A Right to Choose
There are many choices we have and can make in life by benefit of living in this great Nation. We can choose to have long or short hair. We can choose who we marry. We can choose the type of car we drive or the very light bulbs we use (at least until 2010). We can choose what we do or do not believe. While there are certain things we have no choice about (who our parents are), we have plenty of opportunity to choose much concerning the courses of our lives.
Emphasis on lives. We cannot choose nor can we have opportunity without life. The foundation of this Nation, the Declaration of Independence (the Constitution and Bill of Rights would come later) iterates three inalienable rights (they are a primacy): Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Without Life, no one has rights. Without Liberty, one cannot exercise their rights. Without the Pursuit of Happiness, one’s freedom means little. So we have the right to Life. An inalienable right.
Yet, that most basic of rights has, at times in our Nations history, been denied to people. Not on the basis of action – such as those condemned by Capital Punishment, but by basis of birth; the color of one’s skin. There are those who uphold the Supreme Court as the best defence in this Nation against Executive or Legislative abuse of our rights, yet if you look at the but a few examples (Dred Scott) you see that the expediency of appeasing financial and political allies overthrew the rights of many. It took a bloody civil war to rectify that fault in America.
Today, we have a similar situation. It was not born out of compromise in order to create the Union as slavery was. This was born out of a mistaken ideology which does not value life for it sees no separation between man and common animals. The very Supreme Court case: Roe vs Wade, relied on poor and debunked evidence to support the theory that a human fetus was not human. When is a human a human if not at conception? Certainly not prior to conception, there is zero potential for humanity in a sperm or ovum (* link may offend some). Once conception occurs, regardless of the simplicity, there is 100% potential. That is: you have human life. The main differences are: size, intellectual capacity, self-reliance, communication, and maturity.
The premise that a woman has the right to abort her fetus is an erroneous argument. It presumes that the rights of one individual outweigh the rights of another. The only instances allowed are in cases of Capital Punishment and self-defense. With regards to a mother’s choice then; with regards to a pregnant woman’s choice then, we do not have an instance where Capital Punishment of a Fetus is expected nor do we have an instance of self defence except for the case where a woman’s life is in direct danger due to the pregnancy. Otherwise, what gives the right of anyone to take the life of another?
Where does that right come from except by dehumanizing the fetus; the unborn? Only by assuming that our inalienable rights do not come from a higher power: not from God but from man – that we make the rules and rights. All should be very much afraid for if man can pick and chose the rights to bestow on his fellow man, then likewise those same rights and more can be taken away.