Long Island Coalition for Life, Inc.
Oratory Contest
Pro-Life Speech on Abortion
by Carolyn Vaeth
2009
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 mankind 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. Today, we are confronted with a whole generation of people who are being exterminated unjustly in a genocide that exceeds 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 Americans, and the "unwanted" are the unborn. They are now being destroyed at the rate of nearly 1 of every 3 conceived. In the United States there have been over 40 million abortions since 1972, 1.37 million yearly, or approximately 3,700 per day. 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.) We have seen the genocide of an entire generation of peoples.
Proponents of abortion act on the conviction that what is being aborted is less than a living human being. The historic Judeo-Christian view has been that life begins at conception. 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 that 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?" (Gregg Cunningham: Executive Director of Bioethical Reform)
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, author, leader and spokesperson for feminism in the pro-abortion movement, said, "A woman should have the right to abortion just as she has a right to remove any parasitic growth from her body."
It should be self evident that a human life begins at the point of conception. The fertilized egg is alive and it possesses the genetic matter of a being distinct from the mother and father.. 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 unborn child can perceive pain. Since brain waves and heartbeat are considered 'vital' signs, why are some people so reluctant to admit that the unborn child is a distinct human life in the first trimester? In addition, the laws of genetics state that people make people, they do not make horses or mice. Thus, an unborn child conceived by a human female and a human male is a member of the human species. It is genetics that determine an individual's biological species.
Abortion--whatever else it may be-- is an act against nature. It violates 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, by which, over the ages, regular patterns become apparent. An example of this would be the law 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. These Natural Laws provide arguments against the practice of abortion because abortion stands in contrast to the basic principle that all humans, whether born or unborn, have a right to life.
Throughout the Scriptures the truths that human life begins at conception cannot be legitimately challenged. Jeremiah, King David, and John the Baptist all speak of being known of God from conception (Jer. 1:5, Ps 51:5, Lk 1:15 ). The Scriptures also elevate the 'sanctity of human life', from conception, over and above all other creatures. It is because human beings are made in the image of God (Gen: 2:7, 5:1), that the unjust taking of a human life is considered murder (Gen: 9:6).
It is easy to destroy life when it is deemed inhuman. It is difficult to acknowledge our own responsibility for genocide, not unlike the citizen of Germany in the 1940's who allowed the destruction of over 6 million Jews. In our Nation's own history we too have witnessed the abuse and slaughter of Native Americans and African slaves. We likewise now 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.
[Back to Oratory index]
[Back to Main Page]