News Flash, Abortion Is Evil

IN today’s culture, not just in America but also most of the West, abortion is a hot-button issue. For nearly a half-century now a war has been unfolding between the pro-life and pro-choice camps. I can mention the various Establishment assets being operated on either side, but that is not the focus of today’s article. Instead, abortion plain and simple is my focus.

What I want to focus on is pretty much the primary thought on either side: “How do we end this conflict?” How do we end the question over the act of abortion, over the nature of human life and the infant. Can this theater of the culture war be resolved, and in whose favor can it end in?

The fact of the matter is, like so many other sociopolitical issues such as immigration or homosexuality, the answer is already settled by clear, unadulterated  data. This data, however, is oppressed by the ideological vanguard in academia and blocked by the mainstream media. What I am going to lay out in the course of this article is data that has been accessible for years, but which the Culture War has ignored in order to keep fanning factionalism and hostility.

So, how do we tackle this issue? I believe it lies in understanding the fundamental difference between the two camps, especially in their perception of the embryo and its life. The pro-lifer views the embryo as a living infant, and the pro-choicer views it as an unliving fetus. If the “womb-being”, to be crudely PC, is alive, then – as a life-stage of Homo sapiens – it is absolutely a living human and has personhood. If not, the opposite applies, and it can be aborted at will.

So, let us get down to tackling this. First off, let us address a go-to assertion of the pro-choice camp, and not even of some radical elements of it, that is used to denigrate the nature of the infant, so as to make it seem like an inferior organism whether or not we view it as alive. This view of the infant in the womb constitutes a fail-safe that makes abortion a bit more morally gray, which is all the pro-choicers need to get bystanders to join their side out of pressure. This assertion is that the embryo/infant is little more than a parasite.

What we need to determine to analyze this claim is simple: What is a parasite? Who else should we confer with but professional medical organizations? Well, the CDC, to start, defines a parasite as, “[A]n organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.” Additionally, the esteemed medical dictionary Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (19th ed.) defines a parasite as an “organism that lives within, upon, or at the expense of another organism (host) without contributing to its survival” (p. 1582). As we can see, the concept of a parasite is pretty much consistent.

If there is a host organism and another organism, and the other organism embeds itself into the host and siphons off of it, off its nutrients and energy, giving nothing in return, then we have a parasitic organism. The question now is, “Does a human infant fit these qualities?” It seems obvious all we need to do is show whether or not an infant exhibits these defining features while in the womb.

Before we examine anything, let me begin by pointing out – even without contrary evidence – the claim that infants are parasites is logically flawed. Even if we can show that infants do give back to the mother, the fact is there will never be balance between the two as the mother has the burden of nurturing a whole organism, a multicellular eukaryotic mammal, which requires a lot. If a simple imbalance in what is given and received in return between mother and offspring makes said offspring a parasite, then every instance of sexual reproduction in the animal kingdom must be redefined as parasitism, something no biologist worth their salt will do.

Now, it is time for data. When I speak of benefits that a woman might receive from childbearing, I do not mean societal ones like the respect of being a mother or being offered up seats on public transportation. Those are social norms and benefits of motherhood, not explicitly childbearing. I want to show examples of biological advantages that might be gained by a mother through the phenomenon of pregnancy.

Fortunately, and it did not take long, I was able to find an article from the website What To Expect. This site, just in case anyone wants to prod, is a legitimate outlet of medical information, as it is supervised by a medical review team made up of many authentic pediatricians, OB/GYNs, endocrinologists, and other relevant specialists. In the article by them regarding the medical benefits of childbearing, the following examples are given:

1.    Easier menstruation – Both I and the article probably began with this for good reason, because a woman’s time of the month is her biggest aggravation. The idea that having a child could make this experience less stressful? I’m a man and it even makes me feel glad. The article explains that the less severe cramps are likely due to the workout the uterus gets from pregnancy and birthing.

2.    Less susceptible to cancers – Not only does breastfeeding, which is more of an aspect of motherhood, decrease the chance of breast cancer, but the overall hormonal shifts caused by pregnancy seem to lead to a statistically lesser chance of certain gynocentric cancers, like ovarian and endometrial.

3.    Resistance to MS – This is perhaps the most surprising benefit, because who knew childbearing and multiple sclerosis had any commonality. Yet, going through pregnancy seems to outright halve the chance of acquiring this disorder. In fact, the effect seems accumulative, with mothers of 5+ kids having a 94% decrease in susceptibility.

4.    Cardiovascular health – Even though the responsibility and raising of a child might get your blood pressure going, it has actually been observed that a woman’s risk of heart disease decreases if they’ve been with child and breastfed. What has been observed is that breastfeeding only a single child for under a year can lower a mother’s risk of heart disease. This is quite significant as heart disease is the biggest killer of women. Diabetes and high blood pressure can get thrown into the mix.

5.    What To Expect also states that the hormonal rush experienced during pregnancy likely will lead to long-term emotional benefits, which they attribute to the hormone oxytocin. The mental, but even biological bond, between mother and child is actually helpful, and can carry on its benefits for years.

These five examples are pretty amazing, and probably far more than anyone would have expected. I’m sure you could possibly find a way to create more out of just these five, maybe by considering the decreased risk of diabetes mentioned in example four as its own unique benefit (making six). But from what we can see, an infant in the womb does give their mother a host of medical benefits. When you consider all the care and attention, all the medical and social benefits of childbearing, a baby simply cannot be deemed a parasite by any means.

One might want to object and assert the parasitism of infants due to the high rate of maternal mortality up until the advent and proliferation of modern medicine. However, there is and was no causal relationship between maternal mortality rates and the infants themselves. Medical science has always acknowledged that these deaths were due to a cause independent of the mother and infant, and as historian Richard Meckel has shown in his lauded book Save the Babies, the issue was a poor understanding of prenatal care, mismanagement of the birthing process, and the general lack of sanitation during this time period.

The simple fact is that infants are organisms, not parasites. As shown above, they do in fact give some very important things back to their mothers. What we also need to consider is what I also stated before regarding the logical fallacy behind calling babies parasites. We would have to reduce all of sexual reproduction to mere parasitism. Thankfully, logic and medical evidence prevents us from doing that in any rational capacity.

Now, as I mentioned before, reducing infants to parasites is merely a fail-safe by pro-choicers so they can argue, even if it can be demonstrated that infants are alive, infants are merely an inferior form of life, parasites, that we should be okay with killing. Having knocked that out of the ballpark, we can move on to determining whether or not infants are really alive.

Some pro-choice activists will assert that the inability for an infant to survive on its own means it’s not alive. This is logically and scientifically absurd. This is because of the same reasons why calling babies parasites is absurd, because it would require an untenable redefinition of sexual reproduction by biologists, something they cannot do in reason because they understand it’s not true. The dependency of one organism on another is a symbiosis, and there is nothing unalive about the dependent specimen. Additionally, human infants are dependent only until birth, after which it has only the basic human necessities: food, water, and warmth.

So, what scientific evidence is there that infants are alive, that from the zygotic stage they constitute a distinct human organism? Well, research conducted by Doctor Maureen Condic of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and by the American College of Pediatricians, which only represent two studies out of a whole host of pro-life literature, provide us with our much needed data.

Firstly, an [living] organism is properly defined as “a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole…” (From Merriam-Webster, quoted by Doctor Condic) It is a systematized and multicellular biological entity, in more clinical terms. Can we find these qualities of an organism in the womb? If we can, the implications are that an organism distinct from the sperm of the father and ovum of the mother exists in the womb, and therefore an independent life that is a human being.

The article by the Lozier Institute explains that a zygote is qualitatively an organism because it produces increasingly complex tissues, structures and organs that work together in a coordinated way. The ACP states, “Cooperation between sperm and egg components to achieve replication of DNA, cell division, and growth occurs as maternally and paternally derived factors in the zygote begin interacting with and chemically modifying each other to initiate the final round of meiotic division in the maternally derived nucleus to enable DNA replication.” What we see here is a biological entity growing, interacting, replicating, and exhibiting various biological processes, and mind you this all is occurring within the first 24 hours after fertilization.

The important thing about this biological activity, as noted by Lozier’s Doctor Condic, is that it is not characteristic in the slightest of cells, which pro-choicers like to refer to infants as a mere clump of. Cells, when they begin replicating and interacting and growing larger and complex structures, are not being organisms. Instead, physicians for centuries have called this behavior by cells cancer. Cancer does not grow into a human being, but embryos do.

As the ACP concludes, “It is clear that from the time of cell fusion, the embryo consists of elements…which function interdependently in a coordinated manner to carry on the function of the development of the human organism.  From this definition, the single-celled embryo is not just a cell, but an organism, a living being, a human being.” And remember, this is within the first day, meaning that morning-after pills and other abortifacients that are used after insemination are killing distinct human organisms.

Please, read these articles on your own. They are quite interesting and also reference some additional literature on the matter of life-at-conception. Now, let us rejoice in the fact that we have clearly identified that the fertilized embryo is a distinct human being within hours of conception. There are many more examples of how early life begins in the embryo, such as the fact that they gain a heartbeat by three weeks, or that the brain begins developing within five.

Now, what we have examined so far is evidence that an infant in the womb is not at all a parasite, nor just a clump of cells. We have proven this both through logical arguments and scientific data. If a baby was a parasite, all of sexual reproduction would have to be reclassified as parasitism (which is vastly irrational), and the science shows that babies do give back some important things to their mothers. If a baby was just a clump of cells then it would be a tumor, but no tumor has ever developed into a living organism; in contrast the qualities of being a living organism are abundant in an infant from the early zygotic stage.

Having said all this, I believe there is one final pro-choice argument that can be levied, negating all that has been discussed so far. This is the so-called “An acorn is not a tree” argument. Essentially, since an acorn has the potentiality to be a tree, the embryo also has the potentiality to be a human; but since potentiality is different from actuality, then it is reasonable to call the embryo nonhuman, like the acorn is not actually a tree. Matt Slick provides a good rejection of this argument, but since it is lengthy, I will only be able to provide a snippet of it below:

“Let’s assume for the moment that the tree in question is an oak tree, and the acorn is from that oak tree. The problem with the above argument is that the acorn is by nature oak. It is not a tree. By definition, a tree is a fully developed plant. An acorn, by definition, is an undeveloped plant. Therefore, to say that an acorn is not a tree is correct, but it is still oak by nature. Their analogy is not a correct analogy anymore than saying a baby is not an adult, and therefore the baby is not human. By definition, a baby is human and so is an adult. Therefore, the problem with this defense to support the aborting of babies is that it uses an improper pairing of words without dealing with the nature of what those words represent.”

Essentially, the acorn-tree argument suffers from a logical fallacy. A toddler and an elderly person are both human beings, just at different stages. In the same way an embryo – which we have shown is an organism – and a toddler, or adult, are both human, just at different stages. The acorn is an oak, the sapling is an oak, and the tree is an oak. The whole article by Slick is much larger than the single paragraph above, and I encourage reading his critique all the way through, which you can access here.

Both through logical arguments and scientific data, we have left the pro-choice camp dead in the water. The infant is not a parasite or a tumor, but a dynamic and distinct organism that begins its life cycle essentially right at conception. The “potentiality” for life is a falsehood, and a human being at all stages – from adolescence to zygote – is indeed actually human.

However, I am not yet done with this subject. The title of this article betrays that I am intending to discuss more than just the science of embryonic life/abortion. I intend to discuss the innate lack of morality in the abortion industry. This systematic immorality goes far beyond killing – as has been proven – living organisms, but involves covert eugenics in the industry and the detrimental health effects of abortion. Let us begin.

A great amount of research on the immorality of the abortion industry has been conducted by the Elliot Institute, through their “The UnChoice” campaign. The Institute published a few years back a highly researched report on “Forced Abortion in America”, compiling a vast amount of data exposing how heinous the abortion phenomenon is. According to them (see page 2 of the report):

• 64% of women reported feeling pressured to have an abortion.
• 84% were not sufficiently informed before having their abortion.
• 65% of women suffer trauma symptoms after abortion.
• Abortion clinics systematically fail to spot signs of coercion.

And there is much more to go over, but that is just a shocking sliver. The report also covers the tragedy of homicide following coerced abortions, or because of women resisting coercion. The report mentions (see page 12):

• A police officer murdering his pregnant girlfriend to avoid paying child support.

• A 21-year-old who murdered his pregnant teenage girlfriend by crushing her skull with a 30-pound boulder.

• Another man murdered his pregnant girlfriend after she refused to get an abortion, and was caught in the act of disposing of her body.

And, again, there are so many more similar atrocities. Of course, these examples might seem to be personal issues, not symptomatic of the abortion industry. However, the fact is that the abortion industry can be implicated as responsible or negligent in many of these cases. From the lack of counseling and screening for coercion mentioned earlier, to pregnant athletes and employees being discriminated against for not having an abortion (see page 3), numerous agents and associates of the abortion industry are abusing women on a national level for having babies and not wanting to abort.

The UnChoice campaign also covers the medical risks of abortion. It mentions that 66% of women who get abortions and get pregnant again later have miscarriages or complicated pregnancies. Women who get abortions have a much higher risk of infertility, ectopic pregnancies, hysterectomies, and other ailments. Essentially, women who do not get abortions get the inverse of the benefits women who do get pregnant and give birth receive (such as the ones listed earlier in this article), like a greater risk of breast or ovarian cancer, heart disease, and other conditions. Women also suffer broad psychological risks, like PTSD and anxiety. An external controlled study is also referenced that showed a clear relationship between abortions and negative psychological effects, rather than with any other pre-existing conditions.

The evidence is abundant for the rampant and severe mismanagement and hostility within the abortion industry, and for the unavoidable pain – physical and mental – from abortion. It makes no sense for pro-choicers to call abortion a women’s rights and health issue, because abortion very clearly is anything but helpful for the rights and health of women. As is the motto of The UnChoice campaign, abortion is simply unwanted, unsafe, and unfair.

The roots of the abortion industry itself are in murky waters, such as eugenics. As might be known to a number of pro-life activists, but few pro-choice ones, Margaret Sanger – the mother of the American abortion industry – was a staunch eugenicist. This fact goes totally unmentioned on mainstream outlets, such as Wikipedia (which only mentions it in one small sentence of her article’s introduction), but she is widely quoted as saying:

“Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly… Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”

          The above quote is given in her autobiography The Pivot of Civilization. She strongly talked about the connections between eugenics and birth control, stating in her pro-abortion journal The Birth Control Review:

“Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control. Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit…”

          “Birth Control and Racial Betterment”, that was the name of the article. How atrocious, and yet her sycophants – even decades after her life – squeal that she was not a racist because she worked with African-Americans to…abort the Black race. Hmm… The Human Life International’s article on Sanger and her sour connections is full of fascinating trivia, such as Sanger’s influence on Ernst Rüdin, the czar of Nazi Germany’s eugenics and racial purity programs. Planned Parenthood, her federally-funded brainchild, to this day kills countless African-American infants, the ethnic group which has the more abortions than any other.

          We can also look into the disinformation and propaganda of the abortion industry. NARAL, perhaps the most influential pro-abortion organization in America other than Planned Parenthood, is the source of some famous pro-choice slogans, all of which were built upon lies. This mountain of lies was exposed by abortion turncoat Bernard Nathanson, who is rarely mentioned at all on Wikipedia’s abortion-related pages (such as “Abortion”, “Abortion rights”, “NARAL”, “Birth control”, and others). Nathanson stated that he “remember[s] laughing when [he] made those slogans up,” and that, “[they] were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion.”

          Here are some other enlightening lies that Nathanson and his colleagues made up to get abortion popular:

• “We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.”
• “The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000.”
• “Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion.”

The efficiency of Nathanson & Co.’s lies were immense. According to Nathanson himself, “…abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization.” New York had a 140-year-old abortion law in effect, but when NARAL flooded the New York airways and newspapers with their deceitful information the law was overturned rapidly, and New York has since become the abortion capital of America.

This whole situation is a tragedy, and while I do not want to digress into discussing the Establishment and elitist agenda behind this, I do want to note there is one, which I suppose I can elaborate on in a later article. As is clearly proven by the science laid out above, and for most of this article, abortion is an immoral act because it involves the killing of a truly living and distinct human organism. Abortion as an industry is an immoral travesty, too, as we have shown by exploring its roots in misinformation, eugenics, and other vices.

The infant in the womb, from soon after fertilization, is living. As shown by the critique of the “Acorn is not a tree” argument, it does not matter if this living organism is in its first stage of development, or its last, it is still human (just like an old person and a toddler are both humans). Being a human being, it is subject to rights, to its natural rights (not civil, as it is not a born citizen yet), which include life. Abortion is infanticide, a “fetus” is an infant, and the easy solution to unwanted pregnancies (the pro-choicer’s last resort) is what it has been forever, abstinence.

There is a lot more to be said on this subject, although I do believe I have given a sufficient treatment of it in this article. For more, however, I highly suggest the two sources that provided with very enlightening data. These are the Charlotte Lozier and Elliot Institutes. I’d also suggest the Human Life International’s two-part series on the unruly origins of the abortion industry (Part 1, Part 2). Nothing gets done by armchair activists, so as I do a lot in my articles, I implore you to do something in real life to address this evil plaguing our society.

Save our children, why don’t ya?