Why be pro-life?

LA Times ^ | 16 October 2007 | Jonah Goldberg

[shrinkermd]

Idon't know if life begins at conception. I don't really know what "life" means. Consciousness? Possessing a soul? Well, if consciousness defines the issue, then life surely does not begin at conception. Not even the most adamant pro-lifer claims otherwise.

As for souls, I believe we have them, but I don't know how they work. Indeed, ensoulment -- the process by which God puts a soul in our bodies -- is a controversial topic among religious scholars, people who know a lot more about such things than I do. And I'm not sure any of them are right anyway....

...In death penalty cases, "reasonable doubt" goes to the accused because unless we're certain, we must not risk an innocent's life. This logic goes out the window when it comes to abortion, unless you are 100% sure that babies only become human beings after the umbilical cord is cut. I don't see how you can be that sure, which is why I'm pro-life -- not because I'm certain, but because I'm not.

[Lorianne]

To err on the side of caution is a good pro-Life argument. It is moral but not religious.

[Lorianne]

To err on the side of caution is a good pro-Life argument. It is moral but not religious.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

Very, very fuzzy thinking in this article. He doesn’t know what “life” is?

I think Goldberg is merely hedging his arguments to get down to the lowest common denominator. His basic premise is aimed at pro-choicers or those that can't decide. It makes argumentative sense to align with these people and say "I don't know what life is" then lead them to the conclusion that uncertainty should set someone against abortion.

It's an excellent argument, one without counter. True, it does not come from a love of life, but it does come from the perspective that killing the innocent is evil.

[MHGinTN]

With the first division of the zygote, the newly conceived LIFE is directing its own growth, even dividing the tasks for living to allow his or her first organ for survival to develop and accomplish implantation ... that organ which is shed with birth into the air world. The newly conceived LIFE makes ALL the organs for survival in the environment to which he or she is exposed (water world or ari world).

[MHGinTN]

Ping ... the LIFE begins at conception and the first cell division of the zygote is proof the new LIFE is active on its own behalf. The new LIFE will go through many astonishing developmental stages/ages, but it will remain the same LIFE (and sometimes even more than one; especially if the new life lives long enough to parent children in the years to come rather than the days ahead —caption twinning, etc.) which accomplished the first cell division at zygote age.

[synbad600]

P.C.: The unviable-mass position.

[MEGoody]

Why be pro-life?

Because I don't believe in killing innocent, helpless human beings.

[elephantlips]

One day I got a really nice piece of wood and I thought, “I’ll build a large bookcase.” As I went along cutting the wood, I changed my mind and I said. “I’ll change this to a nice wooden chest for my bedroom.” As I was cutting the wood it came to mind that what my mother could really use is a jewelry box and so I fashioned her a lovely box for her bureau. In the beginning, the wood had no direction or endpoint, that changed along the way, as it turned out, several times. A human child is conceived to be a human child from the moment of conception, it can never be anything else. As to whether it’s alive, that’s just common sense. If it grows, it’s alive. If a plant growing in my yard is unknown at the time but turns out to be a carrot, that’s what it was from the beginning. A human is a human from the moment of conception. If you destroy it, you destroy a human life, period!

[MHGinTN]

Well now that just makes too much sense ... for those who seek to slaughter alive unborn for utilitarian reasons they will not speak.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Yes, I understand that, but when I wrote that I don't really know what life is, I meant it in an ontological sense. However, Goldberg probably didn't. He wrote that he doesn't really know what life means, which is quite different, and most likely he was confining himself to what "life" means in the pro-life context. Then we must ask, "To whom?"

Still, I'd bet he doesn't know what life is, either. ;)

[MosesKnows]

I don't really know what "life" means

Perhaps you should concentrate on defining what legal death is. In that fashion, legal life would be the opposite.

Is legal death the lack of breathing?
Is legal death the absence of a heartbeat?
Is legal death the absence of brain activity?
Perhaps it is all of the above.

Whatever legal death is in your state legal life would be the opposite.

[cpforlife.org]

I've always liked Jonah. He's a good guy. But his opening line is unnacceptable because he avoids the scientific facts that life absolutly begins at conception.

When does life begin?
We have ABSOLUTE Irrefutable truth, Scientific proof

* In 1981, a US Senate committee held hearings on when human life begins. Speaking on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally known geneticists and biologists who had the same story to tell, namely, that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.

Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life begins at conception.

* "The Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence. Human life begins at conception "

* Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."

* Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."

* Professor Eugene Diamond on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

14 weeks

At 15 weeks, this non-viable disposable blob of tissue is sucking it’s thumb

16 weeks

18 weeks

20 weeks from conception

Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[ex-snook]

"I don't really know what "life" means. "

Then shutup already.

[cpforlife.org]

Pro-Choice Advocates Agree that Abortion Kills Humans.
http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html#S4

Many abortion advocates have agreed that abortion kills human life: A 1963 Planned Parenthood brochure says that life begins at conception: This is a direct quote "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

Similarly, Dr. Mary Calderone, former director of Planned Parenthood has stated that "abortion is the taking of a human life"

Dr. Magda Denes who performed two years of research in an abortion facility and compiled her results told a Chicago newspaper "There wasn’t an (abortion) doctor who at one time or another in the questioning did not say ‘this is murder.’"

The unborn person as recognized by law.

One False objection the Roe court had to the unborn as a person interpretation is the lack of precedent to support it. But there was a federal court precedent for the unborn as a person reading of the Fourteenth Amendment just 3 years before Roe v. Wade, though this fact was virtually ignored by Justice Harry Blackmun and the Roe Court.

From Constitutional Persons: An Exchange on Abortion

The common law basis of our system embodied in the principle of stare decisis and the just requirements of consistency in applying the law demand a respect for precedent. To this objection I offer two replies. First, there was a federal court precedent for the unborn person reading of Fourteenth Amendment before Roe v. Wade, though this fact was virtually ignored by Justice Harry Blackmun and the Roe Court.

In Steinberg v. Brown (1970) a three-judge federal district court upheld an anti-abortion statute, stating that privacy rights "must inevitably fall in conflict with express provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."

After relating the biological facts of fetal development, the court stated that "those decisions which strike down state abortion statutes by equating contraception and abortion pay no attention to the facts of biology."

"Once new life has commenced," the court wrote, "the constitutional protections found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments impose upon the state the duty of safeguarding it."

Yet in commenting on the unborn person argument in Roe, Justice Blackmun wrote that "the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." He did so despite the fact that he had cited the case just five paragraphs earlier!

The failure of both appellees and the Court to treat this case is both unfortunate and inexplicable. Second, while our system is based upon a reasonable and healthy respect for precedent, this has never prevented the Court from revisiting and modifying precedent when the erroneous foundation and unjust results of that precedent become manifest. Such is the case with respect to abortion and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Let’s review the milestones of a person’s life before they are born:
· By the seventh day of life, the new person is planted in the uterus, home for the next nine months.
· By day 17, the blood cells and the heart are formed.
· By day 24, there is a heartbeat.
· By six weeks, the child’s nervous system is controlling their body. He or she now looks distinctly human. Throughout pregnancy the child is mostly in control--even to what day they will be born.
· By day 45, the baby has his own brain waves, which he will keep for life.
· By seven weeks, he has all the internal organs of an adult (though he weighs only one-thirtieth of an ounce and is less than one inch long.)
· By eight weeks, all external organs are formed, by nine to ten weeks, he can drink and breath amniotic fluid.
· From this age on is just a matter of time for growth. Before he is born, he can suck his thumb, cry (if he had air), and recognize his mother's voice and heartbeat.
· By the fourth month the child weighs about 5 ounces and is between 6 and 7 inches long. He has developing fingernails and eyelashes, and already has unique fingerprints that will remain the same for the rest of his life.
· At 32 weeks of gestation - two months before a baby is considered fully prepared for the world, or "at term" - a fetus is behaving almost exactly as a newborn. And it continues to do so for the next 12 weeks.
· By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the 2nd trimester it can hear.
· Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.
· The fetus savors its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.
· Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger, and respond to a familiar story read to it.
· Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows, as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, he or she can hear; toward the end of pregnancy, can see.

This so called “Women’s Right to Choose…to abort her baby” has as its foundation, three main points:
1. It must ignore universally acknowledged biological facts,
2. It denies federal and state laws that clearly identify the unborn as a person with rights.
3. It promotes a blatant lie that “It’s” a woman’s body” When clearly “IT” is her baby within her body.

Many people who have trouble with the abortion issue say. “Please do not quote religious or moral codes” And yet the founder of NARAL used religious and moral codes as a wedge to create dissension against religious and moral leaders by their followers in favor of abortion. He also admitted to lying about every statistic to show a false need for legalized abortion. It’s all here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1030729/posts?page=12#12

“Abortion and euthanasia are crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.’" (The Gospel of Life, no. 73)

The single most important thing we can do as Christians is to teach our children about the sanctity of life before birth, and promote this to all of our friends and our families.

Note from a friend: I gave my 10-year-old daughter a little book filled with the most marvelous actual photos of unborn babies in all phases of pregnancy. When she started hearing about abortion, I would show her pictures of the tiniest, most perfectly formed little babies, and explain that some people didn't think these were actually little humans and it was ok to kill them. She was very disturbed and troubled by this. She said if everyone had this book, no one would ever kill their babies. And with that I MUST say that comprehensive education for school-aged children is THE MISSING KEY OF THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT .

Since the decision of Roe v. Wade, tens of millions of Christian school students could have received a Pro-Life education. This group would today constitute a huge voting block; and with them, the culture of death might have already been defeated.

We must start with being mindful that young children are naturally pro-life. Ask a young child who has a pregnant mother what is inside his mother's “tummy,” and he will likely respond that it is his baby brother or sister. It is so simple to a child.

The sad reality is that the duration of the abortion holocaust is prolonged by Christians who vote for pro-abortion candidates. This can only end with a new generation of Christians fully educated on the sanctity of Life before birth.

“The solution to ending the culture of death does not realistically lie with changing the minds of pro-abortion adults; it lies with preserving the 99+ % of children that are naturally pro-life on their first day of school.”

Roe v Wade is null and void. It is the invalid fiat ruling of 7 men. It has as much validity as the Dred Scott decision or of the Nazi courts. It is the antithesis of both the Declaration and the Constitution. Yes it’s ruling has the effect of law, just as the case in Slavery and just as in the case in Nazi Germany. If it is not overturned it will one day be understood as one of the main factors in what would dissolve our Republic.

[Lorianne]

I've always liked Jonah. He's a good guy. But his opening line is unnacceptable because he avoids the scientific facts that life absolutly begins at conception.

No, he doesn't avoid that. He says he doesn't know. He suspects but doesn't absolutely know. But, he says, he advocates erring on the side of caution.

That's honesty, not avoidance.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” ~~~ Thomas Jefferson

[redgirlinabluestate]

Great quote. President Bush used that quote in his speech on National Sanctity of Human Life Day and added this:

President Jefferson's timeless principle obligates us to pursue a civil society that will democratically embrace its essential moral duties, including defending the elderly, strengthening the weak, protecting the defenseless, feeding the hungry, and caring for children -- born and unborn.

[MHGinTN]

I’ve been looking for that Steinberg v Brown case! Thanks for posting the reference again.

[Raymann]

Well it depends on your defination of ‘life’ I suppose. I always figured that since we consider death to cession of stable EEG readings...then life starts when they become stable.

I think that’s around 20 weeks or so.

[TASMANIANRED]

I was pro choice when I was an uninformed young woman...

During nursing school I worked as a secretary on a busy medical unit in the hospital.

One night when labor and delivery was swamped we admitted a woman in labor , 5 months pregnant and the baby was deceased.

We delivered he poor dead baby in the room.

Mom didn’t want to see him..

The labor and delivery nurse said we needed to photograph him because Mom’s often change their minds as the grieve.

Because everyone else was tied up, it fell to me to wash, dress and wrap in a little blue blanket this beautiful little, tiny baby that never drew a breath.

He had hair, fingernails, eyelashes, beautiful little bow shaped lips...He looked like the most perfect porcelain doll that I have ever seen.

After photo’s, I carried his tiny lifeless body to the lab.

That night I became pro life.