A little over a week ago my wife entered into her third trimester with our second child. It is amazing how quickly this pregnancy has gone and that in just 10 short weeks we are going to be having another little one around the house.
I am very excited. Ava May has brought so much joy to our lives and I look forward to all the wonderful challenges and rewards that come with being a father to two little girls. I have to say that I really enjoyed the 7 years that Steph and I were married without children. We were free to travel, to grow in our professional careers and mature Spiritually and as individuals. But there is nothing that compares to being a parent. It truly is a wonderful adventure with so many highs and lows, joys and fears, laughter and tears.
It was not lost on me that the very week my wife was entering into her third trimester legislation was being passed in the state of New York, and debated in the commonwealth of Virginia, that would allow for abortions all the way through the third trimester. The sound of the chamber erupting in cheers in New York still reverberates in my ears as I write this.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At this point in Stephanie’s pregnancy we have seen our baby three times. We know her gender, we have watched her move, seen her face and even given her a name – Raegan Jean. This isn’t a ‘clump of cells’ but a baby that kicks when I touch her mother’s belly and can feel pain.
Listen to the Virginia House member, Kathy Tran, explain what the bill she is proposing would allow:
The bill she proposed would allow for the abortion of a baby while the mother is having contractions! The caveat she tries to emphasise is that this would only occur in situations where the health of the mother is under threat. Unfortunately, the ‘health of the mother’ is allowed to be broadly interpreted. It can apply both to physical and mental health. In the case Doe v. Bolton, it was established that health, in regards to late-term abortion law, would apply to the mother’s “physical, emotional, psychological, familial … well being.” You can imagine how this can be, and is, exploited by individuals seeking an abortion and those willing to provide it.
It is amazing to me that otherwise intelligent individuals will convince themselves that a baby inside the womb isn’t really a baby, even up to 40 weeks, if the mother decides they do not want it. A princess falls pregnant and the media are calling it a baby from day dot but if the mother doesn’t want it then that’s a different story. They dehumanise the baby and call it a fetus – even though to their surprise the Latin word fetus literally means “offspring”. Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, expanded this point in a jaw-dropping debate that he had with Atheist Adam Rutherford:
Rutherford: …there is no scientific evidence that a fetus system younger than 24 weeks has an increased survival rate…
Hitchens (interjects): Listen to the word fetus, it’s a fetus, it’s a nice Latin word, it’s dehumanised already. It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus.
Rutherford: That’s correct…
Hitchens: You dehumanise it, so you can kill it.
Rutherford: It’s not a baby!
Hitchens: That’s what killers always do. They dehumanise their victim before they kill it.
Rutherford: It’s not a baby and there’s no possible way you could argue that it’s a baby.
Rutherford goes on to describe how he has worked with aborted fetuses and didn’t believe that they were human beings…
Rutherford: They look like them, they resemble them physically but they are not human beings.
Hitchens compared that kind of language to the stuff of concentration camps and then he made this comment…
Hitchens: It’s amazing they’re not human beings … it’s the oldest thing in the book, before you kill, you dehumanise. They’re not really, this is not any killing of a human being, this is something else. We give it another name.
It’s that simple, really. It’s not a fetus, it’s not a pregnancy, it’s not women’s health, it’s not a choice… It is a baby and it will always be a baby no matter how people choose to twist the language or what barbaric laws they pass.
Beautifully written young man! Thank you for sharing! Uncle Dave 😀