What if I told you that, right now, someone was choosing if you were gonna live or die?

What
if I told you that this choice wasn’t based on what you could or couldn’t do, what you’d done
in the past or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you…you could do nothing
about it?

Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation.
Someone is choosing, without even knowing them, whether they are gonna live or die. That
someone is their mother. And that choice is abortion.

Every day a hundred and fifteen thousand children are dying through abortion. A hundred
and fifteen thousand. That means that five thousand children would die every hour. All those
lives…gone. All that potential…gone. And all that hope in the future…gone.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking, “Oh, it’s not really killing. After all, a fetus
isn’t a child…right? Why do we think that just because a fetus can’t talk or do what we do it
isn’t a human being yet? The word “fetus” comes from the Latin word meaning “young one”
or “young child”. Some babies are born after only five months. Is this baby not human? We
would never say that, yet abortions are performed on five month old fetuses all the time. Or
do we only call them humans if they’re wanted? No, fetuses are definitely humans, knit
together in their mothers by their wonderful Creator, who knows them all by name.

Some people might say that, since abortion’s legal now, it doesn’t matter. It’s not our
business. But, if an action is unjust, it needs to be illegal, and it has to be our business. And
this particular law has a huge impact on our society. In 1997 over one million abortions took
place just in the U.S. And just last year over forty-two million abortions happened worldwide.
I’d say that’s a huge impact.

I know some people say that the mother has a right to abort. After all, her life is dramatically
impacted by having a baby. But I’m asking you to think about the child’s rights that were
never given to it. No matter what rights the mother has, it doesn’t mean we can deny the
rights of the fetus. Talking about the mother’s choice…the mother may have had a choice
not to have unprotected sex in the first place. We must remember that with our rights and
our choices come responsibilities and we can’t take someone else’s rights away to avoid our
responsibilities.

At this point, I imagine the age old question arises. What if the mother didn’t choose to have
sex? What if she was raped? But let’s us look at the facts for the U.S., as an example. Only
one percent of all American abortions are hard case categories. This includes rape, incest,
and the life of the mother being in danger. One percent. That hardly justifies the disturbing
volume of abortions that happen these days.

And who’s to say abortion’s the easy way out? I don’t think people understand the effects of
abortion on a woman. I don’t have time to list all the negative after effects, but here are a few
examples of the physical effects. Seventeen percent of women who’ve had abortions face
complications in their subsequent pregnancies. Some may not even be able give birth at all.
They are also at a greater risk of developing breast cancer if they have an abortion.
But perhaps the worst effects are the emotional ones. Women who’ve had an abortion tend
to have more mood disorders substantial enough to provoke them to harm themselves. In
addition, women who’ve had an abortion are five times more likely to have problems with
drug and alcohol abuse. Abortion leaves a woman feeling lost and uncertain about their
future. Almost one-third of all women who had an abortion are dissatisfied with their
decision. It certainly is not the cure-all people think it is.

I read a story on the Focus on the Family website. It was about a girl who had an abortion.
She writes:

“I had abortion at the age of seventeen. And it was the worst thing I ever did. I would never
recommend it to anyone because it comes back to haunt you. When I tried having children, I
lost three. Something happened in my cervix during the abortion.” – Sharon Osborne.

Hers is just one of the many heart-wrenching stories that nobody tells these days. And those
same ones are the ones that we need to hear about.

Thank you for taking time to think about the issue of abortion, to think about the unborn, and
to think about the effects of abortion on a mother. If you walk away with anything after this
speech, walk away with the words of Horton. You know him…the elephant that risked his life
to save that little speck? Remember him and his famous quote:

“Even though you can’t see them or hear them at all, a person’s a person…no matter how
small.”

Thank you.