Therefore, in the context of Tanya's article, the following words of the great St. John Paul II are very apt :
"In fighting abortion the Church is defending not only human life but also the rectitude of the human conscience so that it will call good good and evil evil so that man will live in truth".
Deconstructing Tanya's doublespeak from a pre-born child's perspective, what Tanya is in reality saying is that "it seems tragic that a woman would be unable to exterminate her own child in her own womb for no reason other than she couldn't afford to pay for the extermination". No, Tanya, the reverse is the case. The real tragedy would be if even just one unborn child is deliberately killed in utero for no reason other than the mother could afford to pay for the killing. Abortion is a terrible blight on our nation, not only in terms of the sheer number of human lives destroyed (many millions over the years), but also because these deaths are deliberately intended by the very people who should be the first to prevent them - mothers, fathers and doctors. The human, moral and social problems emanating from a nation's embrace of a pro-abortion mentality are huge. This is summed up perfectly by the following words spoken by St. Teresa of Calcutta during her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize :
"The greatest destroyer of peace in the world is abortion. For if we can legally allow a mother to kill her own child in her own womb how can we tell other people not to kill each other? Any society which permits abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want".
The former President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, once said "I note that all those here present advocating abortion have already been born". What has happened to Tanya in her life that she is so passionately opposed to the unborn child having any rights whatsoever if he or she is unwanted by the mother? In her article, Tanya is effectively arguing the case for free abortion on demand with abortions if necessary being performed free of charge at taxpayers' expense in public hospitals. A ploy of abortion advocates such as Tanya is the use of euphemisms such as "a woman's right to choose", "terminations" and "reproductive health services" to camouflage the truth about the horribly destructive nature of abortion. For one thing, there is absolutely nothing "reproductive" about abortion. Tanya should thank her lucky stars that her own mother did not avail herself of such a deadly brand of "reproductive health service" when she was pregnant with Tanya. No one, including Tanya, deserves to meet their deaths in such a gruesome manner at the hands of an abortionist. If only Tanya would accord to today's unborn children the right to the same precious gift of life her own mother gave her. And this especially as 50% of all victims of abortion are "unborn women" which is the category that all self-proclaimed feminists once fell into. Tanya's anti-child stance is in fact reflective of a sour and negative philosophy that is trying to propagate the attitude that pregnancy is simply a nuisance and parenthood nothing but a burden. In the long run, that philosophy will fail. It is trying to obliterate some of the richest certainties of adult experience and to eradicate woman's truest aspirations.
It denies life.
A light shining through the darkness is the fact that modern technology has brought home to ordinary, non scientific people the fact that from the precise moment of conception a new unique and separate human individual is created. Frequently beautiful pictures of babies moving around in their mothers' wombs are shown in television advertisements. The very first words in a special Educational Reprint of Life Magazine (30th April 1965) entitled "Life Before Birth" and featuring the first portrait ever made of a living embryo inside its mother's womb were "the birth of a human life really occurs at the moment the mother's egg cell is fertilized by one of the father's sperm cells". In other words, as the true meaning of "birth" is "beginning", the actual moment of the "birth" of a baby is at the moment of its conception. This is the moment when a new life "comes into the world", not 9 months later when those fortunate enough to escape the abortionist's scalpel are "delivered" into the outside world. The "Life Before Birth" article points out that whereas in the Western world a person's age is calculated from the day he or she comes out of the womb, the Chinese, overestimating by three months, have traditionally counted a child as being one year old at birth in recognition of the unceasingly active life that has already taken place. This article further reveals that in the 266 days from conception to delivery into the outside world, the single fertilized egg cell has become a staggeringly complex organization of some 200 million cells, having increased the original weight a billionfold.
Tanya would do well to reflect on this amazing marvel of human biology before she continues on the anti-life path she is on.
The most precious thing in the world is a human being. There are many other precious things too such as great works of art, beautiful scenery and rare zoological species. But, completely transcending the value of all these is the value of each and every human being.
To Christians, the source of this value is the fact that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, not mass produced, but each a unique masterpiece, a likeness of God individually and separately hand-drawn by Him. Further, each human soul is directly and personally created by God in His image and likeness, especially in that each soul is irreversibly designed by its very nature for immortality after death.
