Value of Life: Reflective Essay

What is the worth of a soul? Can one place a numerical value on the infinite potential of a consciousness?

I learned the beautiful, yet understated value of life in the sixth grade. My newborn sister was pushed out of a shopping cart and onto the cold, unforgiving concrete floor of the local grocery store. Her fractured skull sent cracks of panic that ran like an earthquake from my anxious mother to my working father to my home to my heart to my soul. For the first time, a life I cared about, a life that was fastened to mine by the strings of shared blood, was teetering on a terrifying ledge.

Through doctors and miracles, her life was saved, but my life was forever altered. Gratitude for something so innate shaped my very view of the life that filled my little sister’s lungs, and consequently, the life that fills your lungs, and his lungs, and her lungs, and my lungs.

“The concept of intrinsic value has been characterized… in terms of the value that something has “in its own right.” William Frankena, an American philosopher, made a list of things with intrinsic value. On it, he included consciousness, health, strength, pleasures, truth, understanding, wisdom; beauty, love, friendship, cooperation; self-expression; freedom; peace, and security. But at the core of intrinsic values, he placed LIFE. Life professes to be worth something. Life is defined as “the existence of an individual living organism” and yells “I am worth something.”

And yet, (pause) snuffing out the worth of life seems to be the desired outcome of society. As a person, as a teen, and as a woman, I am constantly bombarded with messages that tell me I will never be enough. Messages that tell me life is worthless.

This kind of thinking has run rampant in our society. There are many who have and who will continue to push this idea that life isn’t worth anything. Our history books are maimed by the actions of those who could not see the worth of human life.

It took 6 years for the Nazi regime to wipe out 6 million people.

It took 100 days for 800,000 people to lose their lives in the Rwanda genocide.

It took 102 minutes for the twin towers to fall and 3,000 to be killed.

It took 38 minutes for 500 people to be brutally massacred in the Anglo-Zanzibar War

It took 10 minutes for the Las Vegas shooting to end in 58 deaths.

It took 1 minute for the sadistic Orlando shooter to slaughter 49 people

Yet one criminal steals an estimated 41.9 million lives per year, 125,000 lives per day, 5,208 lives an hour, 87 lives per minute, and 1.5 lives per second. That means that less than every single second a soul, a life, a consciousness, is lost to this perpetrator. The perpetrator? The socially accepted, and often encouraged: Abortion.

I am hesitant to use the word pro-choice when discussing this topic. Those words are profoundly misleading. If our attention is on the “right to choose,” we can be distracted from the subject at hand. The term pro-abortion tells us that someone thinks abortion is okay. This way, we can focus on the actual subject of the matter, which is abortion, instead of the right to choose. All of us are pro-choice when it comes to where people live, what kind of car they drive, what food they eat, and thousands of personal preferences. We’re also pro-choice in matters of religion, politics, and lifestyle, even when people choose beliefs and behavior we don’t like. Indeed, I am pro-choice about the great majority of things in life, even when I personally don’t agree with someone’s choice. I have no interest in dictating their choices, nor do I want them dictating mine. I do draw the line for someone’s right to choose when it comes to deliberate murder.

Many are taken aback when I blatantly ignore political correctness and state the facts many cannot and will not face. Murder is most commonly defined as “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” If the child growing inside of the womb is a human then the deliberate killing of this child falls under the definition of murder. Bystanders to the crime of abortion justify their inaction with ideals such as “while it may be human, it’s not a person.” But any embryological textbook would inform you of the biological reality that the human organism that emerges from fertilization is a member of the human species. From a biological standpoint, this is an inarguable fact. The embryo is human, it shares our DNA.

If the embryo is in fact a human being, I identify then, one main factor that separates myself and those who view this issue very differently than I do, what qualities are required for one to claim life worth.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court defined viability—and therefore right to life—as the point when the unborn is “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.” The critical issue as to when this point is reached is [specified] as the development of the child’s lungs. But why make life dependent on viability? Viability can differ depending on the available technology in the hospital the baby is born in. A baby born at 22 weeks in the best hospital in New York will have a much better chance of living than a child born at the same time in a hospital in the slums based mainly on the technology available in that hospital. Thus, part of this “viability” spoken of in Roe v. Wade is purely circumstantial. Claiming that “life” begins at viability is a very shaky argument because viability differs based on circumstance. Why not say he or she gains the right to live in the fourth week because that’s when his/her heart beats? Why not say he or she gains life worth in the sixth week when the fetus begins having brain waves?

Abortion advocates argue that the fetus cannot feel pain when being aborted. Science doesn’t agree. Dr. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto says, “At 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity can be recorded.” In fact, unborn babies probably feel pain more intensely than adults. This is a “uniquely vulnerable time since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher-level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop.”

Another quality one must exhibit in order to gain the right to live according to abortion advocates is size. They argue that a child aborted in the first trimester may be less than an inch or two in size, or less than an ounce or two in weight. But is size really a good measure of life, of personhood? Is a professional basketball player more of a person than someone half his size? Dr. Seuss sums it up with words and logic that even the youngest child can understand, “a person is a person no matter how small.”

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One way the right to life has also been classified by pro-abortion advocates is through the ability to function. Joseph Fletcher, then-professor at the University of Virginia, argued that an “individual” is not a “person” unless he has an IQ of at least 40, is self-aware, has self-control, has a sense of time, and has the ability to relate to others. But if personhood is determined by one’s current capacities, then a child or adult with a mental handicap isn’t a person. By the same standard, someone who is unconscious or sick or even asleep could be killed because he or she is not demonstrating superior intellect and skills. “But give the man time and he’ll be able to function as a person.” Give the baby time and so will she.

My list of qualities one must exhibit in order to gain “the right to live” is much shorter and far less specific.

If you are a member of the human family, no matter your size, intelligence, or situation, you have the right to live.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states,

“Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”

The International Convention on the Rights of the Child says this

“1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.

2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”

Every human has the inherent right to live. This qualifying trait pertains specifically to the unborn because they are blank slates. They have infinite potential and utmost innocence.

The disparity between the pro-abortion and the anti-abortion views are being widened by the day, “two ethicists wrote an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics arguing that doctors should be allowed to abort newborn babies out of the womb because they’re “not persons.” They wrote that when “circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

Partial Birth Abortion, sometimes referred to as after-birth abortion, is defined in federal law as

”an abortion in which the person performing the abortion—

(A) deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus;”

This year the state of New York passed a law that would allow doctors… to perform an abortion right up to the point of birth. Virginia also had a similar partial birth legalization bill proposed.

Our society accepting these types of laws that allow the worth of a life to be defaced makes me sick. Like most of those in the fight for life, I find arguments about bodily control steadily less compelling as the pregnancy advances, and another body develops, which has its own claims to bodily integrity. And so, like many others, I am eventually willing to say enough, you’ve gone too far.”

I can no longer be quiet. I can no longer bite my tongue and sink into my seat with my opinions shoved down my throat and my head bowed. I will not keep my thoughts to myself when millions of human lives hang in the balance. I cannot be a bystander to this crime.

As I look around at the world today, my eyes far more open to the harsh realities of society, I often wonder where the idea that life has intrinsic value has gone. I learned that others’ lives were important as my 1st-grade teacher had us recite the golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated. I discovered the miracle of life as I held my 4th little sister in the hospital room, and soon later I discovered the fragility of life as this perfect little baby fought for life in Primary Children’s Hospital. I look around at the darkness of the world and feel… hope in humanity. I choose to believe that protecting the lives of the unborn isn’t too radical an idea yet.

President Ronald Reagan said, “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life- the unborn- without diminishing the value of all human life.” How can the human rights activists of today ignore the rights of the life growing inside a young mother’s womb? How can black lives matter activists argue that they fight for the rights of black people when half the black babies conceived in the US were aborted last year? How can feminists not fight for the women of tomorrow?

This idea that life is worthless is starting to seep into society. They preach self-love, yet destroy the very building block of one’s self. And so, I question all of you. I question the world. How can we be expected to value our own lives when the very ideals promoted by society tell us life is worth nothing?