Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.

Oratory Contest
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Eugene Cunningham
2008

The Value of Life


"How many of us no matter how ill would have accepted tissues and organs harvested from Jews put to death by the Nazis in the infamous gas chambers of Eastern Europe? How many opponents of capital punishment would accept the tissue and organs of the subjects of sanctioned executions by the state? How many of us, even though terminally ill and desperately needing organ transplant, would accept the heart, or pancreas, or brain cell of the victim of a lynching.?"

I am confident everyone in this room would answer "No." to these questions posed by Bernard Nathanson, an active abortionist turned pro-life advocate. The majority of Americans, I believe, would vehemently give the same answer. Nonetheless, this does not change the grim reality of the world today.

It is a world which has forgotten the sanctity and value of human life, and swept the inconvenient truth of the matter under such rugs as "the right to privacy", "the right to die", and "the dangers of overpopulation".

It is a world in which euthanasia, abortion, and infanticide, occur with disturbing frequency. These atrocities should fill us with abhorrence and yet, the countries of the world treat these horrors with callous indifference. In India, for instance, the killing of baby girls is viewed as no big sin, and in China, untold numbers of infants have been slaughtered, because the parents were forced by the government, or simply because they did not want their own children. In the Netherlands, the euthanasia rates have skyrocketed to 9.6% of all deaths; that is nearly a tenth of all those who die in the country were euthanized. Doctors in the Netherlands assist an average of five patients a day to take their own lives. Even our own country, the United States of America, has played its part with the 48 million abortions which have been performed in the country since Roe versus Wade. All these lives destroyed, and for what? Convenience? Money? This disregard for life is an unmitigated evil. The taking of innocent lives, or even of lives that are substandard, such as the sick or elderly, can never be justified. Everyone on this earth was put here by the Creator for a purpose and their lives are sacred. Yet, again and again, human life is tossed aside, with ever increasing cruelty.

In 1985, an edition of California's The Vallejo Times Herald reported on this contempt for life, which is rampant in the world today. In our own country, the Herald said, there are restrictive laws which regulate how a young cat or dog may be put down, in order to be as humane as possible. However, there are no such laws in place for the benefit of human infants. Is it humane that in a saline abortion, the fetus suffers the same degree of agony as an adult who has been burned on over 80% of their body? Does not the life of a human infant deserve as much respect as the life of a dog or cat?

The newspaper next cited an incident concerning the head of a medical department at D.C. General Hospital. This man sold the product of late term elective abortions for $68,000. He then took this blood money and used it to buy a new television and refreshments for professors visiting the hospital.

Next, the newspaper cited another incident of reprehensible disregard for life. In April 1981, along the Swiss-French frontier, a customs officer halted a truck coming from Eastern Europe. The truck was loaded with fetuses from abortion clinics in Hungary and Yugoslavia, and was en route to a French cosmetics firm. There the fetuses would be taken to the lab, and studied. And what would be the result of this experimentation? Cosmetics products which add luster and resiliency to older skin. Human life was to be traded for vanity. The outlook for preserving the sanctity of life is dire, but the battle is not lost. How, then, do we combat those who treat human life with less respect than they do the insects in the ground they walk upon? Those who follow Margaret Sanger, the precursor of Planned Parenthood, and lay bare their utter disdain for the gift of procreation and the gift of life, in the statement: "We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing spawning class of human beings who should never have been born at all. Their reckless breeding produced the dead weight of human waste, including the poor, blind, deaf, diseased, prostitutes, and alcoholics." This inexcusable contempt evident in Sanger's words can no longer be tolerated. We must fight it, but again, the question is "How?"

First, we must always respect the sanctity of every human life. This must be our guiding principle no matter how fierce the opposition we face . Next, we need to take the time and effort to understand the abuses of life that occur in the world today, that we may better defend our beliefs.

What then, do we do with our convictions and our knowledge? Sitting back and watching as our country's standards are thrown away is not an option. We can not be complacent. Action is imperative. We must stand up for our beliefs by electing Presidents who will nominate and senators who will confirm Supreme court justices, who will fight to overturn Roe versus Wade and to keep Congress from passing any more laws which disregard the sanctity of life. We should take part in the March for Life and other protests, and donate funds to the American Life League and other worthy causes. Furthermore, we should disassociate ourselves with companies and individuals who promote the degrading of life.

Every possible means of standing up for our beliefs must be employed. Let us not forget that the lives of the innocent and helpless depend on us and how much we care to fight for them.

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