After reading Sarah Schwab's article headlined "Women left out of 'pro-life' discussion" (Nov. 18), I thought that I would simply ignore another senseless attack on the pro-life side of the abortion debate. However, I found that my conscience was encouraging me to respond. After all, the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing.
What I thought to be most preposterous about the article was the belief that people who are "pro-life" only care about unborn children and then believe that life is to be carelessly thrown away. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The vast majority of pro-life supporters believe in the protection of all life. The argument that children should be murdered because the human race cares nothing about the sanctity of life is pathetic.
First of all, her argument that people "simply accept war" is far from the truth. If you really study the reasons for the wars we have been involved in, we have fought to make life safer and bring freedom to people the world over. Often the wars we fought brought regimes to an end that were violating the sanctity of life. The same can be said of the argument that people simply accept "grinding poverty," (the U.S. spends $1 trillion annually on welfare programs) "famine," (how many international and U.S.-based organizations are there to end world famine? Dozens) epidemics, (we have an entire agency - the Center for Disease Control). Apparently, all of this effort amounts to a shrug so we should murder babies if it makes it more convenient for our lives to do so.
Of course, one of my favorite parts of the article is the example of the woman in Ireland who died because she was not allowed an abortion. I do not know the facts of the case, so I will refrain from commenting. However, I do have a couple of points to make on the matter. First, in a world of 8 billion people, it is easy to find one example that supports any argument no matter how morally invalid or socially harmful. Second, let's examine for a moment the end result of Ms. Schwab's line of thinking in this case. The baby still had a heartbeat, but the doctors did not believe they could save the baby so they should have just killed the baby to save the mother.
Now let's say for a moment that an individual needs a heart transplant in order to live. Should we comb through the nation's nursing homes to find Alzheimer's patients (doctor cannot save them at this point), kill them, and give their still-functioning hearts and livers to those who immediately need them?
As a Catholic pro-life believer, I do believe in the sanctity of life. Whether it is a helpless unborn child, a middle-aged adult suffering from ALS, or an elderly person in the late stages of cancer, these individuals, almost exclusively without a voice, need our protection. The minute we accept that life can be taken for our convenience, we stop being human. We become monsters.
Norma St. George is a Fredonia resident.
