OPED: Choose right, choose life

By Cliff Djajapranata,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

Last month saw the annual March for Life in Washington D.C., where more than half a million Americans gathered to end abortion and were joined by thousands of others across the nation. Each year, the American people are reminded of our presence and our mission: to end the scourge of abortion.

Over the summer, I took a course on American politics at a summer program, and we had to research and write on a political issue of our choice. One of my peers chose to research abortion, a topic that I and many others also chose.

I had never witnessed the effects of abortion, nor have I ever met anyone who had been affected by abortion.

However, as my class ate together in the dining hall during our lunch break and talked about politics like the geeks we were, one girl explained to us why she chose to research abortion: she was adopted as a child and was forever grateful that her birth mother had not aborted her.

It was then when I realized first-hand the devastating effects of abortion. The choice of just one person had the power to decide life and death for that girl when she had no say in the matter. Needless to say, I would never have had the pleasure of knowing her if that fatal choice was made.

Regardless of where you stand on when life begins, no one can deny that abortion destroys the potential for life. That girl was saved from the terror of abortion, yet about 1.2 million others in the U.S. are murdered every year.

Pro-choice advocates often claim that they did not want their child to suffer if they knew during the pregnancy that the child would have a disability, such as Down syndrome. Yet I have worked with children with mental disabilities, and more often than not, I see smiles on their faces that are surrounded by a loving family.

It is no one else’s prerogative to decide whether or not a child can be happy when you never give him or her a chance.

Perhaps I am politically incorrect, but I can hardly distinguish abortion from eugenics— you know, that “science” that the Nazis used to justify murdering 6 million Jews. Our society systematically decides who is fit and unfit to live.

And to those who would pull that rape or incest card—which I can admit is a gray area— I would remind you that they represent only about 1 percent of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, so it would be unfair to judge an entire issue according to a miniscule minority.

In the first March for Life in 1974, 20,000 assembled in our nation’s capital. Today, the pro-life cause has mustered 500,000 to march on Washington with millions of more Americans back home at the grassroots level. The number is growing every year, and we will not stop until we overturn Roe. v. Wade and terminate abortion.

Forget the politics of abortion because this is not a Democrat or Republican issue, nor is it a Catholic or Evangelical issue. And it is certainly not a women’s issue either. It is a human rights issue.

As a journalist, I am often told that one of the main responsibilities of the press is to give a voice to the voiceless. While the mainstream media seems to have forgotten that duty, I am proud to know that I fulfill that great responsibility by standing up for the voiceless unborn.

I am pro-life.

We are the pro-life generation.