It's Just Tissue

I wrote a letter to the editorial pages of the StarTribune a few months ago which was critical of our nation's approach to abortion. It didn't make the paper but it did get printed in the online edition where someone from Human Life Alliance found it and responded to me. Since then I've been receiving their mailings. I was looking through their latest newsletter and came across this...

It's Just Tissue

Consider the following facts: Simple tissue does not have a beating heart, brain waves, fingerprints, and unique DNA. A woman can carry a baby with a different gender or blood type from her own. After the moment of fertilization, nothing new is added to the baby except oxygen, nutrition and time. The only differences between a newborn and a preborn baby are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. All of these facts confirm the reality that you are a person worthy of protection from the moment of fertilization.

I'm reading on a little further in the newsletter and I find this...

"I'm personally opposed, but I can't tell others what to do"

What if U.S. citizens had been willing to accept this justification for tolerating slavery? Our forefathers took away the "rights" of slave owners in order to give freedom and respect to African American people. Our youngest and most vulnerable are still slaves to the life and death decisions of others.

Now I remember what the opinion piece was that I wrote...I was talking about slavery and how it was a person's right to choose whether or not they would be a slave owner. The slaves, after all, were 2nd class citizens not worthy of the protections afforded you and me just as an unborn child is not worthy of those same protections. I was drawing comparisons between slave owners then and pro-choice people today and hoping that someday as a nation we will be able to look back on these days and realize the error of our ways the way we realize the error of our ways those many years ago with respect to slavery.

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