not use fetal injection at that stage of pregnancy. Then I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. The fetus, now dead, slid out more or less intact.” My friends, the facts speak for themselves. When we face the truth, it is obvious that abortion is wrong But our feelings of disgust and horror when confronted with the truth are not the reasons that abortion is wrong. Abortion is wrong because 1. God says so in his Word and because 2. Secular science and our foundational moral principles find it completely unacceptable.
Arguments from the Bible
When we try to examine God’s word on abortion, “Thou shalt not kill” is obvious, but what about the unborn? Does God care about them?
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you aside for my holy purpose,” Jeremiah 1:5. This clearly states that God cares about unborn children, but some might argue that it’s a choice for the lesser of two evils. Children being born can cause significant problems, and reality is that sometimes we have to make hard choices.
But if we look to Psalm 127:3 it says, “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb his generous legacy?” God doesn’t say that a woman’s comfort or a good education or a paycheck every week are His best gifts. He says children are. Christians who support abortion have their priorities backwards! God loves children so much he sets them aside for his holy purpose even before they’re born. Abortion destroys those children so loved by God. The Bible clearly rejects abortion.
Secular Science and Principles
Unfortunately not everyone believes in the Bible, so we must examine the secular evidence in order to find abortion universally unacceptable. Human Embryology And Teratology, by Ronan R. O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, states: “Fertilization is an important landmark because under ordinary circumstances a genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.” And from The Developing Human: Clinically-Oriented Embryology, by Kieth L. Moore: “Development begins at fertilization.” So science tells us that at conception, a genetically distinct human organism is formed and developed immediately and continues that development through birth and until death. At no time during this development can science find a definite point where this human ceases to be a “non-person” with no rights and suddenly becomes a “person” with rights. Because of this lack of certainty, abortion cannot be tolerated at any stage of pregnancy.
Just look at the comparative consequences; on the one hand, if we guess that “personhood” and the “right to life” begin earlier than they do, the consequence is that a baby is born. On the other hand, if we guess that “personhood” begins later than it actually does, then the consequence is that an innocent child is brutally murdered. We can’t afford to play guessing games with the gift of life.
Abortion advocates are constantly pushing for the “separation of church and state.” They say they want ideology out of government. Yet they ignore the objective science because the termination of pregnancies fits in with their own blind ideology. They kill millions of people every year because they let their ideology get in the way of sensible government.
This absurdity is exactly why our founding fathers wrote into every facet of our country’s documents that everyone has the right to life and all people are created equal.
Our founding fathers weren’t just doodling when they wrote the Declaration of Independence; the very Declaration that they would risk their money, reputations, and even their very lives to make the government of America better. They obviously thought it was important when they wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
My friends, any angle you look from abortion must be stopped.
The simple truth cries out how horrible abortion is! The Bible is clear: children are God’s best gift, and He sets them aside for His holy purpose even before they are born. Objective science cannot justify abortion. Our basic principles declare that we cannot afford to take peoples’ lives on a whim.
Unfortunately, governments have narrowed the definition of what a person is. Human sacrifice, the slave trade, and the Nazi holocaust are just a few examples of what happens when we fail to respect peoples basic rights. “And that among these are the right to life.”
