When a sperm and an egg cell unite, a most unique and wonderful miracle occurs: life begins. This tiny single cell, no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, now contains all the genetic materials needed to allow this most precious life to begin its journey through time. During the next nine months this single cell will travel on the most fantastic voyage imaginable until it makes its way, totally transformed, out of its mother’s womb into birth. The problem is that since abortion was legalized in America in all fifty states in 1973 over 60 million of these precious little ones, at various stages of development, never made it to birth. My contention is that life clearly begins at conception and the taking of these 60 million lives represents a massive genocide on a scale never before seen.
When prochoice advocates hear that we on the side of life are using the word genocide to describe the taking of the lives of 60 million babies in the womb in America, since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in all 50 states, they cry foul. While I admit that the word genocide is a strong word, abortion is at the very least a heinous crime against humanity. The website Abort73.com puts it this way:
“One of history’s most tragic lessons is that human beings have a remarkable capacity for abusing their fellow humans. When this abuse is severe enough, and moves beyond the mistreatment of a few individuals, we call it a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity generally refer to any large-scale atrocity committed against a group of innocent human beings. They are not crimes of passion, they are crimes of precision.”[1]
But I believe that abortion is more than just a crime against humanity—it’s genocide. Gregg Cunningham in his article, Why Abortion is Genocide, says:
“Webster’s New World Encyclopedia, Prentice Hall General Reference, 1992, defines genocide as ‘The deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable.’ That definition readily applies to abortion. The ‘national group’ is American ‘unwanted’ unborn children and they are now being destroyed at the rate of nearly 1 out of every 3 conceived. They are being terminated in an elaborate network of killing centers.”[2]
Since abortion is clearly deliberate, systematic and performed on a specific group I believe it fits the definition of genocide. Consider the following:
Intent to destroy: The pre-born are specifically targeted for dismemberment, decapitation, and disembowelment. They are killed in clinics built for their extermination.
Systematic: Abortion is legal through all 9 months of pregnancy. It is paid for through tax dollars. Medical professionals do the killing.
Identifiable group: The group targeted is the pre-born, discriminated against for their age and location and even for being “unwanted.”[3]
However, people who are prochoice again voice their strong protests against calling abortion in America genocide. They would argue that the intent of the original meaning of the word genocide was to only include the targeted killings of a cultural or ethic community. The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform points out that this isn’t necessarily true when they state:
“However, the intentional mass killing of a large group of people is a heinous crime regardless of the ethnicity of the people targeted. Many genocides of the modern era, including the Holocaust, the Bosnian Genocide and the Cambodian Genocide involved the killing of people of multiple races and creeds.”[4]
One final comment from pro-life leader Rabbi Yehuda Levin sums up the argument for genocide quite convincingly:
“Each form of genocide, whether Holocaust, lynching, or abortion, differs from all the others in the motives and methods of its perpetrators. But each form of genocide is identical to all the others in that it involves the systematic slaughter, as state-sanctioned ‘choice,’ of innocent, defenseless victims—while denying their ‘personhood.’”[5]
No matter from what angle we look at it abortion fits the definition of genocide.
Once again the website Abort73.com says it well:
“Genocide or not, abortion, like the Jewish Holocaust and like the mistreatment of native and African-Americans, is a phenomena which dehumanizes a group of human beings so as to justify their elimination.”[6]
Abortion is the ultimate crime against humanity because it targets our tiniest and most defenseless human beings. Katrina Jackson, who is a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, had this to say about African-Americans of today:
“The No. 1 genocide in the African-American community, and why we’re becoming a minority of minorities, is because most of our babies are dying in the womb from abortions.”[7]
Not only that, if the unborn are people (and everything we have seen confirms this), then abortion is not only comparable to past crimes against humanity, it is, by sheer volume, the greatest holocaust of all! Genocide may be a harsh word to use when talking about abortion in America but since 1973 over 60 million precious lives have been silenced forever. Just how will history judge this dark period of our nation’s existence only time will tell.
[1] Abort73.com website: Systematic Injustice. http://www.abort73.com/abortion/systematic_injustice/
[2] Gregg Cunningham, Why Abortion is Genocide, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform website: http://abortionno.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/whyabortionisgenocide.pdf
[3] Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform website: Lesson 9: Is Abortion Genocide? http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/training/classroom/genocide
[4] Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform website: Lesson 9: Is Abortion Genocide? http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/training/classroom/genocide
[5] Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform website: Lesson 9: Is Abortion Genocide? http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/training/classroom/genocide
[6] Abort73.com website: Systematic Injustice. http://www.abort73.com/abortion/systematic_injustice/
[7] LifeNews.com website: Black Democrat: Abortion is the Number One Genocide in the African-American Community. http://www.lifenews.com/2014/08/12/black-democrat-abortion-is-the-number-one-genocide-in-the-african-american-community/
What is sad about the abortion debate is that it’s unnecessary. As with so many government lies lately that are supported by mass media, the “abortion is legal” lie has been the most gruesome and evil of all. The following article will explain what I mean:
Abortion Is NOT Legal!
Herb Titus
The mainstream media tell us that the Supreme Court legalized abortion with its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The media also tell us that there is nothing we can do about it because Roe v. Wade is the “law of the land.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Abortion is not legal in America! Recognition of this fact is the first step for the pro-life movement in its campaign to turn back the murderous scourge on innocent babies. Indeed, heart disease (738,781 deaths per year) is not the number one cause of death in the United States – abortion is, at well over a million deaths per year.
Article VI of our nation’s founding document declares that “[t]his Constitution, and the laws of the United States.. .made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties…made…under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land.”
What is clearly missing from this Constitutional list of supreme laws is a court opinion. This was not an oversight. Our Constitution’s writers knew that a court opinion could never be law; much less the supreme law of the land. This is especially true if that court opinion contradicted the Constitution itself.
As can be plainly seen from the Constitutional text, a statute enacted by Congress is the supreme law of the land only if made “pursuant to” (in conformity with) the Constitution. If a statute passed by the people’s representatives is not law unless it conforms to the Constitution, then how can a court opinion decided by unelected judges be given a higher status?
When Chief Justice John Marshall established judicial review-the right of the court to review a statute to see if it conformed to the Constitution-he said that the written Constitution was just as binding on the courts as it was on Congress. Marshall, then, did not establish the supremacy of judges over the Constitution-but the supremacy of the Constitution over Congress, the President and the courts.
Our Founding Fathers resoundingly rejected the idea of judicial supremacy. They did not empower judges to usurp a power, rightfully belonging to the people and thereby become a law unto themselves. That is why they put the Constitution in writing-so that the original founding laws and principles would not be mistaken or forgotten. In this way they believed that the Constitution would become the fixed law of the land.
Just a little more than 100 years ago, the American people knew that Supreme Court opinions did not become the law for the whole country, but bound only the parties to the case. That is why Abraham Lincoln rejected the Supreme Court’s decision in the infamous Dred Scott case. Lincoln knew that even though the Court declared-in the name of the Constitution that black people had no rights that white people were bound to respect, that ruling was not the law of the land.
What has happened to America since the days of Lincoln?
Things began to change when Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ascended to the Supreme Court. He introduced the idea that law changed with changing times, and that it was the business of judges to make the necessary changes.
Holmes’s evolutionary philosophy of law soon transformed the Constitution from a document of fixed rules and principles to one reflecting the latest court pronouncements. In this way, the judges became the nation’s supreme lawmakers, displacing the Congress and legislatures on matters ranging from abortion to pornography.
But judges have no right to make law. Their job is to discover the law, state it and apply it. Their role is like that of an engineer who designs a bridge according to the discovered laws of the natural world, not according to “laws” that he has made up.
If an engineer should design a bridge contrary to natural law, there is no question that the government officials who employed that engineer would reject his design. So it should be with a court opinion. If it is contrary to the Constitution, then the president, the Congress and the fifty states’ governors and legislators should reject that opinion.
This is what their oath of office demands. The president takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” not Supreme Court opinions. Further, Article II, Section 3 states that the president is duty-bound to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Any court opinion that is contrary to the Constitution is, by definition, not law. Therefore, the president must not enforce it.
That was what President Lincoln did with the Dred Scott decision. He refused to enforce it as the law of the land.
That is what presidents today should do about Roe v. Wade. Pursuant to his Constitutional oath, the president should issue a proclamation declaring Roe v. Wade to be illegal, and declaring that the human fetus is a person entitled to the full protection of the right to life by the states.
At the state and local level, the people should insist that the laws that are still on the books be enforced against abortionists. In Virginia, for example, abortion is still a Class 4 felony. While other Virginia statutes have incorporated the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, those statutes are unconstitutional. They violate Article 1, Section 1 of the Virginia Bill of Rights which denies to the state legislature or any other civil authority any power to deprive the state’s “posterity” (the yet-to-be-born) of their “inherent” rights to “life, liberty, and property.”
In Virginia, then, pro-lifers do not have to change the state law to protect innocent life. They don’t have to look to the president or Congress for action. They don’t have to elect a pro-life governor or state attorney general. They can act now, petitioning their local Commonwealth’s Attorney to prosecute abortionists under the state law and defend the right to life of the preborn under the state Constitution. And if the Commonwealth’s Attorney chooses not to prosecute, then the people can vote him out of office and elect another who will do his prosecutorial duty consistent with his Constitutional oath.
A petition drive has already begun in Virginia. The governor and the attorney general have been petitioned to speak out, urging the Commonwealths’ Attorneys to prosecute the abortionists. While neither office has the authority to command such prosecutions, such a statement would have a profound moral impact. Some local prosecutors have also been petitioned to take action now.
As concerned citizens, it is our duty to petition the Commonwealth’s Attorneys to make decisions according to what the Constitution demands, and not according to what the Supreme Court decides. And it is our further duty to continue to seek justice until we receive it.
Excerpted from Abortion Is NOT Legal!