A Modern Day Holocaust

I found my Senior year research paper this weekend while cleaning out my room for a yard sale. I am not sure if I am happy that I had such great writing skills 10 years ago or sad to know what they have diminished to now. Anyways, knowing this is a hot topic with some people, thought I’d add this to my blog:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain un-alienable rights, that among these rights are life..." 1973 was a crucial year in the controversies surrounding abortion. That was the year the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in the notorious Roe vs. Wade case. Abortion, though one of the most immoral and heinous of deeds, is the most accepted crime in our world today. Some even applaud this sinful killing. All abortion should be made illegal for numerous reasons. Abortion is infanticide, and God said killing is wrong. Abortion is also harmful to the mother and future children. It is a great misfortune that our society has grown so accustomed to killing babies that we forget that we have not been assigned the job of Atropos, and we continue to cut short the thread of life.

Five types of induced abortion are commonly used by doctors to terminate pregnancies by killing the baby. A suction method, which works at powers 29 times more powerful than a vacuum cleaner, rips the baby into pieces. With the Dilatation and curettage method, a loop shaped steal knife is inserted in the uterus, and the placenta and baby are cut into pieces and scraped out into a basin. Also, there is a Prostaglandin abortion in which drugs to induce labor right at the moment are administered. Many times the baby is born alive, but it is too small to survive, and such a live birth is considered a “complication.” The salt poisoning technique is used after the 16th week. Salt solution is injected into the amniotic fluid through a large needle. The baby breathes and swallows this poison and struggles, usually living for over an hour. The mother then goes into labor soon after, ideally delivering a dead baby. Quite often, the baby is still alive when delivered after salt poisoning. Another method of abortion is a hysterectomy which is similar to a Caesarian section. The baby is lifted out of the uterus still in the placenta and discarded. Once, a surgeon was performing an abortion in this manner when he lifted out the baby who was trying to cry and flailing his arms and legs. The doctor smothered him.

Abortions will cause physical harm later in life to both the mother and any future children. The increase in premature births after one abortion is 14% due to the stretching of the cervical muscle ring. This also leads to a higher percentage of brain injuries at birth. Induced abortions can also cause Rh problems with later babies, which could lead to the need for transfusions. Babies suffering from this condition are likely to be born dead or die shortly after birth. There has also been an increase in tubal pregnancies after abortion, from 0.5% to 3.9%. This is because the scraping and cutting in the womb leads to permanent scarring which hinders the process of the fertilized egg moving down the fallopian tube. The egg then stays and grows in the tube causing hemorrhaging and a need for immediate surgery. Studies have also shown that there is a 50% increase in the risk for breast cancer, and this will result in 40,000 – 50,000 more cases of breast cancer per year.

By allowing abortion, not only are we placing a social or economic price tag on human life for its continued existence, but we are also requiring a certain physical perfection. Usefulness to others is a must. The only tim ein history that this was ever done was by the small group of physicians in Hitler’s Germany during the Holocaust. History is surely repeating itself all over the world. How can we, as a civilized nation, whose government was created by the people, for the people, resort to killing innocent babies and denying them any rights? Conception marks the beginning of human life. The baby has its own genetic code and grows and develops from this time to the rest of its life. This unborn child has a right to live, a right which is taken away from babies millions of times a year. Abortion is being used as a form of birth control by millions of women who want to be sexually active but do not want to take the accompanying responsibilities. These women claim that they have rights to privacy of their own bodies. Because a baby has its own genetic code unique to the mothers, it makes the baby an entirely separate being, and the baby can never be considered a part of the mother’s body like a lung or a kidney. Suppose a mother was beating her child on her own property and someone saw this. That person would definitely intervene, and stop the killing, without any regards to the privacy of the mother’s home. Abortion is the same in that a baby is being killed. Some would try to use the semantics of our language to argue that the baby is not human and is not being killed. Unborn babies are called by pro-abortionists as a “fetus” or an “embryo”, and rather than the repugnant term “kill”, words such as “terminate” and “interrupt” are often used. However, a baby is alive; it breathes, has functioning organs, and a heartbeat. Why would it have to be killed if it were not alive? A mark cannot be placed on the exact time that a “fetus” becomes a “baby”. No person grows at the same rate as another. Babies have been known to survive premature birth as early as at 20 weeks. How then can another baby, merely at a different location at 20 weeks not be regarded as a human?

When Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 for first-trimester babies, the decision in fact also legalized abortion for the whole pregnancy. Because of this, partial-birth abortion has become a common method for aborting pregnancies after 20 weeks. When the pro-choice nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer was assigned to an abortion clinic, she did not think anything of it. Then one day, a doctor was performing a partial-birth abortion. The doctor delivered everything but the baby’s head. The baby was kicking his feet and moving his fingers until the doctor took a pair of scissors and stabbed the baby in the back of the head, then inserted a tube in it and sucked the brains out of the baby. Nurse Shafer never went back to the clinic. That doctor has performed over 1,000 partial-birth abortions exactly as this one. The difference between partial-birth abortion and homicide is a mere three inches.

As a predominantly Christian society, we should not even have a question about the validity of abortion. From reading the Bible, we can infer that abortion is morally wrong. Both David and Job wrote that the Lord knew them even as they were being formed in the womb. “…When I was growing there in secret, you knew that I was there – you saw me before I was born.” This clearly illustrates that God still regards a “fetus” as one of his precious children; a child that is to have a life in this world. “Verily I saw unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” One of the Ten Commandments states that “Thou shalt not kill.” By allowing abortion we are evidently violating this commandment and God’s word. What is this world coming to when we allow a mother to kill her own dear child?

Each year there are over 1.2 million legally induced abortions in the United States alone. There are around 55 million abortions in the whole word each year. The US has the highest rates of both unplanned pregnancy and abortion in the world. About 50% of the pregnancies in the nation are not planned and according to the Guttmacher Institute about 43% of American women will have at least one abortion by the time they are 45. Most of the women who are getting abortions are usually unmarried, white, aged 20-24. Twenty percent of the women are under 19 years old.

Even in the case of rape or incest, abortion is morally wrong. It is extremely unfortunate that a women or young girl had to endure the horrors of being forced to have sex by a total stranger, or even by her father. If a baby was conceived because of this, the baby still has a right to live. It was not the baby’s fault that it was the product of rape. The baby should not be punished for the crime of his father. The baby is still a baby, growing, and breathing in the mother’s womb. “All children are gifts from God. IT makes no difference how they are conceived.”

There is a wonderful alternative to abortion. This is adoption. About 1.4 million families in the U.S. are on waiting lists to adopt children. This figure is almost the same number of babies who are killed each year through abortion. Only 50,000 babies are released for adoption each year. This leaves over a million people still willing to adopt a child. It is a completely selfish choice not to carry the pregnancy to term and then give the baby up for adoption if it is still unwanted at the time of birth.

Abortion is a legal crime which needs to come to an abrupt halt. The only difference between abortion and homicide is the legality of it. Just within the past six years, abortion has claimed about 184 million babies worldwide. The holocaust took the lives of only 14 million people within the same period of time. That makes this “modern-day holocaust” over 13 times larger in the amount of lives that it is taking. It is highly ironic that Norma McCorvey, the woman who is responsible for the legalization of abortion, also known as “roe” in Roe vs. Wade, is now 100 percent pro-life. This change of heart came with her conversion to Christianity in 1995. McCorvey said, “I’m sorry for being so terribly, terribly young and so terribly, terribly naïve.” God said, “Thou shalt not kill.” He must be listened to before we bring disaster upon ourselves.