Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.
Oratory Contest 2008
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Clare Hinshaw
Kellenberg Memorial High School Senior
Thirty-five years ago, on January 22, 1973, in the landmark Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade, abortion became legal in the United States. Since then over 46 million abortions have been performed in this country. That means that the world has been denied the joy that over 46 million people were meant to bring to it.
Each human being has a purpose in life. Every child who has been aborted had a reason they were brought into existence, a reason that they never had the opportunity to fulfill. How many diseases would have been cured if the doctors who would have discovered the cures had not been aborted? How many scientific discoveries would have been made if the scientists who would have made them had not been aborted? How many more children would have been born if their mothers and fathers had not been aborted? And what would those children have brought to this world? Perhaps the parents who killed their child because they could not afford him would have been supported in their old age by his good salary, and instead, have lived and died in poverty.
An Austrian man recounts the story of his father, a Jewish physician in Braunau, Austria: "On one particular day, two babies had been delivered by one of his colleagues. One was a fine healthy boy with a strong cry. His parents were extremely proud and happy. The other was a little girl, but her parents were extremely sad, for she was a Down Syndrome baby. I followed them both for almost fifty years. The girl grew up, living at home, and was finally destined to be the one who nursed her mother through a very long and lingering illness after a stroke. I do not remember her name. I do, however, remember the boy's name. He died in a bunker in Berlin. His name was Adolf Hitler."
Even disabled children have a purpose, though abortion advocates will never admit it. They say that disabled children will lead lives full of suffering and be unable to offer anything to society. Disabled children every day offer great things to their families, communities, countries, and the world
Gianna Jessen's 17-year-old, 7-and-a-half-month pregnant mother went to a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in 1977 where she received a saline abortion. In this type of abortion a saline solution is injected through the mother's abdomen into the amniotic fluid which the baby swallows. Upon the ingestion of the solution, the child is poisoned and burned and dies in approximately 1 hour. The mother gives birth to a dead child about 24 hours later. Gianna surprised everyone by coming out crying 18 hours after the abortion procedure began. Though she has cerebral palsy, Gianna does not treat herself as though she were disabled. She spent the first three months of her life in a hospital incubator and was not expected even to live let alone walk. However, in 2004 she ran her first marathon in 7-and-a-half hours. She is a professional singer, but still finds time to travel the world as a disabilities and pro-life advocate. Gianna has a purpose in life which she has worked to fulfill to the utmost.
In Madeline L'Engle's book Troubling a Star, the main character recognizes that "thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star". Every abortion affects so many lives. It leaves a hole in the universe where a human being would have been. Mothers and fathers have holes where children would have been, boys and girls have holes where siblings would have been, we all have holes where friends would have been.
Magaly, of the Silent No More campaign, has felt these holes first hand having lost 8 of her siblings to abortion. As a teenager in Cuba her mother asked Magaly to come with her to the abortion clinic where she had a Dilation and Curettage, more commonly called D and C, abortion. Magaly says that years later "When I first saw the abortion pictures, when I saw the one about the D and C, the D and C baby that comes out in pieces, that's the type of abortion that was done in Cuba, and a voice, interior voice, said to me 'that's what your brother looked like when he was aborted.'" Magaly also says that every time her family sat at the dinner table she would look around and "think about those that were not there." Every day at that dinner table Magaly saw the holes caused by abortion. Now, as an older woman, she is suffering from a very deadly type of cancer. She has only two living siblings, a brother and sister, who live very far away from her and, therefore, she has no one to help her through her ordeal. If it weren't for the abortions, she says, "I would've had a brother or sister to help me through this difficult time."
Ronald Reagan once said, "I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born." Unborn children are against abortion. After watching an unborn child physically fight the tools of an abortion doctor in the film The Silent Scream, this fact is undeniable. This child has a purpose and is fighting for the chance to fulfill it. We, too, must fight for this child and must speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.
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