Were there to be no support in the whole history of ethical and moral thought, were there no acknowledged confirmation from medical science, were the history of legal opinion to the contrary, we would still have to conclude on the basis of God's Holy Word that the unborn child is a person in the sight of God. He is protected by the sanctity of life graciously given to each individual by the Creator, Who alone places His image upon man and grants them any right to life which they have.
Did you know that, in Ohio, a young couple is being charged with
a felony “after they allegedly induced the delivery of their
29-week-old preborn baby boy using a type of abortion pill,
intentionally causing his death”? After the couple killed their preborn
baby, they hid his body in a shoebox.
Abortion
kills people. Reading this story forces us to confront the fact that,
in today’s society, individual human beings are deemed worthless by far
too many. After more than two generations of decriminalized abortion, what else can our once-civilized nation expect?
This
is why we have chosen to dig into pro-life history and share nuggets of
wisdom that help us understand why every innocent human being is worthy
of our respect and our protection. While much of this is not on the
Internet, the facts are consistent and help us see that science does not
change.
Three examples follow.
On June 29, 1967, James H. Ford, MD, who later became a founder of American Life League, appeared on the Joe Pyne radio show. In his prepared remarks we find this:
A
living, human zygote (fertilized ovum) or embryo is by definition a
living, human individual; which by definition is a living, human
organism; which by definition is a living, human animal; which by
definition is a living member of the human race or human species (Homo
sapiens), which by definition is a living, human being or person.
I
will give $1,000.00 to the first person who can bring scientific proof
from an accredited university in this country to refute that statement
or its scientific, factual basis.
Over the years not a single person came forward to challenge Dr. Ford, because nobody can!
On December 27, 1971, the Modern Medicine magazine published a
letter by Dr. Ford in which he quoted Nicholas J. Eastman, “who approves
of abortion as a means of population control and therefore cannot be
considered to be, in any way, biased against it.”
Eastman
stated in July 1967: “In other branches of medicine the objective of
the physician is invariably to preserve life. Only in obstetrics is he
asked from time to time to destroy life.” In his comments he explained
that ever since the days of the Roman Empire, the preborn child has lacked the protection of civil law.
Bernard N. Nathanson, MD, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1974 about the continuous spectrum of life from its beginning to its end, saying:
“Abortion must be seen as the interruption of a process that would
otherwise have produced a citizen of the world. . . . Denial of this
reality is the crassest kind of moral evasiveness.”
From
Ford to Eastman to Nathanson we see three doctors who knew and
understood early on that the act of abortion was not a simple surgical
procedure, but rather an act of killing. So we have to ask why is it
that today so few have the moral courage to state this plainly and
without apology.
Learning
from history requires the ability of the individual to distill the
truth in the midst of the propaganda barrage. We do this by travelling
the pro-life highway paved long ago by others. We will find it leads us
all the way back to ancient times.
In fact, in 197 A.D. Church father Tertullian taught the same truth, writing: “To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing.”
Even though Tertullian did not have access to current science, such as the Carnegie Stages of Human Development published in 1942, he acknowledged that direct killing is always wrong no matter where it takes place—before or after birth.
