Pro-Life is Postitive

First principles - the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness must be stressed. And it's so easy to be positive while teaching these truths. True happiness, health and success, as well as a stable society and government result from those same principles. We have no reason to be shy, apologetic, or to hesitate when confronted with straw men and circular logic.

It is vital that the pro-life advocate repeat that the fight to eliminate elective abortion is about the inalienable rights of each and every human, especially the right to life, and that the only legitimate function of government is to protect those inalienable rights, using as little force as necessary. Quite often, because most people are law-abiding, the prospect of breaking the law and threat of punishment is enough force.

As someone who studied and practices human medicine, I know that the life killed in abortion is a human life. Government and law should recognize this, too. After all the Endangered Species Act recognizes when life begins: crack the egg of a bird on the Endangered Species list and you'll find that it doesn't matter that the bird embryo or fetus can't survive outside the egg. You've still broken the Endangered Species Act.

There is no doubt about what kind of life, only whether it's **human enough** to deserve the same sort of protection we give snail darters and eagles. I can't imagine a more basic type of discrimination than one where some humans call themselves "persons," decide that the members of another group are not "persons," and proceeds to kill the non-persons at will.

As to the problems of a ban on elective abortions (those which are not done to actually save life): those problems have been faced in the past in this nation. Thousands lost the right to own slaves and were deprived of what they considered their "right to own property" due to the 13th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution. Those slave owners understood - really, they knew - the truth: the slaves were human and the act of usurping the life or freedom of a human being is not only wrong, but also harmful for the aggressor because, in the long run, it weakens any protection to life, liberty that any of have. If the majority rules on life and liberty, then we are each one court decision, one election, or one executive order away from slavery or death.

Unfortunately, we still hear about violations of the laws against slavery (kidnappers, involuntary prostitution, and those who prey on immigrants), but no one would argue that these infringements on inalienable human rights should be legal!

There is no longer any real public shame attached to having a child out of wedlock in this country. Ironically, the proponents of abortion as birth control - the blatant or subtle eugenicists - are more likely to shame a woman or girl for completing an unplanned pregnancy than is the straw man of the puritanical, religious, pro-life advocate.

No one on the prolife side should tolerate the idea that we do not support the mother and the child after birth. The Crisis Pregnancy Centers, the hotlines, the shelters and homes for mothers and their children, are run by pro-life (usually religious) institutions. And don't forget that we, too, pay taxes - just like the abortion advocates - that fund education, Medicaid, WIC, and Welfare.

In the long run, we do need to stress that each child should be wanted, and that having children outside of a loving marriage is less than optimal. There is no need to accept accusations that we are imposing our values on others: the facts support this idea.

Who would deny that what everyone wants is one, unconditional, trusting, loving relationship for life and that the best way to find that love and life is to be sexually faithful to your mate, even before marriage (or even before meeting him or her)? Children do better in school and later in life when their parents have an intact marriage. Marriages are more likely to avoid divorce if the partners do not live together before the wedding. Faithfulness (not celibacy, and not only abstinence before marriage) and monogamy for life is healthier. This is especially true for women, whose risk for HPV infection - which is the cause of 99+% of cervical cancer and virtually all those annual pap smears (That's right: the pap smear is an STD!) - is directly related to the number of sexual partners her partners have had. Because of her biology, the younger the girl, the higher the risk of infection and long term effects, including the risk of cervical cancer.

One way to reduce the perceived "need" for abortion is to teach our children to understand that how they live will affect how well they live and that it is vital to recognize what they really want: True love, and the security of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As someone who studied and practices human medicine, I know that the life killed in abortion is a human life. Government and law should recognize this, too.

Is Abortion Murder?

Homicide Based on the Killing of an Unborn Child -- In this essay, Alan Wasserstrom surveys the history of laws which prosecute feticide--the destruction of a human fetus--as homicide.

State Homicide Laws That Recognize Unborn Victims

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 503) recognizes unborn children as victims of federally prohibited crimes of violence. If someone injures or kills an unborn child while committing a violent federal crime against a pregnant woman, the assailant will be charged with a separate offense on behalf of the unborn child. The bill simply puts federal law behind the common sense recognition that when a criminal attacks a pregnant woman, and injures or kills her unborn child, he has claimed two human victims. The House passed H.R. 503 / vote: 252-172 April 26, 2001

Human Embryo Research After the Genome The Orwellian terms "pre-embryo" and "potential human being" no longer have any scientific validity.

Statement - On Human Embryos and Stem Cell Research...

One of the great hallmarks of American law has been its solicitous protection of the lives of individuals, especially the vulnerable. ...–one of the great achievements of the modern world–is founded on the conviction that when the dignity of one human being is assaulted, all of us are threatened.

Current law against funding research in which human embryos are harmed and destroyed reflects well-established national and international legal and ethical norms against the misuse of any human being for research purposes. Since 1975, those norms have been applied to unborn children at every stage of development in the womb, and since 1995 they have been applied to the human embryo outside the womb as well. The existing law on human embryonic research is a reflection of universally accepted principles governing experiments on human subjects–principles reflected in the Nuremberg Code, the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and many other statements. Accordingly, members of the human species who cannot give informed consent for research should not be the subjects of an experiment unless they personally may benefit from it or the experiment carries no significant risk of harming them.

...the Supreme Court has never prevented the government from protecting prenatal life outside the abortion context, and public sentiment also seems even more opposed to government funding of embryo experimentation than to the funding of abortion. The laws of a number of states–including Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah–specifically protect embryonic human beings outside the womb. Most of these provisions prohibit experiments on embryos outside the womb.

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