• A Look at the Abortion Problem
    Awake!—1970 | October 22

    • Destroying Life?

      Is an induced abortion the destroying of life? That is what the doctor quoted above called it.

      The magazine Ob. Gyn. News, serving obstetricians and gynecologists, published, on May 15, 1970, the remarks of Dr. Frank J. Ayd of Baltimore regarding unwed mothers. He said:

      “If the trend continues and if abortion on demand is permitted and accepted by this group alone [unwed mothers], the medical profession may kill more Americans in utero than all our wars have killed. The curet will be mightier than the sword.”

      Thus, many doctors regard an abortion as the killing of life.

      Others may insist that it is not really taking life. Yet, from the moment of conception, what will happen to the fertilized cell in the mother’s womb if its growth is not interfered with? It will become a baby and eventually an adult human. That is why Dr. Michael J. Halberstam of Washington, D.C., said of the fetus:

      “Its future is unlimited. This fits so well with what we know of molecular biology​—the fact that the fetus received its entire genetic potential of RNA and DNA at conception. . . . There is no doubt that the fetus is ‘alive,’ though in a special way. . . . As a physician I know that it lives and as a human being I am in awe of it.”

      Would it be killing to put a baby to death one month after it was born? Would it be killing if the baby was one day old? One minute old? Any person who took the life of these babies could be charged with murder.

      But what real difference is there between a baby one minute old and one that is only a minute away from birth? Even if it is one day, or week, or month or more away from birth, it can still be born as a human.

      We cannot escape the fact that from the moment of conception, a new human life has begun. No amount of so-called ‘sophisticated’ argument can diminish the truth that it would normally become an adult if permitted to do so.

      Further, when a person agrees to an abortion, he or she is saying that one person has more of a right to life than another. But that is what Hitler said, and so murdered 6,000,000 Jews and millions of others. Society condemned him as a mad murderer. Yet, more than 30,000,000 lives are taken each year through abortions!