Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.
Oratory Contest
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Lauren Pendergast
2007
ABORTION
Mother Theresa once said, "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." Abortion is a selfish, evil and immoral act of murder towards a baby. From the moment a child is conceived it is a real person and deserves a life. Anyone who has been created by God should have the ability to live the best life he or she can. No one should have the chance to take that away from a person, especially when they have absolutely no say in it for themselves.
Life begins with a fertilized egg. This is the time of conception, when your genetic make-up is determined. The heart begins to beat after about nineteen to twenty-two days. On the sixth week the brain waves become detectable and the muscles begin moving. The baby's nerves and muscles start to work together by week seven. By fifty days the baby weighs almost one gram and is about an inch long and the sex is now identifiable. By the ninth and tenth week the finger and footprints become present, the cartilage starts to form into bone, and the blood cells begin to be formed in the bone marrow. By the eleventh and twelfth weeks, the baby can grasp things, and weighs one ounce. From weeks sixteen to twenty the baby can hear external voices, sleep and dream. Babies are also able to survive birth sometimes as early as nineteen weeks after they are conceived.
If the baby has been aborted he or she will never be able to experience life outside the womb. There are several different types of abortion, and it can be performed at any time during pregnancy, but it occurs most during the first trimester.
When a woman has an abortion, she and the child that she conceived become part of many statistics. Around the world there are about 46 million abortions conducted every year, 20 million of them being illegal, with approximately 1,370,000 abortions occurring annually in the United States alone. About 88% of the United States abortions occur during the first 6 to 12 weeks of pregnancy. Roughly 126,000 abortions are conducted every day worldly.
Although the baby is the one who is most effected during abortion, because it is being murdered, the person who decides to have one can also be greatly affected both physically and mentally. Some of the psychological effects may be post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual dysfunction, and suicide attempts. Alcohol and drug abuse are common, along with eating disorders, child abuse or neglect, divorce, and repeated abortions. Many physical effects may include, increased smoking, death, breast cancer, cervical, ovarian, and liver cancer, cervical lacerations, complications of labor, and the woman's general health being adversely affected. Women who get abortions may also have handicapped newborns in other pregnancies, pelvic inflammatory disease, or endometritis. Several immediate effects are, excessive bleeding, anesthesia complications, infection, convulsions, embolism, hemorrhage, ripping or perforation of the uterus, endotoxic shock and cervical injury.
The court has had much involvement with the legalizing and rights of woman when it comes to abortion. In the year 1859, abortion was condemned except as a necessary was to save the life of the mother, by the American Medical Association. Laws banning abortion were adopted by all states in the year 1875. The Birth control League, now known as Planned Parenthood, was formed in 1917 by Margaret Sanger to endorse abortion and contraception. In 1959 the "Model Penal Code" was presented by the American Law institute to exhort that abortion should be performed in licensed hospitals when it was necessary to preserve the physical or mental health of the mother or if the woman was raped or incest was performed. The first state to approve abortion for cases of incest, rape or a threat to the woman's life was Colorado, in the year 1967. By 1970, fourteen of the fifty states were authorizing abortions in certain cases. President Clinton signed five executive orders into effect in 1993 which allowed fetal tissue research and harvesting, RU486 research, abortion services in U.S. military hospitals, and abortion counseling in federally funded family planning clinics. Then in 1994 Clinton signed the law, Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrance Act. This essentially exterminated the First Amendment rights of pro-lifers to peacefully demonstrate, protest and provide sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics.
In 1973 in the court case Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that during the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman has the right to abort the fetus. This decision brought about groups that opposed abortion, such as "right-to-life" organizations that attempt to deny or limit abortions. There are also "pro-choice" groups that protect and defend a woman's rights to abortion.
In the Doe versus Bolton case, the Supreme Court defined "health" as including these factors: emotional, psychological, physical, familial, and the age of the woman. This primarily makes it legal for a woman to have an abortion for any reason at any time during the pregnancy.
In the court case, Planned Parenthood Association of Central Missouri versus Danforth, the Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri abortion law, demanding the permission of parents in the case of minors, and husbands in the case of married women is unconstitutional. The 2000 case of Stenberg versus Carhart was ruled on a 5 to 4 decision with the Supreme Court declaring that the partial birth abortion law of Nebraska unconstitutionally placed an exorbitant burden on a woman's so-called right to a late term abortion.
Abortion may be legalized by the government and practiced by many, but that does not make it moral. By performing abortion, you are taking the life of an innocent human being. The child is created in the womb at conception, and must have a chance to live their life without anyone cutting it short. To conclude I took this quote from the book, Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments, 'Who is less capable of speaking up for themselves than little boys and girls who haven't yet been born? If we don't speak up for these innocent children, who will?"
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