1. In Minnesota the Fetal Homicide Law makes a person guilty of manslaughter or worse if he kills the baby in a mother's womb - unless the mother agrees with the killing. Who is willing to live with the moral implications of making a person's "being wanted" the criterion of its right to life?
2. There is an inconsistency between doing fetal surgery on a baby in the womb to save life, and at a similar stage of development, killing a baby down the hall.
3. A baby can live on its own at 23 or 24 weeks. Yet pro-choice people say it can be killed even at and beyond this age if the mother will be distressed by its live birth more than its abortion. What morally significant factor will prevent them from saying that two babies at 23 weeks - one born and one unborn - may both be killed because of a mother's distress?
4. A baby's living without an umbilical cord (that is, outside the womb) is not the criterion of human personhood and the condition of the right to life. We all know this because our own living on a respirator or dialysis machine would not jeopardize our own personhood. The source of food and oxygen does not determine personhood.
5. The size of a human is irrelevant to human personhood. We know this because we do not make a one-month-old baby outside the womb vulnerable to killing even though it is so much smaller than a five-year-old. Littleness is irrelevant to personhood.
6. Developed reasoning powers are not the criterion of personhood. We know this because a one-month-old baby outside the womb does not have these powers either, yet its life is not in jeopardy because of that.
7. Scientifically we are human beings by virtue of our genetic makeup. The human code in the chromosomes is there from the start. We are utterly different from monkeys or rats or elephants as soon as the chromosomes of egg and sperm meet.
8. At eight weeks, all the organs are present - brain functioning, heart pumping, liver making blood cells, kidney cleaning the fluids, fingerprints formed, etc. Yet almost all abortions happen later than this date.
9. Ultrasound has given a stunning window on the womb that shows the unborn at eight weeks sucking a thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. We can see the amazing pictures in Life Magazine or various books or Web pages.
10. There is a principle of justice that, when two legitimate rights conflict - say the woman's right not to be pregnant, and the baby's right not to be killed - the right that should be limited is the one that would do the most harm.
11. The Word of God says, "Thou shalt not kill." But many abortionists admit they are killing baby humans. Bill Long, who used to do abortions at Midwest Health Center for Women told me over lunch some years ago that he knew he was "killing babies." Those were the abortionist's words. But he said it was a lesser evil; women must have "reproductive freedom."
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