In the next few days there will be much hype about the inauguration of President Barack Obama, but another important event will also be commemorated later this week: the 36th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Together, the cases formally legalized abortion in America.
The 2008 March for Life, a pro-life rally held annually in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 22, boasted a crowd of over 200,000 supporters and protesters alike. This year, several members of Tufts' own pro-life club, Jumbos for Life, will be in attendance.
The pro-life position is simple and consistent: It states that human life deserves to be protected in all of its stages. Once it is agreed that a fetus both has life and is human, there can be no option to terminate a pregnancy that would result in the killing of an innocent human life. Our own founding documents recognize that all humans are granted unalienable rights, the foremost of which is the right to life. Yet since 1973, over 50 million lives have been taken by abortion. In a country that so prizes its freedoms and lends its aid so freely worldwide, it amazes me that the genocide taking place in our own country is so largely ignored.
Science has proven, and logic tells us, the rather obvious yet all-important fact that human parents cannot produce anything other than a human child. Therefore, from the moment of conception, there can be no doubt that this product of reproduction is human. As for the argument regarding its life: the fetus has its own DNA, distinct and unique from both its parents. Therefore, it satisfies the "uniqueness test" and is not simply an extension of the mother's body.
The definition of life as given by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary states that life is "an organismic state characterized by the capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction." In short, all of the necessary qualities belonging to a living organism are possessed by the early embryo. Clearly, life does not begin at birth. Human life is a continuous process; from the joining of egg and sperm until death, this being ceases to be neither human nor living. In fact, most of the structures belonging to the baby will have already been formed before the eight-week point — well within the first trimester when most abortions take place. At this point, the baby's heart beats 150 times per second, he/she has thin eyelids, a brain and fingers, and can sense vibrations.
The newest weapon in the battle for life is the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), recently put before Congress, which would in short overturn all former laws "interfering" with the abortion process. FOCA could possibly force a retraction of the Hyde Amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1976 and bans the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, by allowing abortions to be tax-funded. In addition, it would repeal state and local laws restricting abortions and force all health-care providers to offer abortions regardless of their moral, clinical and ethical objections. FOCA would also remove the protection granted by the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, which protects babies born live after a failed abortion. Under FOCA, women would also be able to seek legal redress against any governmental office she feels has encroached upon her right to choose in the past.
Pro-choice pundits often cite viability as a reason for not granting the protection of life to unborn children. However, if we apply this same logic to other circumstances, like those of dependent persons who rely on the support of machines or monetary and physical aid from people to live, people in those categories may range from infant to adult to the elderly and infirm. Just because these people are dependent on another does not give their caregiver the right to decide whether or not to kill their dependents because they are an "inconvenient burden." The choice to abort is the same; the weak and innocent should never have to suffer for their "inconvenient" condition of being alive, especially when there are so many resources in such a developed nation as ours and an endless list of parents willing to adopt. The only saving grace for humankind is its ability to distinguish right from wrong, yet when the world's three major religions all agree upon the same point that killing a human being is wrong, why is this "right to choose" even debated? The answer seems pretty clear: Americans have simply ceased to value human life as they should. The bottom line here is that every human being is unique and special and deserves the same rights of protection as any human in any stage of life. I can only hope that President Obama will recognize the folly of the pro-abortion stance and repeal his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act when it comes before him.
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Jaclyn Thomas is a junior majoring in chemical engineering. She is the co-chair of Jumbos for Life.
