“Abortion is a complex question,” according to many pro-choice advocates.   If I had a quarter every time I’ve heard this I’d be a millionaire.  What surprises me about this statement is not that pro-choice people repeat this hackneyed phrase ad nauseum, but the fact that no one, even pro-life advocates, ever challenge this meaningless phrase.  What is so complex about abortion?  Either life begins at conception or it does not; either the unborn is a human or it’s a piece of tissue.  If life begins at conception and the unborn is a human being, then that life is a human life that deserves all the rights that you and I have.  The comment that abortion is a complex issue is a non-issue; it’s just plain false and misleading. 

I know, I know, the pro-choice advocates will say that a life the size of a period on this page is not the same as a baby that is one day-old.  Let’s analyze this line of reasoning.  Since when did size determine the worth of your life?  Would you say that Shaquille O’Neill’s life, at 7 feet tall, is worth more than, say a little newborn baby at 20 inches?  Is that little baby less human than, say a two year-old? Size is not the issue, the unborn is the issue. 

Scott Klusendorf has written a brilliant little book called Pro-Life 101:  A Step-by-step Guide to Making your Case Persuasively[1] where he makes the “SLED” argument (Size, Level of Development, Environment, Degree of Development).  Klusendorf makes the argument that none of these differences diminish the human dignity of any human life.  When it comes to level of development, what difference does it make?  A toddler is less developed than an adolescent, an adolescent less development than and adult.  If we decided to give human dignity by our size, then any one of us could have been killed at any moment in our life before adulthood.  Every one of us started as a singe cell zygote.  Klusendorf is a brilliant and eloquent spokesman for the pro-life cause and I highly recommend him as a speaker at a pro-life function.  

Whenever man or governments decide when a person gets rights, be very worried because if man or government give rights, they can take them away just as easily as they gave them.  Human dignity is not a right obtained by man or any form of government, it is a God given right, period.  Human dignity starts at the beginning of life – conception.  How can killing a human life be complex?  It is not complex, but very, very simple.  If you don’t believe that life begins at conception, I suppose you could make an argument, but if it does not begin at conception when does it begin?  It would have to be determined by man or government.  But how would you determine when it would be?  It would have to be a subjective determination.   Princeton University, Bioethics Professor, Peter Singer, says that you should have about 28 days to determine if a newborn should live or die.  Do you think this is a reasonable position? How so? 

Fortunately, we do know when life begins; we know it by science and by what our Church teaches.  It is no longer an opinion.  Science has determined that human life begins at conception.  In my previous posts on this blog I’ve listed countless links where you can check the documentation of this fact.  You will not find any credible person who will argue that science has not established this fact.  Just the other day Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Majority Leader of the United States Senate, made a flat out stupid comment that the Roman Catholic Church has not been able to establish when life begins.  This lie was quickly pointed out by some U.S. Bishops, such as the Bishop of Denver, Charles Chaput and the Bishops of New York and Washington DC. 

When Barack Obama was asked at the Saddleback Church Forum on August 17, 2008, about when a baby should get human rights, he answered that this question “was above his pay grade.”  He further stated that he is pro-choice, not because he likes abortion but because women make these decisions with difficulty.  Difficulty?  How can the killing of a human being be made with difficulty?  Is it difficult to decide to kill your two-year-old? This is just plain nonsense, irrational, self-delusional and just dishonest.

Yesterday’s presidential candidates forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California was a great description on how wide the divide between the two presidential candidates is.  As Charles Krauthammer, nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post commented, this was perhaps the best debate on presidential candidates he’d ever seen.  I agree.  The only fault I found with Rick Warren’s interview was that he understated the number of abortions at 40 million.  The actual number to date is 48.5 million according to the National Right to Life League.  The most stark and outstanding difference between the candidates, and there were many others, was how each defined the beginning of life.  McCain answered quickly and without hesitation – at conception.  Obama had a lot of trouble answering this questing and used his rhetorical skills to spin it.  He answered it this way: “whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.”  What? Above your pay grade?  What does that mean?  Here is a YouTube video of Senator Obama and Senator Clinton answering the same question in another of the presidential debates on CNN.  Notice how both danced around this question and failed to answer it, and instead made a completely different argument. 

This response can mean only one of two things:  Either you are dishonest, or you’re in denial of the plain truth.  You look at Mt. Everest and say it is not there.  If you ignore the Roman Catholic Church, if you’re Catholic, which believes that life begins at conception, and go only with science, the answer is as plain as when did the United States begin or when were you born.  Even pro-choice scientists cannot deny that life begins at conception.  This is common knowledge. For a public figure to state otherwise is not only untruthful, but it is simply ridiculous.  This is not a hard fact to discover.  Medical textbooks, top scientists in this filed such as Dr. Jerome Lejeune, "Father of Modern Genetics" and discoverer of the cause of Down's Syndrome, stated, "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence."   You will be hard pressed to find one scientist who does not agree that life beings at conception, yet Obama says that this is beyond him. 

 “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed,” according to Hitler’s chief strategist Joseph Goebbels.  The famous 1973 Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision stated the “we don’t know when life begins.”  The decision sentenced unborn babies from conception until birth to death, if the parent wished to kill it. This is akin to saying that if we want to demolish a Las Vegas hotel, and we don’t know if there are any people in the building, we can demolish it anyway.  What?  Where is the logic?  Well, we’ve discovered since 1973 that there were 48.5 million humans in that hotel that was just blown-up. 

Since 1973, the pro-abortion side has repeated this lie about when life begins so many times that many pro-abortion advocates repeat it mechanically, like a talking doll that speaks a phrase when you pull the string.   I ask all of you who are pro-abortion, or as you like to call yourselves “pro-choice” how do you know that life does not begin at conception?  What evidence do you have? 

The other stark difference between the candidates was their response to whom they would not have appointed as Supreme Court Justices.  Obama answered that he would not have appointed Justice Clarence Thomas or Roberts or Alito.  All strict constructionist judges and all pro-life.  John McCain said he would appoint judges just like Thomas, Roberts and Alito. 

As John McCain, likes to say, my friends, this could not be a more important reason not to vote for Obama.  A vote for Obama will mean condemning more innocent, unborn babies to death.  As it stands now, 48.5 million unborn babies have been killed as a result of a decision by our Supreme Court.  This means that those responsible for this decision are a party to this number of killings.  Obama would only appoint judges who would continue this policy and not appoint any judge who is pro-life. 

I often tell my wife that when my days are over on this earth and I face the final judgment, I need to have a good reason why I did what I did or why I did not do what I should have done.  When you face the final judgment what will you say you did to prevent the killing of an unborn child?  Will you plead that you had other concerns or will you say that you did everything you could?  This is my test for myself.  Voting for a pro-abortion person is the same as being the get-away driver who helps a person who just murdered a store clerk get away.  You are just as guilty.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. 

Father Frank Pavone says that America will not end abortion until it sees abortion.   Look at these images of abortion and tell me that these were not human babies.