Reply to the Letter Of The Day 8 Aug, 2019: The Right To Choose A Basic Human Right, Kimon Blackwood
THE EDITOR: Dear sir:
One of my friends was killed recently in a car crash. We hadn’t seen each other in years, but we had a real bond and I thankfully got the chance to see her 3 times in the 10 days before her death. Whether that was destiny or God’s will (I choose to believe the latter), I’m not sure.
I am sure that I was sad. I am sad and angry, and confused.
All of us have had to face death in some way – whether an elderly relative has died a slow and painful death due to illness or whether a loved one was snatched away quickly by a random act of violence, self-harm, or a simple accident. The circumstances are different, but it is always sad.
I was pondering, “Why is it sad when someone dies?”
I am sad because I’ve lost my friend, only in her mid-20’s – we’ve shared emotions, secrets, and memories, good, and bad times together. But if I were talking about 90-year old granny or 45-year-old Joe, would it cease to be sad?
Death is always sad regardless of a person’s age; in fact, the younger a person is when they die, the sadder it is, partially because of all the unrealized potential they die with.
Why are we sad when babies die, or a mother miscarried, but not sad when we talk about abortion?
Didn’t a baby still die?
The fact is, there are scores of women dying to conceive but are unable to, or they have conceived, but their babies die before reaching full term. It isn’t a beautiful expression of free will or personal choice. It is experienced as a loss – a death.
Death is sad because life matters. No matter where that life exists – in the womb or outside of it. Whether 5 years old or 105, we all know life inherently has value.
Most people are sad at funerals because they recognize the loss of life, is a time for mourning and sadness, not a celebration that the person died. When we think about abortion, we should pause to consider that a real human baby, who without any interference by the hands of the abortionist, may have grown and developed into a girl, a student, a woman, a wife, a mother, a doctor…
In the pro-abortion/pro-life equation, there are many factors to consider, but let us please remember to consider the baby as a person endowed with the right to life, a separate entity, apart from her probably unprepared, scared, lonely, less-fortunate mother who wants to exercise her “basic human rights”.
Brittanie Clacken, medical doctor and member of Love March Movement