In the U.S., the “pro choice” advocates who used to hold that voluntary abortion was a matter of choice that had to be placed exclusively in the hands of pregnant women, have now made their own choice and decided that abortion is no longer a matter of choice. The politically correct choice is now unreservedly framed as: “pro abortion”. This shift shows that the “pro choice” movement was never about choice, but about the promotion and stimulation of abortion all along. This “pro-choice”-to-“pro-abortion” move places the “pro abortion” crowd in direct opposition to the unborn. And because abortus provocatus means the ending of Life in its most pristine and fragile form, this shift also puts pro-abortionism in flagrant opposition to that unalienable Right that was defined in the American Declaration of Independence as … LIFE.
Life in the womb
In that Declaration, the new American nations made it known that they held as self-evident truths that “all men are created equal” and “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Properly understood, these words not only mean that Life is what makes it possible for Man to manifest himself and participate in “the world” as Man, but also that Life is a right to protect and defend what constitutes the foundation of his very existence. Does this apply to “life in the womb”? Well, when it comes to the existence of life in the womb, there can’t be any question that a human embryo that isn’t dead or was aborted is obviously alive. The very word “embryo” is from Greek “embruon”, a combination of “en” (in) & “bruein” (swell, ripen, become full, flower). Hence, embryo means “young one”, “that which grows within”, or “fruit of the womb”. Moreover, there can’t arise any question whether a human embryo belongs to the species called Man. All obstetricians will unreservedly agree with the fact that, without having to perform a DNA test, an embryo who lives in the womb of a pregnant woman specifically belongs to the human species. As a consequence, Life as Life and Life as unalienable Right are coincidental. And so, a human embryo who is alive is per se to be regarded as having been endowed by his Creator with the unalienable Right to protect and defend his or her Life.
“… in His own Image”
If we are to take the words of the Declaration serious, aborting a human embryo thus comes down to the elimination of a specimen of the human race as well as a breach of this embryo’s foremost right to exist as a living being. Even though an embryo is incapable of exercising its unalienable right to defend its Life, this doesn’t mean that it somehow waived this right and that eliminating him or her shall remain inconsequential. After all, we’re dealing here with a fundamental human right that was endowed to Man by his Creator when, as Moses wrote in Genesis 1:26-27, “God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; […] So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female He created them.”
The embryo’s natural custodian
Most likely, this is the God Who plays the leading role in the Declaration of Independence as the Creator of Man. Since He is the One Who endows Man with Life, we may safely conclude that Life finds its origin at the Divine Ground of Being and that this is why Man has the inherent and unalienable right to defend and protect it against annihilation. Evidently, lacking any means of defense against obliteration, the earliest manifestations of the human organism, from embryo to newborn child, are entirely dependent for their protection on their natural host, the mother who carries them. Like her mother, she is the irreplacable custodian and guardian of the embryo’s rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, which, at this stage of its development, means the right to oxygen, food, shelter, protection, respect and affection.
What is Life ?
In 1972, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, the Hungarian Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893 – 1986), wrote in his book The Living State, “[t]hough I do not know what life is, I have no doubt as to whether my dog is alive or dead. We know life by the existence of things for which there is no direct physical reason and, which even seem contrary to the rules of physics. Life appears to be a revolt against the rules of Nature. […] Life is a paradox. It is easy to understand why man always divided his world into ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, anima meaning a soul, the presence of which had to explain queer behaviour. The most basic rule of inanimate nature is that it tends toward equilibrium which is at the maximum of entropy and the minimum of free energy. As shown so delightfully by [Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin] Schrödinger in his little book, What is Life (1945), the main characteristic of life is that it tends to decrease its entropy. It also tends to increase its free energy. Maximum entropy means complete randomness, disorder. Life is made possible by order, structure, a pattern, which is the opposite of entropy. This pattern is our chief possession, it was developed over billions of years. The main aim of our individual existence is its conservation and transmission.”
A slap in the face
Anyone who has no more than a faint inkling of the complexity of a new human being must be impressed and baffled by the awesome development of order and structure in the pattern that actively “configurates” Man. A pattern that can already be observed during the earliest stages of his or her efforts to overcome entropy and increase free energy and conserve and eventually transmit this pattern to a future generation. Even those of us who think that Man is an accidental event in Evolution, who are convinced that the words laid down in the Declaration of Independence’s Preamble have become meaningless and who believe that the Creator of Man is just a delusion, must agree with the fact that every child, born and unborn alike, is the astounding living proof of the fact that it possesses this archetypical pattern that evolved over billions of years. In this “evolutionary” context, abortion comes down to depriving a new human being of what Erwin Schrödinger defined as his or her “chief possession” and making the conservation and transmission of that pattern impossible. This constitutes a total negation and nullification of “the aim of our individual existence”. Simply put: abortion dehumanizes Man. For those of us who do agree with what the Founding Fathers wrote in that famous Preamble and who accept the premise that Man is a spiritual being, the abortion of an unborn child isn’t merely an assault against Life and Man’s unalienable rights, it is also a “slap in the face” of the Creator Who made Man in His image. And that is exactly what Life got to do with abortion
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