Posted on 01/24/2007 10:29:08 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
Warning: The following commentary includes graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for children or sensitive readers.
Undoubtedly many of the great evils of our times have been committed because the cries of the victims were not heard—not heard by those who sat by, comfortably ignorant of the horrors around them. In early nineteenth-century England, few citizens had any real understanding that the lump of sugar they dropped in their afternoon tea was made at the high price of human bondage. The screams of men and women branded or whipped on West Indies sugar plantations were not heard in the fashionable parlors of England. Not until, that is, the great Christian statesman William Wilberforce launched his crusade against the slave trade.
Today, some two hundred years later, there are victims whose agony our ears will never hear. These are the unborn victims of abortion.
While the unborn do not have a voice to scream, science tells us that by twenty weeks a child in the womb is capable of feeling pain. Dr. Sunny Anand, director of the Pain Neurobiology Laboratory at Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, testified before Congress and said: “The pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children . . . the highest density of pain receptors per square inch of skin in human development occurs in utero from twenty to thirty weeks gestation.” Sobering testimony.
To make matters worse, the biological mechanisms that inhibit the experience of pain do not begin to develop until weeks thirty to thirty-two.
Yet ironically, an unborn child has less legal protection from feeling pain than commercial livestock. In a slaughterhouse, a method of slaughter is deemed legally humane only if, as the hundred-year-old law states, “all animals are rendered insensible to pain . . . ” By contrast, D&E abortions, performed as late as twenty-four weeks, involve the dismemberment of the unborn child by a pair of sharp metal forceps. Instillation methods of abortion replace up to one cup of amniotic fluid with concentrated salt solution, which the unborn child inhales as the salt burns his or her skin. The child lives in this condition up to an hour.
These things are uncomfortable to hear and to speak about. That is precisely the point. We should not be comfortable in a society where such things exist and where we have the power to influence change. The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act is scheduled to be re-introduced into this Congress. This legislation would require that women seeking abortions are fully informed of the pain that their unborn baby feels when he or she is aborted twenty weeks or more after fertilization. If that knowledge does not deter the mother in what has come to be reduced to a mere “choice,” she must be offered the opportunity to give the unborn child drugs to ease his or her pain.
Pro-abortion advocates dreadfully fear this legislation. It brings to light the difficult questions they do not want to confront, like why livestock have more rights than an unborn child. Questions like these, like the cries of victims, are hard to forget once they have shaken us from the comfort of our parlor chairs.
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It really is heartbraking ... it reduces me to tears.
Mr. S. You and I both know that people just don't want to be faced with the truth. That's why they get all freaked out when people show pictures of aborted fetuses on signs. I have mixed feelings about that but that's another topic.
We had a gal talk in our church years ago - the woman who was a nurse and saw the fetus "screaming" during. That story changed my life as much as anything. I was horrified. It is a wretched, wretched business and a big moneymaker for many.
Note how the left is all worried, really concerned about the pain felt by a criminal when he is executed.
Note how the left tried to make us think that the poor woman Terri Schiavo who they let starve and dehydrate to death was in a wonderful, peaceful, euphoric state.
Note how the left is trying to suppress any information about how a baby can feel pain.
Ping
Disgusting! Any person who would perform this is nothing short of evil.
Excellent. Thanks for posting.
I respectfully request that each of you read this commentary by Mark Earley (especially paragraph 5) and explain to me again why I'm a hypocrite for caring about this issue.
We were truly amazed at the show he put on for us. He was aware of the intrusion, located it precisely, and examined it with his hand. I don't know how to reconcile this with a newborn's inability to find its feet with its hands, but his actions were very purposeful and precise. Hardly just a "lump of tissue".
This little fellow is now nearly 14, and making plans for high school next year. I can't imagine life without him.
As upsetting as this is, it really should be required reading for any woman contemplating abortion and ALL senators and congressmen.
We're going to need it. I know what Jefferson meant when he said "I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just."
Not trying to start a fight, but you need to read this.
okay.....? If you want me to defend 20+ week abortions, I can't really help you on that.
Severe preemies are acutely sensitive to tactile stimulation, as in very painful to even be touched in motion if removed from the water world of their comfort at 24 weeks from conception. Ask any nurse who works a Neonatal intensive care unit ... but there are freepers posting every day who will deny these little ones are even human beings prior to being born. Disgusting doltish servants to evil ...
Excellent idea. It would also make a hack of a documentary, some young pro-lifer going through Capitol Hill Michael Moore style, asking Congresscritters to read this and respond. He or she would get the door slammed in their face by almost all liberals, and those libs who did read it would be tap dancing like crazy afterward. To make it bi-partisan, the pro-lifer could ask everybody--even the pro-life pols who were mightily disturbed--why tax dollars go to an organization (Planned Parenthood) that commits such acts.
I fail to understand why instead of abortion being as widely available as Slurpees in a 7-11, that abortion be restricted to cases of rape, incest, the mother's life at medical risk from pregnancy, and if a woman decides she doesn't want to be a mother, so be it: she carries the child to 9 months, she is given a general anesthetic, the child is delivered by C-section, the child is never seen by her, and is placed for adoption with loving parents who WANT that child, will CARE for that child, and the biological bearer of that infant never has to see her offspring, she heals up, goes on about her business, secure in the fact that the unwanted child she carried is with a loving home that will raise that child, Lord willing, to adulthood, and everybody (including the child) comes out a winner.
What could be more reasonable than that?
hack=heck
Every person who says we must hold the line on Roe vs. Wade is defending this. Everyone who would fight it if we tried to pass a law restricting abortion to the first trimester is defending this. Every...single...one.
My wife did a neonatal rotation during her studies to become an RN, and she remarked on their sensitivity.
"God have mercy upon us".
...make that "them". I'm not taking the heat for what these liberal monsters do.
Sure as heck would be better than what we've got now.
Are you saying you'd be okay with a law that left abortion legal in the first trimester?
Yep Mr. S, the relevent question to these people is: Why do you even think an animal is more important than a human being or even of equal importance of a human. The idiocy of comparing animals in a slaughter house to a human baby shows the utter stupidty and cruelty and utter disregard for human life many people disply today.
Because somewhere along the line, society began to paint adoption as a worse option than abortion. And let's fact it- the most attactive part of abortion is that you walk in the client, have the procedure, walk out, problem solved. No one has to know about your adulturous affair or that your good girl daughter got knocked up, or about the boyfriend that twice your age. It is simply the easy way out of getting in trouble. Adoption, meanwhile, requires actual sacrifice, and many are unwilling to do so.
BTW, Roe vs. Wade ruled that abortion was only legal in the first trimester and that states could have any restrictions they wanted for the second and third, but Doe vs. Bolton introduced the "health exemption" and blew that to smithereens.
I am debating whether or not to respond to calex59, 'cause I know if I do I am going to put aside my work and not stop for 2 hours.
We now have the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi who voted against a bill last month to lessen the pain felt by the unborn child during an abortion. This is the same Pelosi who want to "help" all the children. What a hypocrite. It is just disgusting what the American people are tolerating from their politicians.
Very, very true.
The abortion issue would disappear if the folks claiming to be Christians would merely acknowledge that abortion kills a being with a human spirit, the thing given by God and God only. But we must know there are millions of cinos and pretend christians populating AMerica ... there's an entire political party nearly filled to the limit with same.
PPOA runs a DVD non-stop in it's waiting rooms to ease the "patients" mind while waiting to kill her baby ,, they use the Ramones "I wanna be sedated" during the part where they are presenting themselves as saviours to the distraught woman... 20 minutes later "problem solved" and the patient is smiling in the recovery room...
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There is a very strong anesthetic (versed; sedative-hypnotic) used quite often which creates an amnesia effect, so that not only does the woman have pain blockage, she can lose a significant period (sometimes days) of memories associated with the killing episode.
Abortion does not make pregnant women un-pregnant; abortion just makes them mothers of dead babies.
Got a source on that?
Then ignore him and respond to me; I'm the one who asked the question. Read the article and tell me why exactly I'm a hypocrite for caring. Ya wanna paint with a broad brush, ya oughtta back your words up.
I'm curious, why the C-section? It's quite a bit more dangerous than a vaginal birth. Not only that, but complications are more myriad and more likely from a c-section as well. Both of those in addition to the fact that c-sections are disfiguring and vaginal births aren't.
Hello Mr. Silverback.
You are certainly entitled to care about it (abortion), and thanks for writing.
My responses are as follows:
1) If women have general property rights too, meaning property rights to their own bodies, do they not have a say or any rights to avoid the risks of pregnancy, which DO exist.
2) Many pro-lifers are avid hand gun owners - and users. They wouldn't hesitate to use the gun on someone, a HUMAN, if they faced a home invasion robbery. That is “taking a life,” isn’t it. Since a fetus IS an unintended (UNWANTED) intruder (if the birth control you follow fails), a fetus represents an "intruder" in the body of a woman, in that case. If you allow that a woman is the landlord of her own body, why not let her as the owner, protect her own biological resources, at least in the first trimester?
3) I know you are going to claim that a home-invasion robber is not the same as a fetus, so therefore you ARE entitled to exercise your 2nd amendment rights against a home invader. The fetus (unborn child) is in fact an "innocent" victim in your opinion, and therefore -- there is no parity between an abortion and gun-involved self-defense. That is the usual response I get. I disagree with that assumption -- a person who is robbing you may not be “evil” or intending malice. He may simply be in a desperate state, due to extreme sudden poverty due to a natural disaster such as hurricane, and is just searching for food. Where is your Christian charity toward a brother in need? It is not very Christian of you to shoot him, if he is not acting out of malice, but is in fact an innocent victim of a severe natural disaster, such as bad weather. But we protect ourselves anyway, don't we. We are all self-preserving, we all exercise some self-defensive measures. We put locks on our doors, we use car keys, we password protect our accounts, we use birth control, and we give some - BUT NOT ALL – of our income or wealth to charity.
4) As to "Which ranks more highly, humans or animals?" It depends on the human. I would defend myself against animals and humans. I don't go around killing animals, or humans, unless attacked. Which has more value? Obviously, it depends on the human. If someone was robbing or attempting to mutilate my horses, I would "have at" them, and protect my property (the animals).
I happen to be pro-2nd amendment, pro-choice (abortion), and pro-death penalty. I am also a vegetarian, but would kill rats in my attic, if they were interfering with my property rights & private property (eating the wiring & destroying the AC system). If I were starving, it would be a tough call. I would not eat my own pets, but I’d certainly eat insects and fish, stuff like that.
I hope this helps, - take care,
4L
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