Anti-Abortion Campaign
Dear editor,
Jan. 22 marked the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade in the U.S. Millions of anti-abortion activists in numerous cities throughout America took part in the ``March for Life" to protest the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion. Why?
Human life begins at conception. This was established 120 years ago by Wilhelm His, the father of human embryology.
Today, in many people's consciences, the perception of the gravity of abortion has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake.
On a superficial level, we may be convinced that legalized abortion has not changed much in our private lives and in our society. It all takes place in the silence of an operating room, which ensures the woman's safety. It is as if the fetus has never existed. But there are no small murders.
The respect for every human life is an essential condition if a societal life worthy of the name is to be possible. When man's conscience loses respect for life as something sacred, he inevitably ends by losing his own identity.
While the slogan that abortion is a woman's right to control her own body may sound reasonable to many, it is a medical fact that the human fetus is not a part of the mother's body. It is a separate, distinct and unique human person with its own heart beat, brain waves and DNA.
Ultimately, those who support abortion cannot coherently answer the question why the right of the fetus not to be killed must yield to the right of individual freedom. When the law accepts that the rights of the weakest may be violated, it also accepts that the law of the jungle prevails over the rule of law. When we begin to call even an embryonic human being a ``thing", a ``clump of cells" or a ``blob", progress becomes blind and destructive.
Abortion violates every human instinct. It contradicts the 4th century BC Hippocratic oath that says ``I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy." Let us not change what our most ancient ancestors knew with simplistic certainty - that abortion is evil.
We all must welcome every new life into the world, regardless of the circumstances, as if it were our own. Our lives and the lives of our unborn children are inseparable.
Paul Kokoski
Ontario. Canada