January 22, 2016, is the anniversary of a legal system gone askew, a system that failed to protect millions of vulnerable preborn children from annihilation by abortion. Forty-three years ago, in 1973, the US Supreme Court, in ‘Roe versus Wade’, endorsed abortion on demand. A law was passed in the name of free choice allowing mothers to legally take the life of their child in the womb.
This gave rise to the brutal dismembering of preborn children in their mothers’ wombs under the guise of choice or reproductive health. The tsunami of death unleashed by this court sentence has grown into an industry that has spread to most countries and will probably soon reach our shores. The long-term effects of this genocide and the population shifts are already being felt globally.
We can see an ageing Europe, with countries that have birth rates lower than replacement levels. In countries where abortions are sex-related there are shifts in the male/female proportions, resulting in a large deficit of women. One would think that such catastrophic effects would unite world leaders, even if only to realise that there is an economic detriment to destroying such a large potential workforce.
When will we realise the consequences of what is happening? Will it be too late to turn back the tide?
The number of lives lost to abortion is staggering. According to National Right To Life, America, since that tragic day in 1973, abortion has taken about 58 million American lives. As a scale of devastation, it can be compared to the elimination of the population of 18 US states.
In the UK, since the Abortion Act of 1967, the number of abortions has risen to more than eight million (Department of Health statistics for 2013). In Canada, a Campaign Life Coalition abortion fact sheet puts the number of Canadians who have died from elective abortion at 3.2 million from the legalisation of abortion in 1969 to 2009. Nearly one in four pregnancies in Canada today result in abortion and it is legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason, up to the moment of birth.
We have to stand up for a true equality, where life always has value, an equal value
In China there are more than 13 million abortions a year, or 1,500 an hour. More than half a billion birth control procedures, including at least 336 million abortions, have been performed in the name of China’s one-child policy, which has currently been extended to a two-child policy, without removing forced abortion. In India, there are roughly 11 million abortions each year.
The hungry abortion mills are not happy with these statistics and would like to promote abortion as a right so that countries that have been able to resist this anti-life travesty will be made to toe the line, in the name of a new ‘equality’, which seems to be the new buzz word of the moment.
According to data collected by the United Nations and compiled in 2011, Malta is one of six nations that does not allow abortion under any circumstances. It is a privilege that we hope to retain and nurture.
Killing preborn babies is not progress. The right to not be killed supersedes the right to not be pregnant. Defenceless life should be protected from conception.
Choice may be acceptable only if it involves the person making the choice without harming anyone in the process. In abortion, however, there are two bodies involved, namely that of the mother and that of the preborn child in the womb. The child in the womb is a unique separate individual, a distinct human being with a right to life.
The humanity of the unborn is not an issue any more. Not when we can now see the developing life from conception by closed-circuit embryoscopes, and see the unborn clap and move in utero by highly sophisticated ultrasound, the same child that is born and given to the mother to nurse.
We have to come out of the silence. We have to testify to the humanity of the unborn child from conception. We have to stand up for a true equality, where life always has value, an equal value. We have to stand proud for the defenceless, vulnerable embryo, foetus, unborn, infant, child, adult, infirm and disabled. We have to rally our friends, institutions and others. Silence is not an option, neither is indifference.
We need to be proactive in defending life relentlessly from conception. As wisely put by Ellie Wiesel: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
As we remember the victims of the holocaust of abortion, let us vow to stand up for life. Pray to God to deliver us from the evil of abortion.
chairman@lifenetwork.eu
Miriam Sciberras is the chairman of Life Network Malta.