straight out of Lucifer's personal play-book.

My own pleading to the pro-life community is this:  There must be one common language, one common theme going forward, and it's short, sweet, and simple.  Here it is:  the child in the womb is a human person who has the right to live.  Period.  End of discussion.

Forget "fetus" and "embryo" and every other term now being used to dehumanize the child.  Those words have their legitimate place in ethical prenatal medicine, and that's fine.  But they are essentially useless at best, a liability at worst in the battle before us.  Our lexicon must be clear and united and unapologetic.  From now on that tiny preborn life can have only one name: child.  The child in the womb.  That's who we're talking about, and there is no other way we can afford to say it anymore.

If our elected officials have trouble talking about abortion, or about their pro-life convictions and proposals, then sit them down and teach them:  The child in the womb is a human person who has the right to live.  It's that simple.  Anyone who cannot communicate that clearly to the press or his constituents should sit down and be quiet.  We must stop stumbling over pebbles.  The truth is plain and quite easy to articulate.

It is the humanity of the child in the womb that we must defend and proclaim.  Humanity is not bestowed by women, but by God, the One who creates and establishes all life.  Personhood is not something any woman has the power to grant or deny.  Women have no magical or divine abilities regarding human life. 

A woman's feelings toward the child in the womb have nothing whatsoever to do with that child's humanity or personhood or rights.  It is ridiculous and desperately egotistical to assert that women have such extraordinary powers that they can originate life from lifelessness, and void life at their whim!

What women have been given is the privilege of being co-creators with God in bringing new human life into this world.  We are entrusted with the protection and care of the most vulnerable.  We are gifted with bodies that nurture and shelter that tiny, defenseless person as he/she grows and prepares for that first breath of air. 

But breathing air does not make the child a person.  (Nor is it what makes our author a person.)  Nor does speaking, or laughing, or crying, or walking, or writing, or singing.  GOD made the child a unique and unrepeatable person from the first moment of conception.  There is nothing any woman can do to undo what God has done, or to accomplish it herself merely by her will.

This deification of women is flat-out wicked.  As I said in a previous article, it's evident that Satan knows that the easiest and quickest way to destroy a society, a nation, is to corrupt women; to warp and pervert the thinking and the hearts of women.  Get that done, and everything else crumbles like a stale cookie. 

First women turned on their own bodies and their own babies.  Babies became the enemy, and fertility became a disease.  Rather than the instinct to protect and defend, women began cultivating a fear of their own children, and a loathing toward motherhood.

Now, the latest tactic of the father of lies is to persuade women that they are gods themselves.  Not merely cooperating with God in creating new human life, but the ones who decide when and whether that life is life at all.  They are the beginning and the end, and everything is subject to their wants and wishes.  They hold in their hands the power of life and death, and they answer to no one.

BadKitties asks, "Who are you to force an unwilling woman to confer 'Personhood' on something in her womb?"  "How do you possibly justify stripping women of their humanity, reducing them to nothing more than a vessel?"

Who is any woman or man to deny the humanity of the child in the womb?  How can anyone possibly justify stripping the child in the womb of his/her humanity, reducing them to nothing more than a clump of cells?  Who are YOU to decide who is a person and who is not a person based only on YOUR feelings and wants?

"You should be ashamed," she goes on ironically, "Life is for the living.  To loudly proclaim that a fetus is entitled to all the rights of breathing, laughing, huggable people is unconscionable."

Humanness is an objective fact, not a subjective quality depending upon the desires of someone else. 

Our reply to BadKitties' letter is simple:  The child in the womb is a human person who has the right to live.  This does not negate the personhood or value or humanity of the mother in any way.  It merely defends the humanity of the child against the chilling blasphemy that pro-abortionists are now preaching.

-----

Jennifer Hartline is a grateful Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling mother of three children.  She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.  Visit her online at Wake Up, Deborah!
- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: personhood, abortion, fetus, child, choice, Life, Jennifer Hartline

NEWSLETTERS »

E-mail:    Select Gender Male Female    Zip Code: (ex. 90001)

Today's Headlines Sign up for a roundup of the day's top stories. 5 days / week. See Sample