Opinion

The cost of freedom

American Flag in front of Planned Parenthood Abortion Center in Bryan, Texas
(Photo Credit: www.plannedparenthood.org)

It always irks me to see an American flag flying above an abortion clinic. There has never been a day on the sidewalk when I haven’t gritted my teeth at the blasphemy the abortion industry advertises by raising the red, white, and blue full-staff over a building that is completely antithetical to what the stars and stripes have stood for throughout our nation’s history.

I begin to think about all of the brave men and women who have selflessly sacrificed their time, their families, and, for some, the ultimate cost – their very own lives – to protect and defend our freedoms from tyranny and oppression. And yet there it stands in all of its glory, the symbol of our nation, above one of the most heinous and oppressive places in our country, which promotes no life, nor liberty, and the people leaving the clinic are anything but happy.

Regardless of your position on the necessity of war, I think we can all agree that the cost of freedom is not free. The rights and liberties we hold so dear to our hearts have been bought with blood. Precious blood that should have never had to be shed, sacrificed so that you and I may live in freedom. Yet some people believe that true “freedom” lies in a woman’s ability to choose to abort her baby or keep it. They have convinced themselves that their freedom to live as they wish trumps the right to life of the unborn because of a perceived inconvenience it may or may not place on a woman’s lifestyle. There are more than just the people in our armed forces fighting a war in our country. The unborn are also soldiers – silent soldiers – whose lives are being sacrificed by the millions for a so-called freedom of “choice.” The blood of the unborn has been senselessly spilled, with almost 3,500 innocent human beings aborted each and every day in a country that prides itself on protecting life first and foremost.

Even the Constitution provides for our posterity

The Preamble to our Constitution states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That’s funny. When I look through my handy pocket-sized booklet of the Constitution, I don’t see anything that comes close to mentioning a “right to privacy” (created by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut) that inherently gives a woman the freedom of choice to abort her unborn child. Maybe that’s because this mysterious “right” emanates from a penumbra, or as I like to call it, the “legal twilight zone” of the law, which essentially takes components of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, cranks them into the Willy Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper Machine, and out pops the “right to privacy,” thus paving the way for legalized abortion.

What I do see, however, is a covenant among the People of the United States, promising to protect and defend the life  and liberty of her citizens, ensuring them for “ourselves and our posterity,” which is the complete opposite of what abortion advocates.

We will overcome the injustice of abortion and protect the life of ALL people. It is only a matter of time.
(Reprinted with permission)

Unfortunately, this is not the first time since America’s birth that she has witnessed inequalities in the rights of her people. The one thing that gives me hope for our country is that our flag has stood strong despite times of injustice, particularly that of slavery. While we as a country have come a long way since those days, we are still struggling to give the same respect to the most defenseless among us – the unborn. The Dred Scott decision disallowing citizenship to people based purely on race proves that we are not infallible nor always equal and just in our application of the law, but thankfully we have been able to overcome the atrocities of our past.Despite all of the evils and corruption our country has faced and will continue to face, our flag remains a beacon of the ideals our nation was founded upon, as a constant reminder of the burden and blessings that freedom entails.

As I snap out of my disdain for the desecration of our flag, I think about how helpless Francis Scott Key must have felt as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore from afar on a boat, thus spurring his writing of our National Anthem. Although there is a war waging in America for the rights of the unborn, that they may be ensured of the same life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that all human beings are entitled to, the star-spangled banner still waves on above the abortion clinic, even amidst the injustice freedom seeks to destroy.

Our flag will continue to gallantly soar above the “land of the free and home of the brave,” despite the attacks that attempt to take away our most intrinsic rights- attacks in which an abortion clinic profits from. As is evident in the lyrics of our nation’s song, freedom never quits, and freedom always triumphs. Polls show that a majority of Americans now consider themselves pro-life, and these numbers will continue to rise as we strive to educate people on the humanity of the unborn, provide care and support for the women and families in crisis pregnancy situations, and seek to change the hearts and minds through pure love in order to make the killing of pre-born Americans unthinkable. Our Constitution is pro-life. Our Declaration of Independence is pro-life. Americans are pro-life.

It is only a matter of time until we look back on the evils of abortion as an unfortunate chapter of America’s history like that of slavery. The time is now. We must fight for life.

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  • Anonymous

    Surely bodily autonomy (i.e. no one has a right to use someone else’s body without your consent) is one of “the blessings of liberty”…

    • http://www.facebook.com/beverly.harlton Beverly Harlton

      Is the willful murder of another human being also part of liberty? You can deny the personhood of the unborn as much as you like, but they are human nonetheless.

      • Anonymous

        If they’re persons like any other, what gives them the special right to use someone else’s body without their consent when a patient in dire need of bone marrow or a kidney doesn’t have that right?

        • http://twitter.com/CalFreiburger Calvin Freiburger

          Good point. It’s not as if it’s her son or daughter or anything.

          Oh, wait……

          • Anonymous

            Oh, of course, it’s just like how we force parents to donate organs and tissue to their offspring.

            Oh, wait…

        • Veronika Johannsen

          Consent is established the moment two people decide to have sex. The fetus has it’s own bodily autonomy as well, so what gives a woman the right to destroy that life? Nothing in our Constitution, that’s for sure.

          • Anonymou

            So you’re okay with exceptions for rape?

            And that’s what I’m saying, even if a fetus did have bodily autonomy as well, that doesn’t give it the right to use another’s body against that person’s will. Even if, theoretically, someone “consented” by having sex, she can withdraw her consent since for purposes of this discussion, the “donation” is ongoing. If I agree to donate my kidney to someone, but then change my mind before the operation, is it illegal for me not to show up at the hospital?

            And correct me if I’m wrong here, but I don’t think abortion or pregnancy is ever mentioned in the US Constitution…

          • Veronika Johannsen

            rape is a disgusting violation of another human being. a woman who is raped did not have a choice in whether or not she was raped, and the scum bag who raped her should be punished severely. that being said, a child conceived in rape did not have a choice in being conceived either. should a child be punished for the actions of his or her father? absolutely not. whether a person was conceived through an act of love or an act of violence bears absolutely no weight to their own value and self worth. i personally have friends who are a product of rape. do you want to tell them they should not be alive today due to the manner in which they were created?

            and yes, “Anyonymou,” a fetus does have bodily autonomy. from the moment it is conceived, it’s genetic blueprint is laid out that it will have for the rest of it’s life. gender, eye color, hair color, and even blood type are decided at that precise moment. this has been scientifically PROVEN (www.ehd.org for starters). also, it’s DNA is completely separate from that of it’s mother. how’s that for “bodily autonomy”?

            the second two people decide to have sex is the second they have decided that the possibility of having a baby is ok. a baby is not a kidney, nor any other individual organ, which shares the exact same DNA as the original owner of the kidney. a baby is a unique, individual, human being. period.

            and you’re absolutely right, abortion and pregnancy are not mentioned. but you know what is? the right to life- before all other rights. without life, no other rights matter. abortion terminates life- life which is protected by our Constitution, even if it’s not being properly applied in our current time.

          • Anonymous

            Whoops, I forgot the “s” at the end of “Anonymous”. Sorry about that; I usually proofread my posts but I guess I didn’t do it in the other fields! You forgot to capitalize the words at the beginning of most of your sentences, though. Just a tip.

            Anyway, if you don’t think that there should be exceptions for rape, then your whole “consent” argument kind of goes out the window. You can’t say “the woman consented to a baby when she consented to sex” applies to most abortions but the few that are the result of rape have different reasons for being unacceptable. Either consent matters and rape exceptions are okay, or it doesn’t matter.

            I do know how DNA works (no offense, but probably better than you do since I’ve studied biology extensively), but the concept of bodily autonomy, to me, means that the owner of the body can make decisions about what happens to it. An eight-week-old fetus can’t do that since it doesn’t have any thoughts or feelings yet. But leaving that aside, I wasn’t saying the fetus can be removed because it’s an organ. I was saying that it can’t use the woman’s body/organs without her permission BECAUSE it’s a separate organism.

            And the right to life doesn’t come before personal liberty/bodily autonomy in our society. If it did, then as I’ve been discussing, healthy people could be compelled to donate organs or tissue since those actions would be saving the life of another while causing minimal, if any, harm to the donor. But we don’t do that, so why force a pregnant woman to allow her body to be used by another organism for nine months against her will?

          • Veronika Johannsen

            My response to consent was to your original post that read:

            Anonymous • 21 hours ago • parent−If they’re persons like any other, what gives them the special right to use someone else’s body without their consent when a patient in dire need of bone marrow or a kidney doesn’t have that right?
            You never specified rape in that post. I responded accordingly, because a consequence of sex is the creation of offspring, so when two people consent to having sex, they consent that the possibility of creating a baby is ok. Obviously rape is completely different, and I never once said that rape means consent to conceive a child. What I did say however, is just as the woman didn’t consent to being raped, the child didn’t consent to being created either. Again I ask, does the manner in which a person is created merit them any more or less of a right to life than another? Should a child be punished for the crimes of his or her father? No. Rape is a devastating attack on an innocent individual. Abortion is a life-terminating attack on an innocent individual. What’s worse, rape, or murder? Should we really be trying to justify either of those? How about instead, we provide help and support for both mother and baby in their time of crisis. I think that’s a good start.
            Good for you for studying biology. You probably do know a lot more about it than me. But according to your logic, newborns, toddlers, mentally handicapped people, patients in a coma, even many elderly or infirm people would all be legal to kill under your definition because they are not able to make decisions for themselves nor capable of surviving on their own without “using” another person’s body, money, or time. Are you really about to justify killing a person in a coma for not being able to think on their own and using their parents to survive by paying for their hospital bills? Because that’s the slippery slope you are skiing down at full speed. Say that person has severe brain damage, but you know for a FACT that in 6 weeks that same person will regain brain waves. Would it be right to pull the plug on that person when they are in a coma and kill them even though they WILL have thoughts and feelings at some point in the future? Of course not! It’s the same with the unborn. In a few short weeks, the unborn WILL be able to feel pain and have thoughts, and a few weeks after that it will be able to survive outside of the womb, although it will still be dependent on it’s mother to survive. Where will you draw the line?
            Again, a baby is NOT an organ. It is a human being. You cannot have liberty if you are not a living person. Life MUST come first. People ARE compelled to donate organs and tissue. I for one have donated blood in the past. Was I forced to? Absolutely not, and no one should be forced to. However, if I were to have sex and get pregnant, that pregnancy would be a result or consequence of that action I partook in. I would be pregnant with a human being- not a simple tissue or individualized organ. That human being would have it’s own set of organs and tissues. It has it’s own life, gender, blood type, heart beat, etc. separate from my own. Sure, it is dependent on me to grow and develop, but it is not taking my life away from me, whereas an abortion would take the life of that human being.
            You seem like an intelligent person. If you agree with the biological proof that the unborn developing human beings and abortion is a good choice to have, you are justifying the killing of the most defenseless among us. Are you really sure you want to cede to that?

          • Anonymous

            Okay, I’m going to address your arguments point by point:

            -Consent/rape: We could make consent into an issue in this discussion if (a) you agreed that there should be exceptions for rape victims and (b) the act of pregnancy ended with the act of intercourse, which it doesn’t. As it stands, the “consent” about which I’m writing is that to have your body used by someone else.

            -Meaning(s) of the word “compel”–I meant legally compelled, or forced from outside oneself. You meant you felt “compelled” to donate blood (me too, actually) by your own conscience, but no one forced you.

            -Fetal bodily autonomy: Obviously I don’t think this exists (at lest in a first-trimester fetus), and that’s why I defined what it means to me. However, whether this exists or not, that does not give the fetus the right to use someone else’s body to survive. For example, a leukemia patient who needs a bone marrow transplant certainly has bodily autonomy, but does that give him/her the right to violate someone else’s bodily autonomy in order to get the transplant (s)he needs to survive? No.

            -The rights of newborns, toddlers, the elderly, the disabled, coma patients, etc.: These people can indeed need assistance to survive, but not anything that physically violates the bodily autonomy of anyone else (unless they have some other condition). If a parent doesn’t want to care for a newborn, for example, they will not be forced to do so; they can surrender their parental rights and someone else will care for the baby. The case is the same for your coma patient: (s)he isn’t using anyone else’s BODY to survive; she’s using machines and someone else’s efforts, but the people caring for that patient are not being forced to do so; either they’re being paid and choose to do the work for compensation or they’re doing it out of love or obligation. Also, needing someone’s money is not the same as needing someone’s body. The state can take someone’s money either in the form of taxes or fines, but they cannot take someone’s kidney, for example.

            -Whether a fetus is the same as an organ: It’s not, and I never said that it was. I said it doesn’t have the right to use a woman’s organs if she doesn’t want it to.

            I never said that anyone who is defenseless should be killed. I’m not even justifying “killing” a fetus, (even though to me it certainly is more acceptable than killing a born person, that’s irrelevant to what I’m saying here) only removing it from a woman’s body if she doesn’t want it there. If there is a way to remove it from her body that doesn’t kill it and doesn’t risk harming the woman, then that is what should happen. My point is that if you can justify forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy (i.e. forcing her to allow someone else to use her body in a way that can, in many ways, be a detriment to her physically or mentally) in order to save the life of another “person” (to you, anyway), then how does that not justify forcing someone to donate, say, bone marrow? That can definitely save the life of another person, and it is far safer and easier than pregnancy and childbirth.

          • Veronika Johannsen

            This is getting way more complicated than it should be.

            1. A fetus is a human being.2. It is wrong to kill human beings.3. Abortion kills human beings.4. Abortion is wrong.
            It’s that simple. I don’t care what ambiguous definitions or opinions you want to assert to make yourself feel better. Abortion kills human beings. Just because a fetus is dependent on it’s mother’s body doesn’t mean it deserves to be killed for doing such.

            As I said before, should a child be punished to death because of the crimes of their father? No.

            And you’re right. A person who needs a transplant does not have the right to take it from another human who has what they need. But that patient should not be intentionally murdered because it is in need of something it lacks. A baby is dependent on it’s mother for at most 9 months. It is a temporary dependency, does not take away the life of the mother, and is a consequence of an action she decided to do. If she doesn’t want it, then thankfully there are plenty of people who would love to adopt. No person deserves to die because they are unwanted or dependent on someone else. Period.

          • Anonymous

            With all due respect, I’m not the one who made it complicated by bringing up rape, the disabled, etc.

            What I’m saying is that abortion is not about the KILLING; it’s about the SEPARATION, which of course does usually result in death. I’m saying that a woman denying a fetus the use of her body is only killing it in the way that denying someone a transplant kills them.

            And that “temporary dependency” can have many terrible side effects, some permanent: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm And of course, pregnancy and childbirth are fourteen times more likely to result in a woman’s death than a safe, legal abortion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271 .

      • Kate Sirls

        Yes, if someone else is using my body as life support, I have a right to terminate it. The right to life does not give anyone the right to use another’s body, against that person’s will, for the sake of their survival. That would be unconstitutional. I agree with you that the unborn are humans, but they do not have the right to use their mothers’ bodies if the mother does not wish to grant it. It is her choice, and will always be her choice.

        • Veronika Johannsen

          -A life that you willingly gave another person. You also used your parents as life support for many years after you were born. Did that give them a right to kill you? Pregnancy is a completely natural biological process. If it weren’t, no one would be alive today. A baby does not take the life of their mother by growing and developing, but yet a mother can take the life of her baby? By consenting that the unborn are humans, you are saying it is totally justifiable for someone to kill anyone for using them. Are you sure you really want to go down that track? Where will it end?

        • Ann Johannsen

          So you have decided that using a body for life support is grounds for killing a human being. What other rules are you going to make up?

    • ann Johannsen

      What kind of twisted thinking is that?

      • Anonymous

        The same kind that means 3000 people die annually in the US for want of a bone marrow donation. We don’t force people to donate bone marrow, which is much easier and safer than pregnancy and takes far less time to complete and recover.

        • AnonymousKnowsCordBloodSaves

          Uh oh Anonymous…You left out the fact that 18,000 individuals in the US alone could be saved from Cord Blood Donations. Oops, that means you’d have to actually support women who have babies.

          • Anonymous

            No, I’m afraid it doesn’t–you’re not grasping my point at all. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to force people to donate organs and tissue against their will because it would allow other people to live! (Although it’s wonderful if donating is something you choose to do.) I’m saying the opposite, that bodily autonomy IS important so we shouldn’t take that away from one person in order to save the life of another.

            Also, saying 18,000 people COULD be saved by cord blood donation at the moment isn’t the same as saying that 3,000 people per year actually do DIE from lack of a bone marrow transplant

          • AnonymousNeedsaPuppy

            How about you don’t take “bodily autonomy” away at all. Leave babies in the womb alone and check out sterilization. If you didn’t have abortion to worry about in your personal life, then perhaps you could check out other web sites. There are many about puppies, perhaps you could say something nice about puppies on puppy web sites and leave babies in the womb alone.

    • Trey Cade

      Anonymous,
      So what you are doing is describing a fetus as a parasite. Nice
      description, only it doesn’t work because, as has been mentioned
      numerous times, when a woman CHOOSES to have sex she is CONSENTING to
      the possible consequence of CREATING a child that she is RESPONSIBLE for nurturing inside her body.

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