Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.

Oratory Contest 2008
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Carolyn Vaeth

Abortion: A Modern Day Genocide


The 20th century has been recognized as the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. We have seen the brutality of dictators and fascist governments that have sought the genocide of humankind because of political, religious, economic, and social reasons. Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Lenin are some of the infamous leaders who sought the destruction of specific groups of peoples. In America, our own government disregarded the humanity of people groups such as the African slaves and the Native Americans. Presently, we are confronted with a whole generation of people who are being exterminated unjustly, in a genocide that is equivalent to any previous; abortion is the willful destruction of a living human being.

What is genocide? Webster's New World Encyclopedia, defines "genocide" as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable." That definition readily applies to abortion. The "national group" is America, the "unwanted" are the unborn, and they are now being destroyed at the rate of nearly 1 out of every 3 conceived.

Proponents of abortion act on the conviction that what is being aborted is less than a living human being. The historic view has been that life begins at conception. This idea is rooted not only in religion but also in science. Only in our modern culture has the concept that an unborn child is not a human person been advanced. The decision of Roe vs. Wade by the courts in 1973 legislated the concept of a woman's 'right to privacy'. In its decision, the Supreme Court held than an unborn child is not yet a person. Roe vs. Wade was not unlike the Dred Scott decision, which stated that African Americans were considered property and were not regarded as persons. In his medical textbook Abortion Practice, Warren Hern compares the unborn child to a 'parasite.' 'Parasite' was the exact word Hitler used to dehumanize Jews in his grotesquely anti-Semitic Mein Kampf. Slurs of this sort paved the way for Hitler, in 1935, to sign the Nuremberg Laws which codified the exclusion of Jews from German society. The next year, Germany's highest court would legalize the Holocaust. It then became legal to kill Jews. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe did the same to the unborn in 1973, ruling that "the word person… does not include the unborn." It then became legal to kill unborn children. "What meaningful moral distinction can be drawn between the extermination of a newborn Jewish baby and the killing of any contemporary late-term unborn baby?" (Cunningham)

In our own day the argument that pro-choice activists use to justify the killing of unborn babies is that a child in the mother's womb is merely a fetus; it is anything but a living child. Gloria Steinem, a leader in the pro-abortion movement, author and feminist leader said, "A woman should have the right to abortion just as she has a right to remove any parasitic growth from her body."

There is a consensus in the scientific community that human life begins at the instant a human egg is fertilized by a human sperm. At only two weeks after conception there is a discernible heartbeat. The circulating blood is the unborn baby's, not the mother's. At forty-three days brain waves are detectable, and there is evidence that the fetus can perceive pain. Since brain waves and heartbeat are considered 'vital' signs, why are some people so reluctant to admit that there is human life before birth? In addition, the laws of genetics state that people make people, not horses or mice. Thus, a fetus conceived by a human female and a human male is a member of the human species. It is genetics that determines an individual's biological species, not the psychological traits it later develops.

Abortion--whatever else it may be-- is an act against nature. It violates the natural law. Howard Feinberg defines natural law as, "God, or nature, or universal reason, has given humanity a law from which the norms of all human law must be derived." Natural law has a number of different sources. One of these is the laws of nations, where over the ages regular patterns become apparent, such as the laws against murder. Another is in 'first principles,' based in self-evident truths and universal sense of the way things ought to be. Yet another is in natural science, particularly the universal biological law of self-preservation.

Our own Declaration of Independence affirms the right to life as being self-evident, inalienable, and basic to all other human rights. Also, the fifth amendment of the Constitution protects life, liberty, and private property by due process of law. But the Supreme Court has decided that the unborn are not persons and are not alive; therefore they are not protected by the fifth or any other amendment.

In the scriptures, there are several verses that cite the fact that life begins at conception and continues throughout a woman's pregnancy. The scriptures also elevate the 'sanctity of human life', from conception, over and above all other creatures. It is because we are made in the image of God, that the unjust taking of a human life is considered murder. The abortion statistics are staggering in the United States; 1.37 million or approximately 3,700 per day; globally the number of unborn children aborted is 46 million. Only 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest, 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons. (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient.)

It is easy to destroy life when it is deemed inhuman. It is difficult to acknowledge our own responsibility for genocide. We likewise struggle to rationalize our abortion brutality. It is sad to see a great nation such as ours, having fought and died for the freedom and rights of others, to become perpetrators of the largest genocide in the history of mankind. To be a child in the womb of a mother has become a dangerous place in our country. We now live in a world where seals and whales have more rights than unborn children.

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