By NoaRose Rogers
My friend, I understand you feel that a woman has the right to an abortion. I believe your ultimate goal is to support women’s rights. I also support women’s rights, especially the right to life, and that includes supporting even the youngest females. Dr. Seuss once wrote, “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Abortion is a complex topic that has been debated for decades. But at the moment of fertilization, the blueprint of an entirely new and unique human life is present. This is the way every woman and man begin. The abortion industry seems to know this, and therefore it uses cryptic terms, normalizes the abortion process, and uses language to dehumanize the baby.
What is abortion? Abortion is “the induced expulsion of a human fetus.” Expulsion is “the process of forcing something out of the body.” And fetus is a Latin word meaning “the bearing” or “hatching of young.” So abortion is the forceful killing of a new human life. To act with moral courage is to know right from wrong and choose the right thing. Abortion is killing a developing human and therefore is morally wrong.
The abortion industry also makes the procedures seem completely normal, stating: “There are two ways of ending a pregnancy: In-clinic abortion and the abortion pill. Both are safe and very common.” But in reality, it kills the fetus and harms the woman as well. She may experience infection, organ damage, eating disorders, relationship problems, guilt, depression, flashbacks of abortion, alcohol and drug abuse, cancer, suicidal thoughts, and even death. Instead of being healthier after the abortion, women often suffer from one or more of these debilitating side effects.
Doctors and medicine are also inconsistent in their language regarding pregnancy. If a woman wants her baby, they refer to him or her as a “baby.” Then they count the fetal age in weeks from the beginning. But if she is unsure, they say it’s only a clump of cells or is parasitic until birth to help her detach from the baby. However, the process of microchimerism is where the baby and the mother share cells, and the baby’s cells can be healing to the mother.
In conclusion, abortion hurts both the mother and the preborn child. While you believe that women should have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies, I believe it is morally wrong to kill a human life. A woman’s right over her body ends where her preborn child’s body begins. As more mature human beings, we must put a stop to the killing the most vulnerable humans and protect all stages of life from fertilization to natural death. And we must remember this: “The American College of Pediatricians concurs with the body of scientific evidence that corroborates that a unique human life starts when the sperm and egg bind to each other in a process of fusion of their respective membranes and a single hybrid cell called a zygote, or one-celled embryo, is created.”
By NoaRose Rogers won first place in the middle school division of the Culture of Life Studies Program’s 2023 Pro-Life Essay Contest.