I WANT TO LIVE!

by Laura Mirabal

There are some like me, who believe that God gives life and that God is the only one with the authority to take it.  In our society many have advocated and endowed themselves with this authority since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, in January 1973, legalizing abortion that left the unborn without any legal protection.  This started society’s downward moral spiral leading to a dark and evil path.

The dictionary defines abortion as - intentional termination of pregnancy, and pregnancy as - to carry developing offspring (children) within the body.  Putting these two definitions together abortion is - the intentional termination of a developing offspring (children) within the body.   Wow!  Put it in this context, those participating in this act are terminating a developing offspring (children).

Can any of us imagine our lives without a Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Gates, or Barak Hussein Obama, just to name a few,  or without our family and friends?  We would never know or enjoy the contributions and joy these people brought to enrich and improve our lives.   Because of these brave, industrious, and innovative people, we, have the light bulb, penicillin, learned how to bring dignity to the poorest of the poor, had the civil rights movement, benefit from Microsoft, and elected the first Black president of the United States, respectively.

These people contributed to heal societal ills and catapulted the world out of darkness and disease, and offered us hope.  Each changed our hearts and enriched our lives or our philosophical view of life and those all around the world that ultimately changed it forever. I pause and affirm that life is awesome - because they were born.

In the United States, the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Roe v. Wade, abortions became legalized genocide of the most innocent and defenseless of humans – the unborn child or fetus.  Abortions have caused millions of deaths of the unborn; even during the process of being born.  Abortions have caused incalculable pain and suffering and has traumatized millions of women now struggling to find some peace and healing from the choice they made, and to the men who grieve for their children because they had no choice. 

Western society enthusiastically embraces abortion as a means of birth control or contraception.  Doctors are enlisted, whose oath is to protect the weak and vulnerable, to provide this service under the guise of its legality - to ease their conscience. 

A society that can infringe on the rights of these innocent and defenseless beings will have no qualms and on a whim will decide who has a right to live or die.  Violating this inalienable human right to life perils all other rights and more inalienable rights can be taken from us too.

We live in a country that protects our rights to make the best choices for our lives, and although I am against abortion, I respect the right of women to be pro-choice.  I am also nonplussed at this society’s passionate and vociferous campaign about saving all sorts of animal species, plants and trees, but yet can be so self-congratulatory, proud and insensitive in their zeal to encourage women to kill their unborn child by heinous and cruel methods, if the child were an inconvenience. 

This society proudly endorses our tax dollars to provide free condoms to children in school, but wouldn’t dare suggest that abstinence be taught instead, or that moral values be taught which would create a moral conscience in those young minds to help them make the best choices for their lives.  

When I hear the argument that a fetus is not really a child because it has not been born I think how ridiculous this sounds and I think back to one summer when I was a little girl and my father and I planted watermelon seeds.  Those watermelons seeds were not watermelons, but they had the potential and were in development to become watermelons - with nurturing and care. 

Like the watermelon seeds, caring for and loving a child from the time of conception, will grow, develop and eventually shooting out as a human being – they just need for us to love them enough to give them that chance.  A fetus is the union of a man’s and woman’s God-given gift to reproduce and populate the world.  The fetus has the potential of being born as an individual who has the right to live and decide the course of its own life and positively impact our lives and those of others.   

 Before Roe v. Wade women aborted their fetuses in the first trimester (first three months after conception, maturation or gestation), but now abortions include the termination of full-term babies while they are being born, called Partial Birth Abortion; the ultimate torture and child abuse  committed on the unborn.

I would not call a doctor performing abortions, doctor – it would be oxymoronic to do so, because by definition a doctor is – a person trained in the healing arts. 

I found some parts of the Hippocratic Oath which all doctors swear to:

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that   warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

... Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

There are seven (7) different methods of abortion performed today.  Partial Birth Abortion was banned in 2003 by President George W. Bush, but President Obama reinstated it shortly after taking office; he has always advocated Partial Birth Abortion even from the time he was in the House of Representatives in Illinois.

Here is a very chilling fact: in this dangerous world we live in today with threats from extreme Muslim terrorists chanting death to all non-Muslims –their population increases while ours decreases.  Muslims do not practice abortion on-demand as we do; they believe that God is the giver of life and that children are a blessing - as God tells us in the Psalm 127: 3-5

1   Unless the LORD builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
   the guards stand watch in vain. 3 Children are a heritage from the LORD,
offspring a reward from him. 4   Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
   are children born in one’s youth. 5   Blessed is the man
   whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
   when they contend with their opponents in court.

I could not imagine my life without my family and friends who touched my life and whom I dearly love.  Each one of us touches another in some way.  We are the links in the chain of life and humanity, each is important, no matter how fragile or insignificant we think some links are.  To God – every life is valuable, every life is important; every life is significant - because He created us, and we are made in His image.