By Tom Hawkes
While we are called to pray for the leaders of our country, we are not required to agree with them. Let me point out the error of our President’s thinking on abortion in light of his statement yesterday, on the sad anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.
I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.
And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.
Here are just the more glaring logical problems with this statement, which at first blush might seem to be very pro-woman and pro-freedom.
1. “ Protects women’s health.” 500,000 infant women will be killed in the womb this coming year, for them Roe v. Wade is simply a death sentence, not healthy at all. Further, having an abortion is far worse for a woman’s health than having a baby. The long term risks of an abortion are high. The certain spiritual and emotional damage of murdering your own child are even deeper and darker. All of the 1.2 million women who will have an abortion, whether they think it is murder or not, are actually guilty before God of murder, guilty in reality of murder. (The unjust taking of human life.) The weight of committing murder will weigh on a woman’s soul, heart and mind and do more damage to her health. The studies are there to back up this reality. But the simple truth is ignored by our culture of death.
2. “Protects women’s reproductive freedom.” Women are free in this country to decide to get pregnant or not, there is nearly total access to contraception, additionally they can choose whether to engage in sexual activity or not. They are free to reproduce or not, without having “freedom” to kill the life they have already reproduced.
3. “Private family matters.” Currently there is a high publicity trial going on over a “private family matter.” An American Muslim killed his daughter in an “honor killing.” In some parts of Islam, apparently, you can kill your children at any stage of their life if they dishonor the family. But US law does not agree that this is private, so the man is on trial for murder. Were a mother to drown her 1 month old would our President concur that this was a “private family matter?” There is no difference in the humanity of a child between one month before he is born and one month after. From conception a human baby is a human baby. The taking of innocent human life is not a private family matter, but a matter of the state protection of the life of all. Our government’s failure to protect the unborn is one of the great, perhaps, the greatest, failure of leadership in our age.
4. “Constitutional rights.” Read the Constitution, there is nothing there that grants the “right” to kill your unborn children. Nothing.
5. “Daughters have the same rights…as our sons.” They do, every one of them is the same already, apart from abortion. They both have the freedom to chose to marry or not, freedom to choose to engage in sexual activity or not, freedom to use contraception or not, all apart from abortion. Actually abortion laws grant women far more power than men have in this matter. Granting women the sole and sovereign “right” to kill an unborn child, actually disenfranchises the father, giving the woman absolute power over the man’s offspring. Mr. President, what about equal rights for our sons who are fathers?
