Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'

I commend the authorities in the southern Russian city of Novorossiysk for scheduling a "week without abortion" in an effort to combat the country’s extremely high abortion rate.

Photo: Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'

Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'

Biology clearly tells us that full human life begins at conception with the formation of a genetically complete, self-directing human entity, the embryo. This was established 120 years ago by Wilhelm His, the father of human embryology. Major theologians also agree that it is at the instant of conception that a person acquires his or her soul.

Procured abortion then is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

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 behaviour 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. The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.

The media often manipulates language to hide the tragic reality of the facts. For example, abortion is called 'voluntary interruption of pregnancy' and not the killing of a defenseless human being, an abortion clinic is given a harmless, even attractive, name: 'centre for reproductive health'.

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", progress becomes blind and destructive.

Partial-birth abortion, is usually performed in the final stages of pregnancy. The child is delivered through his mother's birth canal, but backwards, until only his head remains inside. The abortionist then pierces the living baby's skull (usually without first administering anesthesia), suctions out his brain, and then collapses his skull so that the baby can be extracted intact. While some pro-abortion groups claim that it is necessary to keep the procedure legal for women who's lives or health are in danger, most doctors agree that it is never medically necessary.

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.

Freedom does not rest in one’s ability to do as one pleases. "Ye shall be as gods." This promise is quite clearly behind modernity's radical demand for freedom. Such anarchical freedom does not redeem, but makes man a miscarried creature, a pointless being. Those who live like this very soon clash with others who want to live the same way. The inevitable consequence of this selfish concept of freedom is violence and the mutual destruction of freedom and life. On the contrary, 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.

To claim the right to abortion and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.

I'll leave readers with this quote: "I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born." - Ronald Reagan, quoted in New York Times, September 22, 1980.

Paul Kokoski