March 29, 2024

By JESSICA MARTIN

The overwhelming grief that comes with the loss of a life often feels unbearable. But when the death could have been prevented is when it truly becomes a tragedy.
The majority of ethical debates have a grey area, but for me, abortion is black and white. About 100,000 abortions happen in Canada every year according to the Abortion in Canada website. That’s 100,000 innocent lives intentionally being snatched and destroyed yearly, and that’s only in our country.
Luisa D’Amato wrote an article in the Waterloo Region Record on Dec. 23 about Kitchener Centre MP Stephen Woodworth and his desire for Parliament to have a discussion on the human rights of the unborn child. Woodworth said existing law does not consider a child to be a person until he or she has made it fully out of the mother and into the world, and until then, there is no protection for the child under the Criminal Code.
D’Amato’s article sparked interest among readers and flooded The Record’s webpage with comments and debates on the ethical dilemmas surrounding the issue.
As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing to debate.
Eighteen days after conception the baby has a heartbeat. Six weeks following the conception, brain waves can be measured. Eight weeks after conception, the baby’s stomach, liver and kidneys are functioning and fingerprints have formed. Nine weeks into a pregnancy, the baby can feel pain.
According to Abortion in Canada, the latest results showed 90 per cent of all abortions reported in Canada in 2004 happened between six and 14 weeks of the pregnancy.
It’s not just a bundle of cells that you’re killing. It’s the beginning of a human life that you’re ending. The argument is often made that in cases of rape, abortion is completely understandable.
It’s a sensitive issue and it’s not that I don’t have sympathy for the victims, but is the baby not also a victim? Is taking the hope away from the unborn child logical and fair?
Adoption agencies are always an option, and there are always loving people who can’t have kids looking for a child to raise, nurture and love like their own.
As far as I’m concerned, Woodworth brings up a good point.
“Now that science has, to put it mildly, improved, we might be able to do better for that unborn child than apply the crude distinction of granting it human status only once it is outside the mother,” he told D’Amato.
Woodworth is right and the distinction should be dismissed: a life is a life, in or out of the womb.