For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. | Psalms 139:13-16.
This
guest post is from Sofia Altamura, Regent Law 2L and current Family Law
student:
Abortion. That one word
conjures up so many different reactions in people across this nation. Not only
is there a broad spectrum of opinions, but there is a broad spectrum of state
laws. The standards that states have set on abortion limitations range from
banning abortions altogether to always allowing abortions, no matter how late
into a pregnancy a woman is. Right now, in my state of North Carolina, the law
dictates that abortion is allowed to occur up to 20 weeks. However, I believe
that this is not enough. I believe North Carolina should prohibit all abortions,
starting at fertilization. And if North Carolina laws were consistent, then it
would.
Section 90-320 of North
Carolina General Statutes states that no person in North Carolina has a right
to end a life, as individuals have the right to a peaceful and natural death. There
is also no right-to-die statute in this state, which means that no deliberate
act to end a life outside of the natural process of dying is permitted. These
laws are directed toward wills and end-of-life decisions like
physician-assisted death. Nevertheless, it seems inconsistent to me that no one
has a right to end a life, but a mother can end the life of her own child.
The ending of a
victim’s life makes the act immoral, not the victim’s age. Abortion is in the
same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being. Killing is wrong
because it results in the loss of one’s future life, and the loss of one’s life
is the greatest loss one can suffer. Experiencing a future life is something
people generally hold to be sacred. It explains why it is particularly
heartbreaking when an adolescent child is killed. People often say, “she/he was
so young.” When someone young dies, people mourn the life that child could have
lived but did not get to. The same thing is being taken away with abortion. A 10-week-old
fetus will never have the relationships, opportunities, and experiences it
could have had if it were not aborted. Fetuses, young kids, and adults all have
futures ahead of them – futures that they were meant to live.
For those that insist
on a fetus’s lack of complete personhood being a critical factor in determining
the morality of abortion, I would present an analogy. Let’s say someone has two
seeds. The person plants one seed, nurtures it, gives it a home in the ground,
and allows it to grow. The person then crushes the other seed and throws it in
the wastebasket. The seed planted in the ground will, under normal
circumstances, most definitely become a plant. The seed thrown out will not and
cannot. The purpose of a seed is to become a plant; that is why a seed is
created. Then, as a plant, it can be of value by adding to the aesthetic of
someone’s house, improving the air quality in a home, increasing the appeal of
a business or neighborhood, or being a source of food and life for insects. Its
inherent purpose gives it the right to become a plant; it has a right to be
planted, grow, and become the plant it was meant to be. Clearly, the thrown-out
seed could have become a plant; it would have become a plant, but it was
prevented from fulfilling its rightful destiny. Like a seed with a right to become
a plant, a fetus has a right to become a human and live its life because that is
what it was meant to do, exhibited by the fact that that is what it would do if
it were not prematurely terminated.
Furthermore, the
immorality of killing does not shift when the subject killed is unconscious. Being
conscious is not a prerequisite to having intrinsic rights, as the severely
mentally ill, people with dementia, and those in a coma still have rights. For
example, in North Carolina, a doctor cannot just go ahead and override the
wishes that an unconscious person laid out in their advance directives simply
because that person lost consciousness. Unconscious fetuses have rights as
well, in particular, the right to life. Having the desire to live is not a prerequisite
either, as it is per se wrong to just kill people who are sleeping, tired of
life, or suicidal.
Ultimately, there is no
way to redefine killing. Deliberately ending someone else’s life is simply
killing. To live is our most basic human right and it is immoral to take away
the most fundamental right there is from a human being, irrespective of whether
he or she has been alive for one week or 100 years. This – along with a litany
of biblical, scientific, and philosophical reasons – is why I believe North
Carolina should change its abortion laws and outlaw abortion entirely. It is
always wrong to kill an innocent victim and deprive a person of life, period.
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