Wow. It has been quite a while since I’ve posted. 72 days, to be exact. Good gracious. I have some good excuses though. School has taken up most of my creative thinking, as well as most of my day. Homework takes up the rest of my day. Family gets the rest of the day that homework doesn’t. So life has been pretty crazy. However, thanks once again to Mrs. Wicklund, I have a post! Controversial as it may be, it is important.
Thanks for reading!
*Just so I don’t get sued or anything, there is one picture that some people may not want to see. If you want to skip it, fine. (It’s in the third paragraph.) However, it is not a picture that is meant to be graphic and I believe it is important to see.*
Life: It’s Worth Fighting For
Since 1976, 1,407 people have been legally executed because of the death penalty.1 Since 1973, over 57 million children have been legally executed because of abortion.2 That is more than the population of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada combined.POP1–6 People actively oppose the death penalty, saying that everyone deserves a second chance, a chance to change, and that we have no to right to judge who will die. At the same time, we refuse to give a child in the womb a first chance.
Go to any pro-abortion website, and they will describe an abortion as “emptying the uterus”, there is no sign of life in their description. Yet the “contents of the uterus” meet the seven characteristics for life that we are taught in school: composition of cells, cellular organization, metabolism (use or storage of substances for energy), response to stimuli, development, reproduction, and genetic information (DNA).3
- Composition of cells: Twenty-four hours after being fertilized, an egg (now a zygote) begins to divide.4
- Cellular organization: A zygote has cellular organization simply by being a cell. It is made up of molecules which are composed of atoms.4
- Metabolism: For a zygote to begin to divide, it must have energy. Division cannot happen without energy. And when cells, whether in the form of a small clump of “tissues” or a full grown man, use energy, they are metabolizing.
- Response to stimuli: At least five studies have found that, by the middle of the seventh week, babies react when touched in the perioral (mouth) area.5 Studies have also shown that twins begin interacting with each other as early as fourteen weeks.6
- Development: Again, the zygote provides an example of life even in its short stage. One day after conception, the zygote has developed into a morula, a collection of sixteen cells.4
- Reproduction: The argument is often made that an embryo has not developed any reproductive organs, so therefore it has no form of reproduction and cannot be alive. However, as I mentioned above, a zygote begins to divide after twenty-four hours by mitosis7, A FORM OF REPRODUCTION8.
- DNA: Without DNA, there is no reproduction, asexual or sexual. DNA is the blueprints for what any organic organism is going to be. There wouldn’t be anything to reproduce without DNA, therefore a zygote has DNA.
If that isn’t enough for you, at week four, the baby’s heart begins to pump blood through his or her body. It has its own heartbeat. By the eighth week, the basic foundations of the child’s body systems are prepared.4 This is about the same time that most abortions happen.
So I’ve proven an embryo is alive, but that doesn’t make it human, right? Well, it was created by two humans. This means it has human DNA. It “grows up” to be human. Yet the value of its life is minimal in the eyes of so many people. Take a look at these pictures of an elephant, a dog, and frogs.
If you do a little math, the elephant is at about five weeks along, compared to a woman’s pregnancy. The dog would be about twenty weeks. As you can see, the frog eggs and tadpoles don’t really look much like frogs. Yet each of these embryos is considered a precious life. We trust that these creatures truly are going to grow to be the species of its mother. The picture below is of a baby miscarried at seven weeks. About 65% of all abortions take place before eight weeks.9
We do not doubt that embryo elephants are elephants, that fetus dogs are dogs, that tadpoles will one day have legs and jump! But we doubt the humanity of a “blob of tissue,” whose arms and legs are clearly beginning to form. Gallup found that 61% of people supported legalized abortion during the first trimester, but only 27% supported abortions during second trimester.10 To go off the argument of Stu Burguiere, it seems that when an embryo is three months, thirty days, twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes old, it is a big blob of tissues that will ruin the mother’s future.10 However, once the clock strikes midnight, that “embryo” is now a precious baby that we have no right to murder.10 61% of people would choose a different form of punishment than the death penalty.1 61% of people support abortions in the first trimester.10
But abortion doesn’t just affect the baby; it affects the woman too. A 25-year Danish study showed that women who had just one abortion were 45% more likely to die during childbirth than women who had not.11 Women who had two abortions had a 114% chance of maternal death; women with more than two had a 192% chance.11 A Finnish study found that, compared to women who completed their pregnancies, women who had abortions were about “four times more likely to die in the following year” and almost “seven times more likely to die of suicide.”11 Women who have abortions have increased risks of alcohol and drug abuse, poverty12, self-destructive lifestyles13, ectopic pregnancies (the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus14)13, and placenta previa (placenta blocks the neck of the uterus15)13, just to name a few. Even Dr. Julius Fogel, a psychiatrist and obstetrician who performed over 20,000 abortions, said that “every woman…has a trauma at destroying a pregnancy…[I]t is not as harmless and casual an event as many in the pro-abortion crowd insist.”16 But there aren’t just physical and psychological risks. Sixty-four percent of women who have had an abortion said they felt pressure to get the abortion.17 “Sixty-seven percent had no counseling before the abortion, and 79% were not informed of alternatives.”17 In addition, abortion is the fifth leading reason for maternal death in the U.S.11
Below are four people, three of which survived abortion and one conceived through sexual assault. Each one’s life was threatened by abortion, but each one, and many more, have lived. Through their testimonies they are changing the world. And to think that once they were “unwanted.”
Josiah Presley questions, “What about the rights of the unborn babies? What about the rights of the millions of little women killed each year by abortion? Or the millions of little men killed each year by abortion? What about their rights?”18 An unintended pregnancy doesn’t have to end in abortion. There are options such as adoption and parenting the child. There are resources online, on the phone, and on location. There are solutions like improving the adoption and foster care system and supporting women who choose to keep their child. Both mother and child are important. Both mother and child are human. Both mother and child are worth fighting for.
4Marieb, Elaine Nicpon. Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology. 8th ed. San Francisco: Pearson/Benjamin Cummings, 2006. Print.
[Now, understand how this entire monologue was spoken, imagine that someone just said, “Bucky Barnes was a loser and the Winter Soldier is a villain. And Doctor Who isn’t a deep show. Also, my favorite character from Lord of the Rings is Denethor.” The tone of voice you would use with them is the tone of voice this lady used with me.] 
For The Win 