Why+do+their+lives+have+any+less+value+than+ours?


 * Why do their lives have any less value than ours? **

 When does human life begin? This controversial question has haunted the United States for decades. Does life begin when a heart starts beating, when brain waves can be detected, or when pain can be felt? Research has shown that 38.7% of all abortions take place after all three of these major milestones in development have occurred. Yet, none of these are the starting point of life. Life is defined as the time a person or thing exists. For humans, this begins when all forty-six chromosomes are present: conception.  In 2005, American mothers intentionally murdered 1,206,200 unborn children. This needs to end. America is allowing, and //encouraging//, millions of women to murder their children. What difference is there between aborting a child just before birth and murdering a child born premature? There isn’t.  In 2006, the Smith family became pregnant with their eighth child. After an appointment with a specialist, recommended by their doctor, the Smiths’ baby was diagnosed with Trisomy 18: a rare disease in which only 50% of unborn children diagnosed survive birth. The specialist told Mrs. Smith she had a “choice” to make. Obviously speaking about abortion, Mr. Smith told the specialist they were not aborting their baby. Ignoring him, the specialist continued to badger Mrs. Smith into having an abortion. Regardless of his or her title, specialist, or passer-by, nobody has the //right// to tell you that you should abort your baby! On June 19, 2007, the Smiths’ baby was born a week late, and very much //alive//.  As of right now, America forces a mother to decide whether she wants to keep her baby or if she wants to abort it. The father has no choice in the matter. If a man decides he doesn’t want to have a child and causes the woman to have a miscarriage, he gets charged with manslaughter. However, a woman can decide at any point to have an abortion, without the father’s consent, and have no charges pressed against her. Our laws put the lives of our future citizens in the hands of women who may or may not choose to give birth to them. Therefore, a father has //no right// to allow his unborn child to //live// as long as the mother disagrees or is following the advice of a “professional.”  Many times, pro-choice activists will use rape, incest, or the health of the mother as an excuse to keep abortions legal. In reality, only .53% of women having abortions list one of these circumstances as her reason for having an abortion. Some of the others were because the mother decided she wasn’t ready to have a child. This decision is one that should have been made before the child was conceived. However, outsiders who thought the child wouldn’t survive or would be born with birth defects badgered the rest into having an abortion.  Would people still recommend abortion if clinics were using barbed wire and chainsaws to execute the unborn children? Why? Does it remind us too much of the movies //Saw// and //Wrong Turn//? Then why aren’t people as distraught when blunt scissors are used to puncture an infant’s skull and a catheter is used to suction out the contents until the skull collapses? Despite the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban passed in 2007, dilation and extraction abortions, along with other methods of abortion such as intracardiac injection, suction aspiration, and instillation abortions are still being performed. This means women actually choose to have these procedures done. All of which are still painful to the fetus: they can feel pain as early as eight weeks after conception. Americans fail to see this pain when all they are thinking about is how drastically their lives will be changed after having a child. Who says those children wouldn’t have changed their mothers’ lives for the better? Who has the //right// to say those children wouldn’t have lived full and happy lives if given the chance?