Honorable Mention: Jack Dwyer
Truth and Culture for the Preborn
Some people say that the preborn child is just a piece of tissue and therefore support abortion. However, Dr. Jerome Lejeune, a famous scientist who discovered the cause of Down syndrome, said that the fact that a human life begins at conception is “no longer a matter of taste or of opinion.” There is undeniable evidence that the preborn child is a person just like you and me. I will explain this to you along with how we can build a culture where this is accepted as the norm.
The preborn child is completely the same as you and me because he is fully alive, human, and different from the mother. The reasons the preborn child is alive are that he is made of one or more cells, has DNA, metabolizes, maintains homeostasis, responds to things, grows and develops, and when he develops enough, he can reproduce. These are characteristics of a living being (Miller and Levine, 18-19). The baby is human since he has a full set of human DNA from the moment of creation. The child is not just part of the mother. He has different DNA than the mother and possibly a different blood type. The baby also is a different gender than the mother 50 percent of the time (Dwyer, 12). The only differences between the preborn child and you and me are matters of time and development. We are older than the preborn and therefore have grown and developed more. These differences are irrelevant because, for example, a grandparent is older and more developed than a grandchild, but this does not make the grandparent more of a human. These are the reasons the preborn child is just like you and me and has the right to live.
We can participate in building a culture of life by helping others see that preborn babies are human beings just like you and me by the use of education and advertising. We can use education to participate in building this culture by supporting and possibly participating in pro-life talks, teaching about the pro-life position in schools in religion and science classes, and pro-life education in church. I can help with educating right now by telling my friends about the pro-life position. We could use advertising in two different ways: use of printed materials and technology. Some print materials that could be used are bumper stickers, posters, and billboards. Technology could be used for pro-life advertising because lots of people use it regularly. Some ideas for this form are television commercials and online ads and websites. What could be put in these advertisements are things like: “The preborn child is human, so he has a right to life!” or reasons why the preborn child is a living human like I listed above. In conclusion, this is how we can promote the fact that the preborn are the same as we are and build a culture where this is accepted.
In closing, Dr. Lejeune was right: The preborn child is human, and this is a fact. We can share this with others by educating and advertising to build a culture where the pro-life position is accepted. We need to do this because if we do not, more and more abortions will happen. As the old saying goes, “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
Works Cited
- Miller, Kenneth R., and Joseph S. Levine. Biology. Pearson, 2014.
- Dwyer, Caitlin.“How to answer pro-choice arguments: Part 1 — ‘Science.’“ The Messenger. 19 July 2019, p. 12.