| Wow, what a tough one... This topic
is so steeped in emotion today it is hard to even talk about it let alone
put pen to paper... Oh well, here goes!
I think that abortion is wrong unless it is done to save the life of the mother. There I've said it!!! Now whether you agree or disagree with me please read on. I used to think that abortion was an acceptable form of birth control, after all, they kept saying that it was just a blob of tissue, like a spleen or appendices. You didn't really need it for anything anyway. Then I aged a little (got out of school) and started thinking about such matters. I then thought that maybe abortion would be all right if it was only done before the baby (sorry, fetus) could live outside of the womb. But, it seemed, they were able to save the infant at ever decreasing states of gestation. How do you make a decision about a human life based on such a fluid thing? You can't really... Next, I thought: Well, what is wrong with abortion anyway? This one didn't take long, if the fetus is a person/baby/chronologically challenged adult, then killing it/him/her without due coarse under the law would be murder. Just like the witch burnings and lynchings of old. So, what I really needed to do was to determine WHEN a person becomes a person! Once this point is established then the baby would have an unalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness just like the rest of us. I pondered this for some time and decided that conception is the point at which this should happen. Why? For a couple of reasons. First, there is only one thing that will attach itself to the wall of the uterus and start to grow. A fertilized human egg. This, of itself proves that the fertilized egg is different from any other "blob of tissue" in, or out of the body. Second, it is just a matter of timing. "What?" you say? It's like this, when you make a batch of cookies you call them cookies. But to be more specific, in the early stages of development you call them "batter". With a little more time and heat they become cookies. Except that they were always cookies weren't they. Never a book case, or a new dress, or a meat loaf, or even brownies, always cookies. And when did they first become cookies? When you added the last of the ingredients to the batter. From that point on they could never be anything but cookies! So when does a person become a person and receive the gifts endowed to all men by their creator? When all of the ingredients have been added to the the "mixing bowl". At that point the DNA code that makes you you instead of a dog etc. has been assembled. It just needs a little time and "heat" to finish "cooking". "Fetus" then becomes another stage in ones life rather than a noun for a "blob of tissue". Just like senior, middle aged, young adult, teenage, preteen, child, toddler, infant, fetus (fits right in there doesn't it!). |