But one, it seems, I have to tackle for my next series of lectures on Human Intervention in Reproduction. And yes, it includes human cloning too; let's not even go there for the moment.
Depressing, it has been, to read stories of abortion attempts, the heartache of those who have performed the procedure, and the gory details of details of the abortion procedure. Worse still, to stare at pictures so graphic that I can only view the majority of them at home, courtesy of MOE's site blocker.
But what is the end result?
I don't like the labels pro-choice and pro-life, because they imply mutual exclusivity. As in, if you are pro-life, you are against choice and vice versa. Untrue! A person who is pro-life HAS made a choice; that choice is to allow her child to live.
The choice, by the way, is the province of the female; the father of the child has no legal right to prevent an abortion.
Central to the debate are the issues of when does life begin? When is the fetus considered a living being, an individual person and not just a mass of tissue? What about the principle of ensoulment? At what gestational age, if at all, should it be considered to have rights? Should the rights of the fetus to live override the rights of the woman to control over her own life? Who are we to decide, on behalf of the unborn, whether he or she would WANT to come into this world?
These are not easy questions, and they do not have easy answers. I, as a biologist, am hesistant to allow science to define my morality. Is it only because medical technology can help a 24 week old fetus to live ectogenically that we consider that fetus a human and anything before not?
I can only say this: I cannot consider abortion acceptable. Two wrongs do not make a right; even if the child was conceived as a result of rape or incest, it cannot, cannot, cannot be made right by the killing of the fetus. Each individual is unique, special loved and has an indwelling purpose supplied by God; who are we to prematurely snuff out their destinies? Remember the words of God to Jeremiah, when he felt inadequate to carry the Word of God:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations." - Jeremiah 1:5
Let the unchanging Word of God be my basis, in this as in all others. Amen.
Something to think about: A Prayer Before Birth, Louis MacNiece.
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
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