On the Right to Life: 'A Person's a Person, No Matter How Small'

Brilliance is often quite simple, and so it is with the wisdom of Dr. Seuss. Even Horton understood what we pretend not to know.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - "My body, my life, my choice..."

"Every woman has a fundamental right to bear or not to bear a child..." (from FOCA)

"The emphasis must be on privacy and reproductive control..."

Something is wrong here. All this clanging rhetoric dances around the underlying central fact, obscuring it with a fog of legalese sound bites and demands for personal control. Pretty soon the shouting reaches a fever-pitch, people are panicked over losing "control", and objective reasoning has gone out the window. Honest, clear thinking must make a comeback, and it will require many people to grow up. It will require learning an old-fashioned, adult lesson: "The world does not revolve around you. It's not all about you."

Amidst all the screaming about "rights", a persistent thought has steadily chanted in my head...

A baby is not a "right."

A baby is a human being, a person entirely distinct and separate from you and me. An individual. Not an extension of me, nor an extension of you. A brand-new man or woman.

Does it seem I'm stating the obvious? Of course I am! Problem is, that obvious fact has been buried underneath so much propaganda and warped definitions of freedom that it has been all but forgotten by everyone who wants to justify the killing of babies in the womb. It must be shoved aside by any remotely civilized person who professes the "right" to kill a defenseless child, because deep down everyone knows there is no justification for such horror.

It is actually not a woman's fundamental right to bear or not bear a child. No woman (or man) has the "right" to another person. New life is not ours to acquire or design whenever we wish, nor is it ours to terminate.

Women are blessed by God with the physical ability to assist in the creation of new human life, but that does not make it our "right." We cannot demand it, we are not entitled to it, and we should not expect it. By the same token, we cannot destroy it and refuse it for our own selfish reasons.

The self-centered language of "women's rights" makes the newly created life in the womb a non-entity. The unique human being taking temporary refuge in his mother's uterus is now simply a "thing" encroaching on the woman's life and body, so it is easy to disesteem the bothersome "thing." There's no need to afford human rights to something declared less than a person. It then becomes convenient and even reasonable to "terminate" the existence of this non-entity. With all eyes focused on the woman's body, a horrific magic show is what we're left with...slight of hand, smoke and mirrors, trying to distract and mislead us away from the obvious evil happening right before our eyes.

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I do not believe anyone is actually fooled by any of this intellectual dishonesty. I'll say it again - any remotely civilized person knows the truth that abortion kills a human being. It simply cannot be denied any longer. Terms like "fetus", "viability" and "quality of life" may attempt to soothe the guilty conscience, but they cannot silence the truth spoken in every heart.

But so desperate is the need to find a way out of taking responsibility for our real choices that this illusory language of privacy, reproductive control, and freedom becomes the rote mantra repeated over and over without thinking. The new life is inescapable, but our self-obsessed culture wants an escape. It must be "my body, my life, my choice" because that is the only way out of dealing with the truth we reject. And since the other person in the equation is hidden and small and silent, the execution is easier to rationalize. The unknown person remains unknown, so what is really lost?

The "choice" argument is a dishonest façade masking our supreme narcissism and fear. It panders to our selfish nature even as it erodes our human worth in our own eyes.

The real choices we have are whether to engage in sexual intercourse and with whom. My true choice is to acknowledge that all my actions have consequences, and if there is a particular consequence I wish to avoid, then the responsible thing to do is refrain from taking that action. That's what being an adult is all about. That is how we exercise and maintain our rightful control.

The other real choices we have are whether we, as a society, will extend support and help to pregnant women so that they know they are not alone and their babies are wanted. We have the choice and the ability to care for America's children as they deserve, provided we have the will. Men have the real choice to stand by the mother and care for the child they've helped create. Our nation as a whole has the choice to once and for all regard ALL human life as sacred. America has the choice to finally do away with the most insidious form of discrimination, prejudice, and hatred.

Mother Teresa was right when she said, "If a mother can kill her own baby, what is left but for you to kill me, and me to kill you?"

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We must begin at the beginning. The baby is an individual, not an extension of the mother. A woman's right to control her own body does not grant her the right to kill another person, even though the other person initially depends on her for survival. We are all dependent on each other for survival.

This new individual must be afforded the same basic rights as every other person. Otherwise our speeches about freedom are meaningless, and worse than that, our intrinsic value as human beings is cast aside in favor of power and utilitarianism.

Brilliance is often quite simple, and so it is with the wisdom of Dr. Seuss. Even Horton understood what we pretend not to know. "A person's a person, no matter how small."

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Jennifer Hartline is a Catholic Army wife and stay-at-home mother of three precious kids who writes frequently on topics of Catholic faith and daily living. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

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