Pro-Life - My Perspective

By Debra N. Rivera
Rightgrrl Contributor
January 6, 1999

I may have a very morbid sense of humor--I may have a fascination with the spooky or vulgar or derisively cynical in art and literature and such, and I may be spooky or vulgar or derisively cynical. However, in all seriousness, I am pro-life. I am anti-abortion.

I find it horrific that unborn children can be legally put to death at the whims of their mothers. I cannot look at people and think that their mothers could ever have been right to abort them if their mothers had only arbitrarily decided that it would be right to do so. It astounds me how pro-aborts can look at their loved ones and think that they were ever undeserving of life. Since we don't know the exact moment where life begins, there is an obligation to accord one natural rights (i.e. the right to life) at conception. The issue of abortion is not simply a matter of opinion, since it involves choosing whether unborn children live or die; the difference between life and death is not simply a difference of opinion.

Numerous abortions are performed in the name of "compassion," under the premise that if the unborn child is not aborted, s/he might go on to either suffer or cause suffering. But this premise expresses what might happen, not what will happen. Annually, the lives of roughly 1.5 million unborn children are ended in abortions in the United States. That a fraction out of those 1.5 million would have come to either suffer or cause suffering does not justify the deaths of 1.5 million unborn children per year.

If there were a war today in which prisoners were tortured and murdered by either dismemberment or exposure to chemicals like unborn children in abortions, and in the frequency in which abortions are performed daily, it would be very fashionable to protest.

According to the pro-abortion idea of compassion, one method of preventing suffering would be to round up 1.5 million random members of society every year and do them in, since an inevitable fraction of those 1.5 million would be suffering or causing others to suffer. The logic of that bewilders me. Besides, what is the highest extent to which a person can suffer before s/he deserves to die? Is that extent clearly defined? How can we be sure that an unborn child will develop into someone who suffers or causes suffering so much that s/he is better off dead than alive?

To say that victims of abuse should never have been born is to punish them for the crimes of their abusers. The number of cases of child abuse has actually increased considerably since the legalization of abortion. To say that disabled people should have been put to death before they had the chance to suffer from their disabilities is to punish them for their disabilities. Innumerable people survive beautifully and love life despite having suffered; their experiences speak louder than those whom the pro-abortion movement likes to adopt as its poster children.

It is unconstitutional to deny a person rights on the basis of race or gender. However, it is perfectly legal to abort an unborn child because the child is black or female. It is legal to abort an unborn child because the child might be short or gay or fat or unattractive--whatever reason. That is senseless and horribly, dangerously elitist.

There are people who somehow survived attempts to have them aborted [case in point: Heidi Huffman], and some of those people sustained permanent injuries as a result [case in point #1: Sarah Smith] [case in point #2: Gianna Jessen] [case in point #3: Ximena Renaerts]. What can we say to these people to sympathize with them and rationalize abortion at the same time? "We’re sorry that you’re missing a limb as a result of that failed abortion, but that abortion attempt was in your mother’s best interest as well as yours and society’s"? Or, "Your injuries are awful; better technology and skill should have been available to abort you correctly so that you would not have lived to either 'enslave' your mother or suffer yourself"?

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This article copyright © 1999 by Debra N. Rivera and may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of its author. All rights reserved.