The Genocide Continues

I stumbled across a silly fluff piece of an article today which I thought would provide a little entertainment. It was about things you shouldn’t say to a pregnant woman. (You can read the article here, if you are worried about pregnancy-related faux pas: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/12-things-never-pregnant-person-190600930.html). I thought that might be useful, as a couple of my friends are pregnant now, so I started reading. Then I came across a statement that was short, sweet, to the point and funny. The statement was as follows: “Pregnant people already feel large, because they’re actually two people”. I started moving on to the next sentence only to stop abruptly. I stopped because, suddenly, I realized how unintentionally and remarkably controversial the statement was. Two people. I wondered how many readers chuckled, accepted the statement without question and moved on. There are two people in there. I wondered how many of those people are pro-choice. 

                I’m often stopped in my tracks by how paradoxical we can be when it comes to deciding between two very different terms that I believe mean the same thing: fetus and baby. One term is impersonal, almost alien. It brings to mind a mesh of cells and half-formed non-working organs. It’s parasitical and unwelcome. As a society, we are okay with killing fetuses. The other term is deeply intimate and maternal. Baby. We coo over them, hold them gently, sometimes roll our eyes at a screaming one. Baby, above all, is alive, loud, kicking, sweet-smelling- human. As a society, we are not okay with killing babies.

                You see this dichotomy everywhere. A doctor screws up a delivery and the baby is killed. Society reacts: “horrible, terrible doctor, who could kill a child!?” An abusive husband hits his pregnant wife, causing a miscarriage: society reacts: “horrible, terrible husband, who could kill a child!?” A psychotic killer murders a pregnant wife who longed for her child and spent years trying to get pregnant. Society reacts: “horrible, terrible human being, who could kill a child!?” Conversely, a woman decides she wants to terminate her pregnancy. It doesn’t matter the reason: perhaps she was raped, perhaps she is underage, perhaps she already has children and can’t afford one more, or perhaps she’s simply not quite ready for children. When someone questions her right to do so, society shouts, “horrible, terrible timing, who can live with a child?”. We are society and the plain truth is we are completely horrified by the death of babies and we are completely accepting of the death of fetuses. 

                Not seeing the connection yet? Okay. I’ll play the Devil’s advocate for a moment and switch up one of my examples. What if the murdered woman didn’t long for her child after all? What if the child was a mistake? What if she was on her way to an abortion clinic when the psychotic killer murdered her? If the murderer was caught and the case went to trial, what sort of effect would it have on the man’s sentencing? How should the jury respond when they hear the woman was on her way to have an abortion? The jury room would be a hot mess that day. ‘Sure, the lady was going to get an abortion, but there is something heinous about murdering a pregnant woman’. If found guilty, how many years will the judge sentence him? How many people is this man guilty of killing?

                The fact of the matter is, the real question within the “fetus or baby” debate is: “who is human?”  Who is protected by human rights and who is not? Whenever I have a conversation with a pro-choice individual, I always ask them if they personally okay with abortion. Everyone I have ever spoken with or overheard has always said sometime to the effect of: “Well, personally, I don’t know if I would do it. But, I do think we should let the woman have the choice”. This always throws me for a loop because it shows something truly bizarre about our culture: we are comfortable letting someone decide who is human and who isn’t. Think about that for a moment. Think of all the world atrocities from ancient history to current daily life that have occurred when someone in power pointed to a smaller group and says, “you there: you aren’t human. You are less than. You are vile and unwanted here”. Think of the millions of murders, the enslavement, the rapes, the injustices that have happened from the beginning of time until now. Think of the genocide! Hitler was able to kill millions during the Holocaust (Jews, Romani, Soviet prisoners, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, resistance) because he had persuaded the people of Germany that those people were the cause of their problems. He made them less than human. He declared the Arian race the most advanced in the world and murdered those who didn’t reach his criterion. The Khmer Rouge killed between 1.7 to 2.5 million people during the Cambodian Civil War from 1970 to 1975. Between 500,000 to 1 million ethnic Tutsis people were murdered in the Rwandan Genocide only twenty years ago! These are only three examples out of all of history! This is what happens when people in power decide who is human, and who is less than. As a species, we prove this over and over, with no different results. In arguments separate from that of the abortion debate, we wholeheartedly agree that people choosing who is human and who isn’t is unacceptable. We all agree killing other human beings is bad. But then we don’t bridge the gap. We willingly give the right to choose if someone (a fetus/ a baby) is human to it’s/his/her mother. We have given the person in power the LEGAL RIGHT to decide if the person dependent on her is human or not.

               

             I'm not going to go through the physical evidence that shows that fetuses are, in fact, babies. There's tons of evidence everywhere. If you have even a scant amount of time, just a few minutes of research will show how soon heartbeats begin, when eyelashes are formed, when dreams begin to happen. I just want to point out that the only real difference between a fetus and a baby seems to be location: if the child is within it's mother, it's a fetus, and if the child is outside the mother, it's a baby. I'm just going to give you this fact:  in the U.S. alone, 1.2 million fetuses/babies are aborted each year. And we are okay with that. This just proves to me that humankind is just as fallen and depraved as it ever was. The genocide still continues, whether we call it that or not. Whether or not you call them "fetuses" or "babies", I hope you give this some thought.