When is a Life Really a Life? - College Composition 4th Major Essay

      In January of 1973, the Supreme Court made a decision that literally affected millions of lives. Unborn lives. In the case of Roe vs. Wade, the Court expanded the implied constitutional right of privacy, a right not written in the constitution, and claimed that it was a woman’s privacy to obtain an abortion. They granted the power to terminate an unborn human fetus. An unborn child ought to be protected under the constitution, whether it be the fourteenth amendment or the ninth, because from the day of conception, the forging of cells becomes a human life. 
      The Justices found that the interest in protecting life did not overthrow the right to an abortion until third trimester when the fetus is most certain to be a viable person, viable meaning possible or realistic. This right did not come without limitations however, which prohibited abortion after the third trimester of pregnancy. This new law gave women the right to abort a baby up to twenty-seven weeks of pregnancy. Twenty-seven weeks? At twenty-seven weeks, the fetus weighs two pounds, can blink its eyes, often responds to the mothers voice, and appears much like they will at birth. If born at twenty-seven weeks, the fetus has a eighty-percent chance of survival. What then, about a fetus, makes it viable? Does it become viable when the gender becomes discernible, or when it resembles actual human form? Does life begin when the heart begins to beat? No, life begins in the hours after conception when the genome is formed. Only hours after the sperm has reached the egg, the chromosomes combine and the gender of the future child is determined. Immediately the cells begin to rapidly divide, creating the body and organs of a human fetus. 
      Because of the incredible advances in science and medical technology, doctors and scientists are now able to view the growth of a human fetus and track this growth week by week. According to fetal development charts, between weeks three and four of pregnancy, the baby’s heart begins to beat. From the beating of the heart, there is nerve and brain development and activity, and by four weeks the brain has divided into 5 distinct parts. How is this not a human being? Furthermore, by week six the baby has hands and feet, eyes and ears, and teeth have even begun to form underneath the gums. At week nine, which is the most common week for women to have an abortion, the baby’s brain is growing rapidly, and brain waves can be clearly measured. Cartilage and bone are forming at this time, and through the parchment skin, veins are clearly visible. Although the baby is just one inch long, it resembles a person increasingly by its limbs and facial characteristics ("baby2see"). Giving an unborn fetus less rights than a new born baby, and saying they are not full citizens under the constitution is unconstitutional and ethically wrong. 

The fourteenth amendment originally gave African Americans the right to vote, but it also established them as a whole person under US citizenship, whereas before they had only been counted as three-fifths of a person. In Roe v. Wade, the Court interpreted the fourteenth amendment as defining a woman’s rights, but also said that an unborn fetus was not a full human. That establishment is completely contradictory to the amendment. How can it establish the personhood of someone, but deny it to someone else? Roe v. Wade not only contradicted the amendment, but the Equal Protection Clause that is tacked on. The Equal protection clause says, “No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” By law, the fetus deserves protection. Fetuses are persons. They are alive, moving and breathing, thinking and growing. They are Homo sapiens, not merely an appendage of the mother. By law, they deserve equal protection, and deserve all implied rights. Because of Roe vs. Wade, and the many abortion cases that have followed, fetus’ are being denied and deprived of their unalienable rights, given to them by God: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

In November of 2011, citizens of Mississippi voted on a bill, that would have defined “personhood” as beginning at the moment of fertilization. This bill, which would have redefine the term “person” to mean any human being from the moment that the egg is fertilized, and would have made abortions illegal, was voted down. Largely the bill was denied because of the implications it would have made of some birth controls, contraceptives, and other medical practices. It would also have questioned stem cell research, and in-vitro treatments. The bill, if passed, could have made abortion legally an act of murder. Defining personhood as the moment of conception gives the fetus the right to life, but what is more important, the right to not be killed unjustly. 

An argument then arises about the protection of women if the fetus is harmful to her. In Roe v. Wade, “The unwanted child,” Blackmun avowed, would cause a woman psychological stress, and impose family responsibilities and economic hardships” (Gargaro). How can you choose one life over another? This causes us, unethically, to place different value on different types of life. An adult human is no more important than a child, nor does a child have more value than a baby. Likewise, a baby does not have any more value than a growing fetus in the womb, for each has to potential to grow and live, and each has rights given to them, not by man, but by God. Most people think only about the woman, and the hardships on her, but rarely think about the fetus’s right to life, and its ability to grow into a child and an adult. Anyone could play the “what if” game, posing questions about what the fetus could have become had it been given the opportunity to live, and the sad answer is that nobody will ever know. The fetus’ aborted each day, and the millions each year, are human lives. It is unjust and unethical to deprive them of life just because they cannot speak. A two day old baby cannot speak, but if it were murdered, the murderer would be sentenced to prison for several years. So why is abortion still legal? Abortion is murder. 

There are many ongoing arguments related to abortion, and new ones arise each day. Much anger surrounds the topic. A solution seems unlikely, but no one can deny the facts; the early beating of the heart, or the early brain development and activity, that a human fetus lives and grows in a pregnant woman. Thanks to advances in medical science, like the ability to track fetal development, it is undeniable that even as early as four weeks of pregnancy, a fetus shows its personhood, which began at conception. These fetus’ have a right, under the constitution, of equal protection. They also have the right of life, given to all members of the human genome, by God, a right that is undeniable and inseparable. Whether you accept that all men are creations of a supreme being or not, you have to accept that the personhood of a fetus is scientifically proven from the moment of conception, and deserves the same rights as all adults and children under the Constitution of the United States.