Pointing to the Fire Escape

Meet the newest member of the human race. Ten weeks from conception this tiny person is beautifully luminescent, vulnerable and awe inspiring. She owns nothing but her future! 

Inspired by this aquanaut, I posted a new facebook status     "If killing a person today is murder, & killing them yesterday would have been murder, as well as maybe thousands of yesterdays before that... how many yesterdays can make killing any person legal?"

Almost immediately someone sent an anonymous Flair to the effect that pro-life people need to get a life of their own. It was intended to be a scathing remark. I felt honored, instead, to be identified with a cause I believe in so deeply. I hope to do more than get a life of my own: I pray that I am saving lives. I am proud to be known as a woman who points people to the fire escape during these times when humanity has exceeded its moral flash point. 

The weakest answer to above question is legality. The American courts & legislature assume authority to appoint a day when "products of pregnancy" become citizens protected by the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. However, this date is highly unscientific and randomly discerned by political agendas. If this opinion were not true, we would have a scientifically fixed date where life begins as the reference point for such laws.

Planned Parenthood avers discussing the humanity of a human embryo, emphasizing, rather, that at its earliest stages the conceptus doesn't look like a human being. This disingenuous argument is labored by ultrasound technology, which reveals how swiftly the tiny orb of already-human cells transforms into an undeniably vulnerable human being in development. By the time a conceived egg implants into the endometrium, when mom first suspects she is pregnant, it has become a unique individual with a complex life support system. As illustrated, at ten weeks the fully formed child is the size of a walnut. From this point on, the unborn child's primary purpose is to grow larger and stronger in preparation for its birth. 

Ten weeks! Unborn children were once protected until the first trimester en utero. Once we defiled the privacy of the womb, even second trimester children became vulnerable to legal condonement of abortion. Now, President Obama apparently defines a citizen as one whose head has been delivered, because partial birth abortion does not value a child who has been otherwise born alive. Some lawmakers have spoken publicly of extending the so-called right to choose for days -- even weeks -- beyond birth. 

How ludicrous would such abortion expansionism sound if the question is posed: "If killing an unborn baby is legal because it is unseen, and killing that baby tomorrow would also be legal because its face is unborn, how many days must transpire before killing the child in the privacy of one's own home becomes legal?"

While abortion rights are moving ever closer to complete deregulation, medical interventions are saving wanted children at terms that move ever-closer to conception. Mankind has crossed an invisible moral line whereby a child's life or death is determined by their mother's intentions. How can we quell this raging fire before it consumes us?

Finally, there comes the question of ownership implied in the right to medical privacy upon which Roe v. Wade was based. This thought hearkens to Bill Cosby's classic routine wherein a blustering father of teens declares, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it!" The routine was hilariously funny because Cosby has a rare genius for creative exaggeration. After a child is born, we acknowledge the child as an individual, not owned, but, nurtured by their parents. Yet, after thirty years Cosby's outrageousness contains a kernel of truth. Mothers and fathers make the same declaration by consenting to end their child's life through abortion. The laughter has died; abortion is serious business. We draw ever nearer to an irretrievable moment when human life carries less moral burden than tossing a bundle of twigs into a fire to be consumed.  Why aren't we running from the moral bonfire we have lit? The fire escape is marked with a bright sign reading "CHOOSE LIFE!"