The Right to Life

The first of the "certain unalienable rights" endowed by our Creator listed in the Declaration of Independence is the right to life. According to our Founding Fathers life is a God-given right.

Yet, today the most explosive and divisive issue in our culture is about life and who has a right to it. One would think that in a society gone crazy about rights, human rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights, animal rights, environmental rights, that the right of a child to live in a woman's womb until birth would be automatic. But not so fast. The "right to choose," which is nothing less than the right to abort, has trumped all arguments. A woman's "right" to be promiscuous and not have to bear the burden of the consequences of her life style drives our pleasure mad culture.

This works for the men involved too. Free sex, no responsibility. This attitude was given an immeasurable boost when former President Clinton argued about his dalliances in the White House that it was "just sex." Sex is just a natural thing, it makes no difference who or when. Just go out and have a good time. His argument had the support of a willing liberal press and every characterless leftist in the country.

But it doesn't just stop with our country. Ever since Hillary Clinton spoke at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995, there has been a concerted effort by Democrats in America to export the "right" of abortion world wide. Joe Biden recently visited Kenya to promote the proposed new Kenyan constitution which will open the door for abortion on demand in this country. It basically is a crusade to empower women, but empower them to what?

Any society that does not maintain a positive birth rate will eventually be unable to sustain itself. Since Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in America and America's birth rate has dropped below the sustainable minimum. When the nation becomes top heavy with the elderly and the work force becomes too weak to care for them the only option will be bankruptcy or euthanasia. That's not far-fetched. A few years ago former Colorado governor, Dick Lamb, declared that old people had a responsibility to get out of the way. In other words, die. Legalizing physician assisted suicide is being debated in several states.

And where did this cycle of thinking start? With abortion. It was claimed by the defenders of "Jane Roe" that abortion had to be legalized in order to protect the life of the mother, and that legalization would actually lead to a decline in the total number of abortions. Instead, the rate of abortions grew from a few thousand every year to over 4.4 million per year, and there have been hundreds of botched abortions. It has also been discovered that "Jane Roe," whose real name is Norma McCorvey, was not even pregnant during the Roe vs. Wade legal battle, and that she is now a pro-life advocate.

In order to justify themselves pro-abortionists consistently throw out the archaic argument, "When does life start?" There are two answers to the question; one spiritual and one physical. The spiritual argument comes from Psalm 51:5: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Theologically all men are born sinners (Romans 5:12) so if sin began at conception, so did life. The physical argument is much simpler. From the moment the sperm and the egg unite to form a zygote, the single cell begins to divide and grow. Dead things do not reproduce and grow. The fact is, the baby is a living being from the moment of conception.

Some will argue "viability," the child's ability to live outside the womb. That's a smoke screen. Viability isn't the question with partial birth abortions. These are performed into the ninth month of pregnancy right up to the moment before the baby is born. It is a hideous form of torture and murder. Now the Senate is considering a woman for the Supreme Court who intentionally manipulated information in the 90's in order to get the Supreme Court to overturn a partial birth abortion ban. And the president who nominated her believes that a baby that survives an abortion attempt (and there have been many) should be killed anyway. What does this say about the integrity of the leaders of our country? They have none!

With the invention of ultrasound the "when does life start" argument is no longer even intelligent, as if it ever was. Ultrasound technology has advanced from blurry images in the early 80's to reasonably clear pictures today and what it has shown is that what is developing in the womb is very much alive.

When my wife, Lhey, became pregnant with our second child, we had an ultrasound done to confirm the pregnancy. We saw very clearly the egg and the yolk sac. At about the sixth week Lhey had some bleeding so we went to see her gynecologist and we had another ultrasound. This time the baby was 1.8 centimeters long, just a blob with a head beginning to form and a black spot that we could both see and hear, the beating heart. Three days later my wife had a massive bleeding in the middle of the night. We rushed her to the hospital where the on-call emergency doctor examined her and said, "The pregnancy is over."

Our hearts were broken. Our first son, Jonathan, wept almost uncontrollably. I couldn't hold back the tears either. Lhey was stronger than both of us at that moment. I went to check her into the hospital and when I came back the doctor said, "What we're going to do now is called a D and C procedure." I said, "Wait a minute. I thought the baby had miscarried. Do you mean to tell me the baby is still there?"

He said, "There is evidence of fetal material, but it can't survive." I repeated my question, "Is the baby still there?" He gave me the same answer, "There is evidence of fetal material, but it can't survive." I told him in no uncertain terms he wasn't doing anything else until we had an ultrasound.

We had to wait five hours for the gynecologist and the ultrasound technician to arrive, and during that time we prayed and wondered and tried to comfort ourselves. Finally the procedure was done and we saw the baby, about an inch long with little stubs for hands and feet beginning to appear, and the heart still beating. He was alive!

What happened was the placenta had attached low in the birth canal and had torn loose. It was barely hanging on. Lhey had to be on absolute bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. She had other bleeding spells along the way and spent nearly two months of the next six in the hospital. Because of her condition we were having monthly ultrasounds to check the baby's progress and a more beautiful thing you will never see. At only three months, after a minor bleeding spell, we watched the baby lying on his back, raise his right hand and begin moving it back and forth as if he were waving at us.

In the eighth month Lhey began bleeding again and the doctor decided she had gone far enough and suggested we schedule the birth by cesarean section for three days later. That night in the hospital she had another massive bleeding so they moved the birthdate up a day sooner and on December 13, 2007, Ethan Lance Patterson was born. The doctor said he had never seen a case like ours where the child had survived, and called him a miracle baby and Lhey a champion mother. And so they are.

Lhey would have met the criteria for an abortion from any "humanitarian" point of view. She was 44 years old, suffered several bleeding spells, was in severe pain and discomfort, and had to be on bed rest for the entire pregnancy, and the baby was hanging on by a thread. We even had a doctor who had misdiagnosed the situation recommending it. It would have been an easy decision for a pro-abortionist, but what we would have missed if we had thought along those terms. Today we have a beautiful, healthy child, who is a precious blessing to us. He is so much fun to have around.

Ethan had as much right to life as every man or woman ever conceived, and we are proud to have given him that right. I pity those, I say again, I pity those who are so selfish, cold-hearted and ignorant as to think the right to life does not extend to the life in the womb.