There is so much scientific proof that an embryo is a living human being with a right to live, that no one can justify abortion on any grounds whatsoever. I encourage you to read and share the following. If you support abortion, I hope that this will change your mind, and if you don’t support it, I hope that this will empower you with the knowledge and reasoning necessary to change the minds of others.

This link leads to the article in .pdf format, or you can read it in plain text below.

(Note: I have replaced my original article, written in 2011, with a much better one written in 2019. That is why this blog entry is dated 2011/07/15 but the article contained within gives a date of 2019/04.)

              There is no reasonable argument in favor of abortion. Simply put, it cannot be defended on any grounds, whether from science, morality, philosophy, reason, or anything else. Below, abortion will be looked at from every conceivable angle and shown to be completely indefensible every time. The following is taken from pages 90-100 of Everett’s Ultimate Commentary of the Bible, Volume III (available for sale on Amazon.com), which means that the first three paragraphs approach the issue from a Biblical viewpoint. Then on page 2 we’ll move on to the next part.

              There is not even a shadow of a doubt that a baby is a living human being from the moment of conception. Jeremiah 20:17 and Job 10:18 clearly state that a baby could be killed while still inside the womb, meaning that babies are already alive inside the womb. The Biblical requirements for a living creature are blood and breath. Babies certainly have blood and breath (they breathe amniotic fluid). A pedantic ultracrepidarian may say that babies don’t have blood immediately after conception, as they consist of only a single cell. But the Bible never said that blood and breath are required at every moment. If somebody nearly drowns underwater and ceases to breathe, it is not correct that such a person is dead—if that person is resuscitated then normal breathing resumes and the person goes on living. The important point is that once a baby develops to a certain point (Week 2 or 3), then blood cells shall be produced, and at a certain point (Week 10) the baby will begin to breathe. No person has ever been born and grown to adulthood without blood or lungs, and that’s what the Bible means when it says that all living things have breath and blood. And to consider an embryo alive is not a recent idea, as some claim.

              Church leaders have always recognized the life of unborn children. The Didache, written around 100 AD, demands that Christians “shall not murder a child by abortion, nor commit infanticide.” Both of those actions were frequent in the Roman Empire. Tertullian agreed that “We may not destroy even the fetus in the womb.” Clement of Alexandria wrote that women who “in order to hide their immorality use abortive drugs which expel the matter completely dead, abort at the same time their human feelings.” After studying the church fathers, Ronald Sider wrote, “Eight different authors in eleven different writings mention abortion. In every case, the writing unequivocally rejects abortion.” Every Christian from the very beginning, in agreement with the Bible, affirmed the sanctity of all human life. And life must begin at conception.

There can be no point during pregnancy in which God decides to imbue the person with a spirit. God creates the spirit at the exact moment of conception. It should be an abomination to see a living, breathing human being that has no spirit because God hasn’t gotten around to creating it yet. Before conception an ovum is just a cell of the mother’s body, capable of no more than any other cell. And before conception, a spermatozoon is just a cell from the father’s body, which the mother’s body treats no differently from bacteria or other invaders. But when the two join, a miraculous change occurs.

              A zygote (fertilized egg) has the characteristics of a living organism. According to secular biologists a living organism must have six characteristics: growth, organization, response to stimuli, homeostasis, adaptation, and reproduction. Reproduction is not required for an individual, considering that prepubescent children and post-menopausal women cannot reproduce, but the trait is required for the species as a whole. No virus can reproduce by itself but must hijack a host cell to produce more copies, so viruses are not considered living organisms. So let us examine a zygote.

Growth: Immediately after the sperm cell fuses with the ovum, the father’s and mother’s chromosomes fuse and mitosis occurs. The division into two cells takes about 12-24 hours. On Day 3 there are 4-8 cells, on Day 3 there are 8-16 cells, and so on. No cell divides in this manner unless it’s a zygote or a cancer cell. A colony of cancer cells lacks organization so it can’t be a living organism, but a zygote does and is.

Organization: When there are 16 cells (around Day 4) in the zygote, now referred to as a morula, the cells begin to pack tightly together in a process called compaction, and cellular differentiation begins. Differentiation means that the “generic” cells change into more specialized cell types. The first organ to develop is the heart (although various tissues start to develop earlier), which begins pumping blood on Day 21 or 22.[1]

Response to stimuli: Directly following fertilization and the first mitotic cycle the dividing cells are undifferentiated and unarranged, but when there are eight cells on Day 3 or so, they begin to develop gap junctions which allow them to communicate with each other and coordinate their efforts in order to respond to physiological signals and environmental stimuli.[2] External stimuli are important because they tell the embryo where the wall of the uterus is. If the embryo could not respond to stimuli then it could not implant inside the uterus and should eventually starve to death. Implantation occurs around Day 7.

Homeostasis: Embryonic cells have multiple forms of endocytosis that maintain homeostasis on the cell surface. The cells also work together to maintain intracellular levels of minerals such as calcium and magnesium. Zygotes have a very low ability to maintain ionic homeostasis for the first few hours after fertilization, but this ability increases over time.[3] When the placenta develops much later it becomes the main structure involved with fetal homeostasis. Proper fetal growth requires a continuous flow of water across the placental barrier. Within the fetus’ body the organs maintain homeostasis (such as regulation of hormones) much in the same way that adults’ bodies do.[4]

Adaptation: Every individual can adapt to their surroundings, some more than others. Even before an embryo implants in the uterine wall, it can adapt to changes. At that stage each cell has the potential to change into any kind of specialized cell (nervous, muscular, etc.) which means that some cells can be removed from the embryo and other cells shall compensate for their absence. This is very useful for babies fertilized in vitro, because the doctor can intentionally extract a few cells to examine them. Tragically, doctors do this so that they can eugenetically select the “best” embryo to be implanted in the mother and leave the others to die.

Reproduction: Obviously no one can reproduce until reaching puberty, but the reproductive system begins to develop during the first few weeks of gestation, with external genitalia of males and females beginning to diverge in appearance following Week 9. Every child (barring genetic deformities or medical conditions) is equipped with the necessary physical features to become fertile.

As soon as an ovum is fertilized it must be classified as a living organism. There is no scientifically sound argument against unborn babies being persons. If two cells from a human body, perhaps a skeletal cell and a lymphatic cell, were to be removed from a person and placed in an incubator, they would not form a baby over nine months. Cells are not living organisms because they can only play their small role within the organism of which they are a part. A zygote is totipotent, which means it is capable of building all necessary body parts. A zygote’s goal is to become an adult. A somatic cell does not have any goal other than to maintain the status quo.

              A common argument against the personhood of an embryo is that it is “just a clump of cells.” Using the word “clump” is misleading because it implies that an embryo has no organization or movement, that it is no different from a blood clot. Aristotle believed that a man’s semen acted upon a woman’s menses to produce a baby, and Muhammad similarly stated that Allah fashioned man from a blood clot (Surya 23:14, 75:38, 96:2). But we know that neither sperm nor blood cells are totipotent. They cannot make a baby. If an embryo were just a clump of cells then it could not continue to grow and mature into an adult; it’d just remain a clump of cells. An embryo also has a spirit, which a mere clump of cells does not. Biology textbooks state clearly that human development begins at fertilization.[5] It is impossible for an organism to undergo human development without being human. But it is useless to point this out to pro-abortionists. If they don’t even understand the contents of a basic Biology textbook, then how could they understand the contents of the Bible?

              Humans contain human DNA. Of course, our bodies contain many other things such as bacteria and viruses, so technically speaking our bodies also contain bacterial and viral DNA. But there is a huge difference between a human containing bacteria and being bacteria. If you were to send a cheek swab to a laboratory to have your DNA tested, they would not say that you are 75% bacteria because they understand that bacteria are different creatures. On the other hand, an organism with no human DNA is not a human. An organism with mostly dolphin DNA must be a dolphin. There is no way that a dolphin could have mostly chicken DNA. And a human embryo has mostly human DNA. This is important because no source outside of a good science textbook or the Bible provides a factual definition of a human. The philosopher Plato once defined a man as “a featherless biped.” A rival philosopher named Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it to him, declaring, “Behold, I have brought a man to you.” Plato, having been publicly humiliated, angrily added the words, “with broad, flat fingernails” to his definition. No philosopher has provided a better definition for “human” than the Bible has, although biologists have come close. So what justification is there for saying that an embryo is not a human?

But, you see, pro-abortionists don’t claim that an embryo is not human. They just deny that it’s a person. How stupid! This is akin to saying that a Labrador is a dog but not a canine! They say that an embryo will develop into a fetus, and at some undisclosed time a fetus will magically become a person. To say that a human being can be classified as a non-person has horrifying implications; such implications have led to the greatest atrocities in history. With the proliferation of Evolutionism this belief has only been given more energy. If personhood is subjective, and a person is only a highly-evolved animal anyway, then there is no need to feel guilt over committing genocide of those you dislike. The pro-abortionists counter with the observation that embryos cannot do anything—they cannot walk or talk or feel pain (allegedly) so they can’t be persons.

But since when is ability the determinant of personhood? If a person is under anesthesia and cannot walk, talk, or feel pain, we do not cease to consider them a person. The primary reason is that a human is a person, and that’s all there is to it. Even a dead person is still a person, and is therefore called a “dead person,” not “a clump of cells.” Even the dead are protected by laws. We know that a person under anesthesia retains their personal identity and personhood, so a human’s personhood must lie in his or her innate essence. Furthermore, we know that anesthesia is only a temporary state. Once the anesthetist stops supplying gas, the patient shall in due course of time regain consciousness. A person who is sleeping shall in due course of time wake up. Likewise, an embryo who can understand almost nothing because of its tender young age, lack of experience, dark environment, heavy sleep schedule, and undeveloped senses, shall in due course of time grow into an adult with understanding. 100% of embryos, excepting miscarriage or abortion, grow to term and come out the birth canal. A lung cell can never grow into a newborn baby because it’s not a person. A sesame seed can’t grow into a newborn baby because it’s not a person. But embryos do grow into newborn babies in due course of time.

Most pro-abortionists say that fetuses are a part of their mothers’ bodies. They chant the mantra “My body, my choice,” as if they were only supporting bodily mutilation instead of murder. But no woman’s body contains two sets of human DNA, two hearts, two brains, twenty fingers and twenty toes, and so on. We ought to say, “Baby’s body, baby’s choice.” Some others say that fetuses are attached to their mothers’ bodies so they are not separate organisms. But after babies are born they remain attached to their mothers until the umbilical cord self-severs or is barbarically cut with scissors; so either a newborn baby is not a person because it is still a part of the mother’s body, or it was already a person beforehand. Also, embryos don’t attach to the mother’s body until the second week of pregnancy. By this argument, a baby is a person for the first week of its existence but loses its personhood for the next 8.75 months, then regains its personhood soon after birth. Dust mites sleep in the pores of our faces during the day, and at night they come out to the surface. Do the dust mites cease to be dust mites when they are inside our pores? If not, then how does a baby cease to be a person when it is inside its mother’s womb? Some snidely refer to fetuses as parasites, which is incorrect because, a parasite, by definition, is a different species from its host. But a fetus can’t help being reliant on the mother for its life. Fetuses haven’t the manpower or cognition to live on their own—neither do five-year-old children. Is a five-year-old a parasite? Some parents might say yes if they are in a bad mood…. Again, if pro-abortionists are so ignorant of Biology that they don’t even understand what a parasite is, how can we expect them to understand so simple a concept as personhood?

Still other pro-abortionists claim that fetuses are non-persons because they are not viable, that is, they cannot survive without their mother’s womb or an incubator.  It is well-worth noting that infants and toddlers in general are wholly dependent on their mothers. For the first six months a baby’s immune system doesn’t fully function, and as such the antibodies contained in milk are vital.[6] Babies cannot eat solid food, they cannot drink water, and they cannot protect themselves. A baby separated from its caretakers should soon die. So, true to their wicked nature, some pro-abortionists also support the killing of newborn babies. Doctor Peter Singer (not the Australian one) went on record saying that “it is sometimes appropriate to kill a human infant,”[7] especially if the baby has Down syndrome or some other handicap, up to 28 days after birth.[8] He said that a newborn does not have a right to life until it reaches some minimum level of consciousness.

Making certain functions a criterion for personhood means that individuals who perform certain functions more excellently have higher human value. An old person with Alzheimer’s or neuropathy must be sub-human because of their infirmity. Is forced euthanasia a good thing? There are many concepts that a child cannot understand but adults can. Are children then valid candidates for abortion? As mentioned before, a person under anesthesia is incapable of any voluntary function, and incapable of conscious thought. Can such a one be terminated without remorse? Because pro-abortionists don’t even understand basic Biology, does their stupidity make them sub-human? And why only 28 days? Autism is not generally diagnosed until around two years of age. Would it be appropriate to abort a child of two years? A man named Phineas Gage was famous for suffering a brain injury that drastically altered his personality. Ought we to consider someone like him “consciously compromised” and abort him? What about an old person who loses their sight and hearing? What about someone like Helen Keller who was born without sight or hearing? If a person never sees nor hears, then their brain’s auditory cortex and occipital lobe are underdeveloped. Is that sufficient justification for murder?

Besides, Dr. Singer and his ilk do not understand that babies have a remarkable aptitude for thinking and learning. Although fetuses sleep most of the time (about 95% of the time at Month 7), scientists have tracked periods of wakefulness with marked brain activity. Fetuses experience REM in their sleep, meaning that they dream. They become acclimated to the tastes of their national cuisine every time their mothers eat. By Week 9 babies can react to loud noises, and their hearing becomes more sensitive as pregnancy continues. Fetuses at the end of the second trimester can distinguish between their mother’s and father’s voices, and those of strangers. They show enjoyment when listening to certain things, especially when those sounds have become familiar. Babies in the third trimester of pregnancy can even distinguish different languages based on rhythmic patterns.[9] Whether asleep or awake, fetuses move up to 50 times per hour. They explore their environment and themselves, touching their faces, clapping their hands, holding their umbilical cords, sucking their thumbs, and even licking the uterine wall. They bounce up and down when their mothers laugh, and their heartbeats slow when they hear their mothers speak. Even before we are born we are comforted by the sounds of our mothers’ voices. An issue of Psychology Today stated, “Behaviorally speaking, there’s little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat.”[10] In the same article, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins stated, “Birth is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens.” The aforementioned abilities are not the only ones that fetuses have (for example, they can stretch, yawn, swallow, suck, smell, react to touch, etc.). All of these make it quite clear that infant cognition is far more advanced than a cursory glance may reveal, and for Dr. Singer to say that a month-old newborn doesn’t meet a minimum level of consciousness is baffling.

Those who advocate killing fetuses or newborns because of handicaps are implying, probably unintentionally, that having a handicap means that one’s life is not worth living. What message does that send to those who are living with one of these handicaps? What about their parents, who must endure the torment of hearing that their children are better off dead? If a disability is sufficient grounds for abortion inside the womb, then it must also be justification at any age. Do you desire to live in a country where persons with certain genes are hunted down and slain, and the rest of us are told that it’s for their own good? Adolf Hitler would rejoice to see so many extolling the virtues of eugenics. If we find it moral to kill someone for existing, why not also find it moral to forcibly sterilize those who have certain genes or are likely to engage in certain behaviors, as was done so many decades ago? The unintelligent were also sterilized against their will, in order to prevent ignorant parents from somehow tainting the future of society. And what about pregnancy that results from incest? If you would never look someone in the eyes and tell them, “You deserve to die because your parents are related,” then you have more decency than every pro-abortionist in the world.  Once all guilt is removed, and the self-righteous eugenicists fancy themselves as crusaders building a better tomorrow, the ranks of the “unfit” shall be swelled with political opponents, anti-revolutionaries, conservative or traditional family men, devout Christians, the Jews, and so on. If you scoff at this so-called “slippery slope argument,” then reading the history of eugenics should change your mind. This is not fiction. It really happened, and it shall happen again.

What if it is not just the circumstances of conception, but the circumstances of childhood that are unfavorable? If a baby is born to a slave mother and lives his whole childhood as a slave, then would it be good to kill him to ease his suffering? Jews have been discriminated against in Europe for centuries. Would it have been compassionate to abort them all to prevent further discrimination?  Now, imagine if Frederick Douglass’ mother had smothered him as a baby so that he should never grow up in the harshness of slavery. In that case he also never could have been an influential speaker and writer who worked toward abolition of slavery. There is no way for a human to gaze into the future and see who is or is not worthy of living based on their future accomplishments (not that this is a good way to judge a person’s value or right to life anyway). So what if Albert Einstein could not contribute vastly to the field of physics because he was aborted upon diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, or what if Ralph Braun could never have invented the wheelchair lift because he was aborted for muscular dystrophy? True, there have also been exceedingly evil men with handicaps, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but this is a terribly poor argument in favor of abortion. You have no way to know what someone will grow up to do, and you were never appointed their judge anyway. If you must murder someone, at least wait until they commit a crime. Why punish an innocent baby?

There are also many feeble attempts to justify abortion in the case of rape. First, it must be made clear that two wrongs don’t make a right. If a criminal stole your wallet, would you be justified in setting fire to someone else’s house? On what planet does that make sense? The proper response to being the victim of an evil act is not to victimize someone else. A woman who murders her baby in the hope that it’ll help her emotionally and mentally recover from being raped shall be in for a terribly unpleasant surprise. The trauma of being raped cannot be ameliorated by the trauma of murdering an innocent baby. Women who have abortions are instructed to undergo therapy in order to help them cope with their guilt, which is an unspoken admission that abortion is wrong; otherwise there’d be no guilt and no need for therapy. Also, why punish the most innocent party? If you would not look someone in the eyes and tell them, “You deserve to die because your mother was raped,” then you have far more decency than every pro-abortionist in the world.

Activist groups such as “Save the 1%” are populated by rape victims and their children who work tirelessly to prevent abortion in response to rape. Their name comes from the estimated 1% of aborted babies who were conceived by rape. (Depending on sources, the number ranges from 0.05% to 1.5%.) Even though pro-abortionists often attempt to garner support for abortion by exploiting rape victims, you’ll never hear them say that they support abortion only 1% of the time. They support it 100% of the time but they use this false pretense to get what they desire. Pro-abortionists often claim that women who are raped need to end the pregnancy so that it can’t serve as a constant reminder of their ordeal. In saying this, they are essentially saying that the pregnancy itself shall emotionally devastate the woman. This implication betrays an assumption that women are fragile, helpless creatures who cannot face reality. Pro-abortionists tell women that they are not strong enough to care for their children or for themselves; that they cannot go on living and recover from their injuries. Contrary to what feminists say, abortion does not empower women; it strips them of power. Abortion is not necessary for recovery. Dr. Sandra Makhorn, who is a counselor for rape victims, found that “pregnancy need not impede the victim’s resolution of the trauma; rather, with loving support, non-judgmental attitudes, and emphatic communication, healthy emotional and psychological responses are possible despite the added burden of pregnancy.”[11]

              It is easier to recover from trauma when someone else inflicted it upon you than it is to recover from self-inflicted trauma. The mental health risks associated with abortion are well-documented.[12] [13] [14] [15] Websites such as Abort73.com and SilentNoMoreAwareness.org collect and publish testimonies from women who regret having had an abortion. But it is not just mental scarring that results. First-trimester abortions were found to cause uterine perforations at an alarmingly high rate,[16] which can result in scar tissue that endangers future pregnancies or internal bleeding which could be deadly. Abortion also makes it more likely that a woman will give birth prematurely,[17] [18] [19] which itself causes many problems for the baby. When a woman murders her baby she not only puts her own life in danger, but also the lives of any other babies she may have in the future.  There is also a very strong link between abortion and increased risk of breast cancer.[20] [21] [22] And the more abortions a woman has, the more her risk for breast cancer increases.[23] [24] Pro-abortionists speak of the need for “safe abortion.” Even ignoring the previous evidence that abortion is inherently unsafe for mothers, one must ask just how it can be safe for someone to murder you while you’re in the womb. How can it be safe for someone to impale you before ripping off your limbs with a suction tube? How can it be safe for someone to partially deliver you from your mother’s womb and then cut open your head to tear out your brain? How can it be safe for someone to bombard you with radiation until your heart stops beating? Murder, by definition, is never safe.

              A common argument is that if abortion were banned, then women would seek out back-alley doctors or “home remedies” that could result in infection, internal bleeding, and death. Well, yes, such abortion methods could cause injury. Burglary is banned, so there’s no guarantee that a burglar shall be safe when robbing a house. If a burglar knows that he or she might be shot dead by the homeowner or mauled by the family dog, it is hoped that he or she would abstain from attempting burglary. It would be absurd for someone to suggest that we make burglary legal and ban self-defense in order to protect burglars. Pro-abortionists would respond to this by stressing the importance of a pregnant woman’s circumstances and struggles and feelings. But what about the baby’s feelings? No one’s feelings are more important than the life of an innocent human being. There is no justification for placing a mother’s convenience over the inalienable God-given right to life. During the 1950s and ‘60s, opponents of the Civil Rights movement argued that equal treatment of blacks would result in riots and chaos. This argument, too, had nothing to do with the morality or immorality of the issue at hand (in this case, ethnic discrimination). It was only an appeal to emotion. Pro-abortionists like to call themselves “pro-choice” because they are defending a woman’s “right” to choose to commit murder. But what about the baby’s right to choose? To this author’s knowledge, no baby has ever chosen to commit suicide while in the womb. Pro-abortionists refer to banning or restricting abortion as a “war on women.” But a war results in death, so the real war against women is the one that kills them while they’re still in their mothers’ wombs.

              Besides, deaths of mothers resulting from back-alley abortions are extremely low. In 1972, the year before abortion was “legalized” in the US, the CDC recorded that a mere 39 mothers died from abortion. A leading pro-abortion statistician wrote that claims of “thousands of dead mothers” are utter nonsense. Drawing from the statistic that an estimated 45,000 fertile women die each year from all causes put together, he wrote that the claim of thousands of deaths resulting from a single source (abortion) is impossible.[25] Because of advancing medical technology, the number of mothers’ deaths from abortion fell from 1,231 in 1942 to 133 in 1968.[26] Reasonable estimates show a mathematical mean of 98,000 abortions per year before 1973^{(op. cit. Hilgers)}. This means that in 1972 the mother’s rate of fatality from an illegal abortion was less than 0.0004%. But the “Women will die if we don’t allow access to legal abortion” argument continues as strong as ever. After abortion became “legal” in the US, the number of women having abortions jumped to over 1.6 million per year at its peak.[27] Laws against abortion were highly effective, which means that there is no substance to the argument that “Women will have abortions anyway, so why not just make it legal?” This is no less absurd than saying that rapists will still commit rape, so why not just make it legal? At the time of writing, over 60 Million babies have been murdered in the womb in the US alone since 1973, and globally over 1.6 Billion babies have been murdered in the womb since 1980. But these numbers exclude chemically-induced abortions. If these were included, the number for US abortions since 1973 would well exceed 250 Million. For comparison, all the Socialist dictators of the 20^th century killed a combined total of less than 200 Million of their own countrymen (not including the unborn).

Many pro-abortionists argue that abortion must be funded by tax dollars or else women in poverty couldn’t afford an abortion, and would resort to “dangerous” back-alley abortions. But two years after federal funding for abortion was revoked in the US, a doctor who had argued vociferously against defunding admitted, “The bloodbath that many predicted simply is not happening. Our numbers don’t show that there has been any mass migration to illegal procedures.”[28] Burglars rob houses because they are poor and can’t afford their own stuff, so if you really care about the poor then you’ll support making burglary legal, right?

A similar argument is that women must be allowed to have an abortion if they are poor because there is no sense in having a child you can’t afford to feed. By this same logic, if a mother loses her job it is OK for her to abort her teenage child. If the woman is pregnant because she was raped, then why not enslave the rapist and force him to financially support her child? If you think that slavery as punishment for rape is unjustifiable, but murder as punishment for existing is justifiable, then there is something terribly wrong with your soul. If you are really so heartless, then why not enslave the child once it’s old enough to work? If the mother cannot afford to take care of her child, then why not force the child to support itself? If you really care about the mother’s finances so much that you can excuse murder, then why not excuse forced child labor?

As noted before, rape has a surprisingly low rate of pregnancy—in most cases it’s the woman’s choice to have sex that leads to her pregnancy. Every person has the freedom to make decisions but no one is free from the consequences thereof. If you have sex, you must be prepared to conceive a child. If you conceive a child, you must be prepared to raise it to adulthood. If you wish to not have a child, then don’t have sex. Some pro-abortionists say that if a woman has no desire to bear children then she would be an unfit mother, and may even become abusive, so it’s better to just end the pregnancy. In other words, prevent abuse by murdering its victims. A major study found that 91% of abused children were desired by their parents before birth, and 90% were born within wedlock.[29] Abuse comes from many factors, not one of which is the lack of desire for having children.

              So then the pro-abortionists say that abortion is necessary to prevent over-population. Only someone with no understanding of economics could make such a statement. In a relatively free market, not only does an increase in population not strain resources, it actually results in more plentiful resources. [30]  Every additional human means one more person who can extract, refine, and put to use various resources, as well as improve upon them. Furthermore, a higher population allows for more advanced market coordination, and there is an increased chance that someone will come up with an innovation or invention that will improve life. The CATO Institute’s study found that “The Earth was 379.6% more abundant in 2017 than it was in 1980.” Strained resources can only be possible when there is strict government control over the economy. The introduction of free market principles has had many drastic effects on the standard of living on a global scale. Six examples are shown below.

See, God is not stupid. He made the Earth in such a way that good actions shall have good results. There is no discrepancy between moral good and the quality of life. Contrariwise, bad actions have bad results. But even if overpopulation were possible, it’s unbelievable that an abortion in New York could in any way help a starving family in the slums of Nairobi. There is no quandary that compels us to choose between committing murder and having enough food.

There is a very popular ad hominem attack among pro-abortionists: that pro-lifers don’t actually care about children. Supposedly pro-lifers only care about children when they are in the womb, but stop caring as soon as they are born. Because nobody is capable of reading another person’s thoughts, pro-abortionists have to mean that pro-lifers don’t do anything to help children conceived or born in undesirable circumstances. First, it is important to note that no one has a moral responsibility to help everyone they come across or hear about. It’s physically and mathematically impossible to help everyone in the world, all the time, inexhaustibly, forever. Each of us can only do so much good. Second, it’s unreasonable to say that someone doesn’t care about children if they haven’t personally adopted or financially supported a child. It’s not necessary to completely fix a problem in order to genuinely care about it. Third, most pro-abortionists don’t do anything to help children either. Most of them support enlarging government programs such as welfare which are funded with money forcibly extracted from workers. Reaching into your own pocket to help others is compassionate, but asking a politician to reach into someone else’s pocket is evil and counter-productive. It’s a lie to say that you care about children when all you do is advocate for an increase of financial enslavement. Fourth, there are countless pro-life organizations that contribute a great deal to help those in need. The organization Pregnant on Campus provides advice and resources to pregnant or parenting students. Opinion Line provides free counseling to pregnant women. Catholic Churches USA is one of the largest charities in the US and does many different kinds of charity work. Various non-profit pregnancy resource centers provide free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, parenting classes, and other services. These include Heartbeat International, CareNet, and Life International. There are even organizations that assist with adopting children or giving up your baby for adoption.

(Generally speaking, liberty-minded Christians give far more to charity than any other group.[31] [32] The least charitable group are authoritarian (that is, pro-government) Atheists. Many Socialists outright condemn charitable giving as pointless or even oppressive because it allegedly perpetuates poverty and legitimizes capitalism. [33])

Approximately 2% of American adults have adopted children, with a further 26% saying that they have seriously considered adopting. The most adoptive group are Christians; 5% of Christians have adopted and 38% have seriously considered adopting.[34] The National Committee for Adoption estimated that there are two million American families who have tried to adopt a child but can’t overcome the bureaucratic obstacles. The same group issued a statement rejecting the claim that only healthy, white babies are sought after for adoption. They said, “The myth that no families want to adopt minority infants is often repeated…. Infants who are legally free for adoption, regardless of race, do not wait for homes. In fact, there is a waiting list of screened families who want to adopt seriously disabled newborns, including babies born with Downs Syndrome and spina bifida.” According to American Adoptions, 21% of private adoptions are also transethnic,[35] and according to Adoption Network, 40% of adopted children are of a different ethnicity or cultural background. Only 37% of adopted children are non-Hispanic caucasians,[36] which is a far cry from the supposed 100% demand for white babies that pro-abortionists claim, especially considering that 73% of adoptive parents are non-Hispanic caucasians. These pro-abortionists are simply projecting their own racism onto others. If politicians and bureaucrats did not insist on making the adoption process prohibitively difficult and expensive, adoption would be much more common.

The final remaining argument in support of abortion is that it is sometimes medically necessary in order to save a mother’s life. C. Everett Koop, who was the US Surgeon General during the 1980s, wrote, “Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years of pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, the doctor will either induce labor or perform a Caesarian section. His intention is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby’s life is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.” At a medical symposium in Ireland, attending doctors reached near-unanimous agreement that willful termination of the fetus is never necessary to save the mother’s life. John Bonnar, the Chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists at the time, testified, “It would never cross an obstetrician’s mind that intervening in a case of pre-eclampsia, cancer of the cervix or ectopic pregnancy is abortion. They are not abortion as far as the professional is concerned; these are medical treatments that are essential to save the life of the mother.”

In September 2012 in Dublin, a panel at the International Symposium on Maternal Health declared, “As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn in the termination of pregnancy – is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman…. We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatments result in the loss of life of her unborn child…. We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to a pregnant woman.” At that same symposium, the world-renowned cancer specialist Dr. Frédéric Amant said, “In the case of cancer complicating pregnancy, termination of pregnancy does not improve maternal prognosis.” Eamon O’Dwyer also addressed the attending doctors, saying, “During my 35 years as Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at University College Galway, and Director of the Hospital Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology I delivered – with these hands – over 9,000 children in Galway. From my experience, I believe I am entitled to say that there are no circumstances where the life of the mother may only be saved through the deliberate, intentional destruction of her unborn child in the womb.”

There is all the difference in the world between abortion and the unintentional loss of a patient. An ethical doctor will do everything possible to save the life of the baby as well as the mother. If one or both of them dies unintentionally, that is tragic—but it is not abortion. In very rare circumstances in a developed country, the baby may die in the womb. No doctor can maintain a 0% mortality rate throughout his career. Eventually he’s going to lose a patient. In the rare case of an ectopic or extrauterine pregnancy, no abortion is involved. Either the baby will manage to grow to term (in extremely rare cases) and can be removed via C-section, or it shall die, upon which the doctor removes the dead body. Again, the doctor’s intent is to preserve the life of the mother and the baby. Also, it is not necessary to visit an abortion clinic in the case of miscarriage. Any hospital or surgical center that offers OB/GYN services can remove the dead baby. The abortion industry propagates the lie that abortion clinics are important facilities for mothers who miscarry, but they are actually wholly unnecessary for that purpose. On the contrary, abortion clinics do not meet ambulatory surgical center standards and are often run by uncaring and unprofessional personnel. Complications often result from the removal of a miscarried baby when done in an abortion clinic, specifically because they hold themselves to lower standards than hospitals.

With this final argument having been defeated, there is no hope for the pro-abortion stance. Nothing, from morality, philosophy, science, economics, or so on can justify abortion. Abortion is murder. In ancient times pagan idolaters sacrificed their offspring to their pagan gods, and today many sacrifice their children to the pagan god called “self.” With modern scientific knowledge no one can claim ignorance. Perhaps future generations, when they look back, will compare us to slave-owners or Nazis, who considered certain ethnic groups and others to be non-persons. Future generations will be able to point out that we had ultrasounds, we had knowledge of the human genome, and we had adoption agencies, and they will rightfully say that we carried out a horrendous atrocity never surpassed in all of history. Abortion has killed more human beings than any war, more than any disaster, and more than heart disease and the black plague combined. Pro-lifers are not overreacting when they refer to abortion as genocide.

              Please get involved in whatever way you can. Here are some ideas: Donate to charitable organizations. Educate your friends and family. Understand your opponents’ arguments better than they do so that you can most effectively refute them. Print out and distribute this essay (see link below). Speak to single women and couples who are considering an abortion—visit abortion clinics and try to convince them to not go through with it. Reach out to women who already had an abortion and remind them that they need to hear God’s word. Invite them to church. Invite them to your home for dinner. And most importantly, pray. Cry out to our Father for help. And if you are someone who had an abortion (including boyfriends or husbands who went along with it), know that you are never out of reach of God’s grace. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Know that your baby is resting peacefully and can never be harmed again. You will get to see them again someday. Until then, do what you can. With your experience, you have a special qualification to talk about abortion, so take advantage of that.

              The word “infant” is directly derived from the Latin infans meaning “unable to speak.” If babies are unable to speak then we must speak on their behalf. How much longer must this enormity continue?

(Note: This author encourages you to copy and distribute this essay to whomever you please. A link to it is provided below.)

www.dropbox.com/sh/uw8vkqmjk6u7atf/AAArPestEw23PGRJLMz0RN9Ja?dl=0

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 by its author John Wesley Everett.

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www.barna.com/research/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-adoption/#.UnvPco2E7Tw

[35] American Adoptions. “Important Adoption Statistics to Know: Combatting Common Misconceptions about Adoption.” Web. www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/adoption_stats

[36] Adoption Network. “Adoption Statistics.” Web. www.adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-statistics