Ok, You want to talk about a brain not yet being fully development. Why do you think there are researchers have stated that teens who makes poor judgment is based on their brains that are still growing? When a baby is born in the world their brains are growing and changing, they do not have the same brains as adults, not even teens.
Just because an unborn baby begin to form it's organs, it does not consider a unborn to be any less alive.
Take Christopher Reeve as an example, he had a spinal cord injury, and could not breathe without a ventilator (sp?) Did we viewed him to be any less alive than those people who breathe on their own?
Now that's my belief.
Okay, Cheri, let me break this down for you with a very real life example.
On the week-ends, I work for the coalition against domestic violence. Not only do I deal with abused women and children, I am also the crisis intervention responder for any and all rape victims that are in the emergency room of our hospital.
Early this Sunday morning, at approximately 3:10 a.m., I received a page from the hospital. I went to the ER, knowing that the page meant there was a rape victim. This is what I found when I arrived:
A 14 year old girl who had been held down by 3 other girls that she considered to be her friends while an 18 year old male raped her. She was cowered in the corner of the room, crying hysterically. It took me over 2 hours to get her calm enough for the sexual assault nurse examiner to do a rape kit.
I stayed with this child during the exam. I can tell you that she not only had external bruises and abrasions from being held down by her arms and legs, she also had extensive internal injuries.
This child was a virgin. She was not using birth control, nor did her rapist use a condom. She had, however, begun to menstruate, and therefore, she had the risk of having become pregnant during this violent assault.
Are you telling me that this 14 year old child, who has endured this sort of violent attack, should she have conceived a child during this violence, be forced to endure even greater trauma by being told that she cannot have an abortion, but MUST carry the product of this attack to term, endure 9 months of pregnancy, God knows how many hours of labor, and subsequently, give birth? Are you telling me that she not only has had to go through an experience that will change her life forever, and not for the better, an experience where she was denied her choice not to engage in sexual contact, and then be labled a murderer if she chose to take the morning after pill that will result in expulsion of the product of conception? Are you telling me that she is to be denied that choice?
If you believe that all abortion is wrong because life begins at the moment of conception, then you would tell this child that she had killed a child by choosing not to carry the pregnancy to term.
This child did not consent to sex. She bears no responsibility for the actions of this violent man and her sociopathic "friends".
This child has to return to school, and see the girls that held her down every day. The mother told me when the child was finally able to get to her cell phone and call her mother, the mother could hear the other girls in the background taunting and teasing her as she cried hysterically. Do you propose that she also be subjected to the tauting and teasing she would be forced to endure if whe were to return to school pregnant?
On Sunday afternoon, I received another page at around 4:00pm. Back to the ER I went. This time it was a 16 year old girl who had been raped by a person she knew by name. He drug her under a bridge and raped her. What about her? Should she also be forced to carry a pregnancy that resulted from her attack to term?
This is reality, Cheri. These are but the two most recent situations I have dealt with.
To say that these children should have to carry a pregnancy to term, that they should not be given a choice in the matter, is nothing short of inhuman.
Do I value life? Hell, yes. I value the life of that 14 year old girl that experienced more violence in a short period of time than most of us will experience in a lifetime. I value the life of a 16 year old who was drug under a bridge and forced to engage in sexual intercourse. They have already lost their innocence, and I will be damned if I tell them that they must loose any more of their young lives by being forced to carry a pregnancy for 9 months. A pregnancy that they are in no way responsible for. Will I fight for their right to choose? You can bet your ass I will.
