human-shield-gaza (Photo credit: ` ³ok_qa³ `)
Well, a few weeks ago I became a Daddy, and it’s wonderful. And my son is healthy, which I’m so grateful for.
At our first ultrasound scan, the doctor asked if we’d like to see if the kid was going to be born with Down’s Syndrome, and then explained that the primary reason for the test was to determine whether killing the unborn child would be the right thing to do. That is, the purpose of finding out is not to prepare the parents.
He obviously thought it would be fine to kill an unborn baby, and I reckon it would be for one of the following reasons:
Not a human being
Well, that’s ridiculous. I saw the ultrasound; he certainly looked like a human, and he has human parents…how is he not a human?
The baby’s too small to be a human
At the 12-week scan the baby’s unimaginably small so this seems an obvious argument, but is just downright silly. My newborn’s way smaller than me but does that mean he’s somehow less human? Is Peter Crouch more human? What a joke.
He’s not developed enough to be a human
Again, how ridiculous. A human’s physical peak is in the early twenties, and the intellectual peak is in the 50s. I’ve no idea where the emotional peak is, but I’m pretty certain I’ve not reached there yet. Is there somehow a scale of how human I am based on my age? Or do people become less human once they get through being middle-aged? The answer’s no, by the way.
His environment is not the natural enviroment for a human
In other words, being in the womb stops you being a human. A US senator (I think) once defended stem cell research because ‘human beings aren’t made in a petri dish,’ but this simply doesn’t make sense. This morning I woke up and got out of bed, but I didn’t suddenly stop being me because my environment changed. Similarly, nothing happens physioligically to suddenly make a newborn baby a human where a few minutes earlier they were a few inches higher up the birth canal. Your environment doesn’t define you.
He’s too dependent to be a human
He needs the umbilical cord and everything else to stay alive, and therefore isn’t a human…are you kidding me? Imagine an elderly man who’s smoked his entire life so needs a respirator – is he really less of a human? Of course not.
Conclusion
My son wasn’t just a clump of cells in the womb, and magically a human now. He was a human throughout pregnancy, and still is now. Abortion should be approached the same way that anyone would approach killing any other human being, regardless of their size, level of development, environment, or dependency.
