Better Choices

​There has been a lot of talk about the right to choose in the wake of the recent landmark Supreme Court decision regarding abortion. The right to choose has existed from the moment God created men and women. He made us all with free will, including choosing whether to follow him or not.
 
            “I call heaven and earth as witness today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.”  - Deuteronomy 30:19
 
While those who support abortion rights seek to obfuscate the moral aspect of their position with philosophical arguments of when life begins, whether a victim of rape/incest should be compelled to carry a child, or whether a child with profound birth defects should be brought into the world, the nature of the choice in question remains unchanged. It is a choice between life and death.
 
Over the past few years, we have been told to “trust the science.” What science tells us is that a unique human DNA code is created at the moment of conception. Perform a DNA test on the fetus removed from a woman’s womb and you will find that it is not part of her body. It is a new body within her body.
 
We can perhaps choose to decide when a human has rights, including the right to life, but we cannot choose to decide when a human is a human. Strip away all religious and philosophical arguments and you are left with the answer to when life begins. It begins with the creation of a new human genetic code.  Abortion is the destruction of that unique human being.
 
I grieve to see the reaction among women who lament the prospect of the loss of their ability to choose death. What has become of our society where so many of our sisters and daughters have come to believe that the only two paths they can follow after an unplanned pregnancy are to either surrender all the hopes and dreams they had for their future or sacrifice the life of the child growing in their womb?
 
I submit to you that women deserve better choices. While society should not promote the irresponsible personal decisions that lead to an unwanted pregnancy, it should not abandon those who stumble and fall. We are a society that believes in second chances for its convicted criminals. We re-elect politicians whose corruptions are exposed in scandals. We forgive the sins of our ministers and priests.
 
There is a middle ground to be found between celebrating those whose irresponsibility leads them to an unwanted pregnancy and shaming them into killing their child. We can divert all the resources that have been expended to end so many lives through abortion and direct them to helping mothers raise their children without sacrificing all their dreams. We can demand that men step up and properly support the women they impregnate and do so from the moment of conception.
 
But that does not mean that we fool ourselves and the women who find themselves in such circumstances into thinking that no sacrifice is necessary. There are consequences for the actions we all take. We can help each other to mitigate those consequences, but they cannot be entirely avoided. However, any sacrifice required in bringing a human life into the world is better than the sacrifice of ending a human life that the choice of abortion demands.