COLUMN: The Raod to Destruction

From Marc Teillon's "The Public Pillory," Fall '94 A camera crew scurried about to get the best angle on the group as they passed over the 38th Street bridge. As the end of the line passed, I caught a glimpse of the sign and realized the cause of their objections -- animal experimentation. This scene may not strike anyone else as ironic, but it seems a little funny to me. Here was a group of individuals protesting the unfair treatment of monkeys by a University doctor, while hundreds of human lives are taken each day in the name of humanity and democracy. Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, the death counts have been appalling. 4400 a day. 1.5 million a year. Over 32 million human lives have been destroyed in the abortion mills while most of the nation has become immune to this butchering. When people do rise up and protest these atrocities, they are scoffed at and treated as religious whackos. While our federal government secures the rights of every dirty old man in a trench coat to purchase pornography at 7-Elevens, it threatens the prayerful pro-lifers with anti-racketeering laws and forces them thirty feet from the doors of the abortion clinics. When a couple of fanatics forget their creed to preserve life and decide to play God themselves, NOW, Planned Parenthood and the rest of their lot attempt to brandish the rest of the whole pro-life movement as insane and hypocritical. Abortion is the great moral question of our time. The issue continually warrants debate on the pages of newspapers and major periodicals. But so far, the discourse has focused less on the inherent dignity of all human life and more on issues of secondary importance. Supporters of abortion tell lachrymous tales of unwanted babies born into poverty-stricken environments where they are left to fend for themselves. They spout out apocalyptic statistics of over-population to justify family planning. They even turn the mental state of the mother and potential inconveniences to the parents into major issues as well. The most common argument used by every pro-abortion person is that abortion is a woman's unalienable "right." Women have the power over their own body and the right to do with it as they please. The act of choosing is considered a private matter. A popular NOW placard reads, "keep your laws out of my uterus." But whether or not these arguments are valid is subordinate to the debate. The only issue of importance to abortion is life. Pro-choicers deny this aspect because of the harm it causes its own movement. If the unborn are human lives, then they deserve the dignity and rights granted to all human-beings. This goes against their philosophy and contradicts every one of their arguments. Taking a look at the current scientific information on fetal development tells a person why the pro-choicers dehumanize the unborn by calling them "clumps of cells" and "blobs of tissue." From the moment of conception, the life is as genetically advanced as any person of any age. In the words of Dr. Jerome Lejeune, world-renowned geneticist, "each of us has a very precise starting moment which is the time at which the whole necessary and sufficient genetic information is gathered inside one cell, the fertilized egg, and this is the moment of fertilization." From the point of conception on, it is only a matter of time for the human life to grow and develop. In the first month, the unborn's heart starts to beat. In the second month, brainwaves are detected and all the fingers have developed. By the end of the third month, all the bodily organs and systems are functioning and the baby sleeps, awakens and exercises his muscles with head movements and thumb-sucking. The baby continues to grow and develop as time progresses. By the fifth month, scientific advancement has made ex utero existence possible for those born prematurely. If we choose a time when the unborn is worthy of human dignity besides conception, then the magical moment is only arbitrary. What separates a 12 week old fetus from an unborn child of 14 weeks is only a matter of days and minutes of development. The courts, the doctors, and men in general have no right to make distinctions on the value of life at different stages. The Judeo-Christian values prevalent in this country consider all life a gift from God and only His to take away. Albert Einstein once observed that any civilization which loses respect for all life must necessarily decline. There is no denying our country's journey on the path the Romans and Babylonians once traveled. Does our generation have the courage to turn back? Or are we content to follow the road whence no one returns? Marc Teillon is a junior Finance major from Liverpool, New York. The Public Pillory appears alternate Thursdays.