Not a potential life, but a life with potential

SEFERIN JAMES (Letters, January 28) is logically, theologically, medically and scientifically incorrect in arguing that abortion is not murder.

A foetus is not a potential life, but a life with potential.

This was established 120 years ago by Wilhelm His, the father of human embryology who proved that life begins at conception.

The respect for every human life, from conception to natural death, is an essential condition if a societal life worthy of the name is to be possible.

When we lose our respect for the sacredness of every human life, we inevitably end up losing our own identity.

While the claim that abortion is a woman’s right to control her own body may sound reasonable to many, it is a medical fact that the human foetus is not a part of the mother’s body.

It is a separate, distinct and unique human person with its own heartbeat, brainwaves and DNA.

Those who support abortion cannot coherently answer the question why the right of the foetus not to be killed must always yield to the right of individual freedom.

When the law accepts that the rights of the weakest may be violated, it also accepts that the law of the jungle prevails over the rule of law.

When we begin to call even an embryonic human being a ‘thing’ or a ‘clump of cells’, progress becomes blind and destructive.

Abortion violates every human instinct.

It contradicts the fourth century BC Hippocratic Oath that says “I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy”. Let us not change what our most remote ancestors knew with simplistic certainty — that abortion is evil.

We all must welcome every new life into the world, regardless of the circumstances, as if it were our own. Our lives and the lives of our unborn children are inseparable.

Paul Kokoski

234 Columbia Drive

Hamilton

Ontario

Canada L9C 3Y9