A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE & THE WAR ON WOMEN

My husband and I have been talking about "rights" lately.  It seems to me that we human beings have got confused about that a time or two.  It seems to me we are bogged in a mire of confusion right now.  The founding documents of my country, the United States, talk about being "endowed by our Creator" with "inalienable" or unchangeable rights.  God-given rights.  Not rights we assigned to ourselves because that's what we wanted to do, but rights that are good in the natural order of things.  Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of religion.  These rights and others have stood the test of time.  These rights do not infringe on the rights of others, and if some would warp them to do so, we have had the good sense to realize that the expression of one right cannot be interpreted or used to infringe on the rights of others.  I can practice my own religion, for example, but if my religion says I should amputate the right hands of all men, I cannot practice that, because my right to practice my religion stops short of injuring others.

How different from some of the "rights" many people are pushing today.  Today many of our governmental and cultural leaders have decided that there are new "rights" people are "entitled" to.  We don't want to ever say it in such a way that it shows clearly that another's rights are being violated, so we never say "a woman's right to end the life of her child."  We don't even like "right to an abortion".  We want to make sure nobody thinks about the victim or the violation of another, so we use nicey euphemisms like "a woman's right to choose", "a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions," "reproductive rights", etc.  It's more than euphemisms.  It's doublespeak.  It's talk that consists of words having no relation to reality.  Recently I read that even the UN is determined to push "reproductive rights" as a universal right.  If anyone thinks differently, they are fostering a "war on women."  That's what some would have us believe.

If it is my right as a woman to choose when to end the life of my children, it is a right of a far different nature than the inalienable, God-given rights described in our founding documents.  I can practice my religion without hurting anyone.  I can speak my mind without hurting anyone.  I can live in freedom and seek happiness in many ways that hurt no one.  But I can never have an abortion without hurting someone.   Actually, I can never have an abortion without killing someone.  Without denying that same life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that I enjoy to someone.  It's impossible.  Abortion by its very nature ends a life.

It's pretty bleak when I think about how the idea of "rights" are used today.  Whatever we decide we want to do, we just manufacture the "right" to do it, it seems to me.

I am somewhat encouraged, however, when I remember that in the past we have fallen into this pit a number of times before and still managed to climb out of it.  I remember that there was a time when the Supreme Court of our beloved land declared that a slave had no rights that a white man need respect.  Some people wanted to have slaves.  They found it profitable, so they gave themselves the right to do it.  Thank God we later came to our senses and even the Supreme Court realized that it is not infallible.

Hitler felt the Jews and others did not have the right to live.  A similar thing happened between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in modern Uganda just in recent times.  "Rights" manufactured in the human imagination.  "Rights" to enable wicked people to do whatever their evil hearts imagined.  Those "rights" took the lives of millions, but they did not stand the test of time.

We need to get back to the God-given, unchangeable rights.  A woman's right to choose to terminate the life of her child is NOT one of those.