FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 "Choice or Responsibility"

(The following is the text of Leah Boyd's state winning speech. Leah Boyd is a graduate of Meade High School, Meade, Kansas and her speech was first published in the Meade County Paper-Leah Boyd is a Political Science Major at Azusa Pacific University and has made the academic Dean's List at APU. Leah is honored for a fall semester 1998 academic standing of 3.5 or better grade-point average.)

The Modern Slave

by Leah Boyd

"To be a slave. To be owned by another person, as a car, house, or table is owned. To live as a piece of property that could be sold--a child sold from it's mother, a wife from her husband. To be considered not human, but a 'thing' that plowed the fields, cut wood, cooked the food; a 'thing' whose sole function was determined by the one who owned you.

To be a slave. To know, despite the suffering and deprivation, that you were human, more human than he who said you were not human. To know joy, laughter, sorrow and tears and yet, be considered only the equal of a table.

To be a slave was to be a human being under conditions in which they found themselves with eyes and minds of human beings, conscious of everything that happened to them, conscious of all that went on around them. Yet, slaves are often pictured as little more than dumb, brute animals.....This was the view of those who were not slaves." Julius Lester, from his book "To Be A Slave."

Slavery has long been acknowledged as a great moral evil. The black slave was seen as truly inferior to his white master. The slave was seen as mere property and the only rights that anybody worried about were the owner's property rights.

These premises of inferiority and property rights were seen as justification for the grossest mistreatment imaginable. Yet, today there remains such a cruel mistreatment of some of our own citizens, that slavery pales in comparison. There is a modern slavery that must be ended in this country.

Since slaves were considered property, they had none of the basic human rights. Reverend David Rice, defined the condition of slavery. "A slave is a human creature made by law the property of another human creature and reduced by mere power to an absolute unconditional subjection to his will."

As literal "property", slaves could be bought and sold at auctions, willed to relatives, rented out or lost at cards. The rape of a black women no serous crime. At worst, it would be considered trespassing on the owner's property.

The savage abuse of slaves by their owners was commonplace. On July 18, 1838, in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the published paper, "Standard," this advertisement was seen, "Runaway, a Negro women and two children; a few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face, I tried to make the letter M."

Yet, today in America, an even greater injustice is being served daily on the plate of "choice." The matter of life and death has been reduced to a mere choice, with only one of the involved parties having any choice at all. In America, if a mother "chooses" to kill her child, so long as it is not "viable," there is nothing short of an act of G~d that can stop her from this heinous act.

The unspeakable terrors that a child must endure in the womb during an abortion are very similar to those suffered by the slave a hundred years ago. To be burned with a caustic saline solution; to be ripped limb from limb; to have scissors jammed into the base of the skull and the brain evacuated through a suction tube--all of these violations of the baby's humanity can occur because the law states that it is within the privacy and property rights of a mother to do so. The unborn child has no rights. It is only a piece of property for the mother to do with as she pleases.

In this same country, the mother is charged with child abuse if she uses cocaine while pregnant. If she is killed while pregnant, her assailant can be charged with two counts of murder. And if she dies in a car wreck, the guilty party can be charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. Yet, when a mother walks into a medical clinic, with full intent of having her unborn baby's life ended by a licensed medical doctor, she has the approval of the Supreme Court of the United States. Something is very inconsistent here!! Does an unborn child have rights or not?? Is a baby in the womb any less human than one we can hold in our arms?? What miraculously occurs at birth to change a "choice" into cold-blooded murder??

In 1983, President Ronald Regan said, "Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion....there is no cause more important for preserving (America as a free land) than affirming the transparent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning."

Today, we ask how one man could have reduced another to the state of property. it was because the black man was seen as inferior to the white man. Alexander Stephens of Georgia said that the, "equality of the races is fundamentally wrong." he also said that, "the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery---subordination to the superior race---is his natural and normal condition."

D.L. Dumond wrote that slave owners, "formulated ingenious rationalizations for their conduct, devised legal barriers to it's correction, heaped indignities upon those who spoke out in protest, and challenged the right of free inquiry and discussion."

In the case of abortion, like slavery, we have formulated ingenious rationalizations for our conduct. We have devised legal barriers to it's correction. We have heaped indignities upon those who speak out in protest. We have challenged the right of free inquiry and discussion. And we have criminalized the actions of those who protest these legalized killings.

And why have we done these things? It is because our society has come to accept the premise that the unborn in the womb is somehow inferior to the one that we can hold in our arms. And we have come to accept the premise that the unborn baby is simply the property of his/her mother. He/she is inferior to her, and so any rights that he/she may have are inferior to hers.

One hundred and fifty years ago slave owners did not have the technology that we have today. They could at least argue that blacks were genetically inferior to whites. Yet, did the black man not bleed when cut? Did he not cry out when abused? Did he not possess every faculty for learning and reasoning that a white man possessed? How could a nation that was dedicated to the ideal that "all men are created equal" have kept millions in servitude for almost two hundred and fifty years?

Today there is scientific proof that babies are completely alive individuals in the womb. Nothing drastic happens at birth to change them. And we cannot use the excuse that they feel no pain. We know differently. So how can we today deny a child in the womb the inalienable rights to "life. liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"

A great hypocrisy exists in our culture today. When the tragic plight of starving children from Africa is shown on television, millions are saddened. In the United States, the excessive violence that surrounds our children worries us. Yet, the decision of a mother to murder her child before it draws a breath is viewed as a civilized personal choice.

Mother Teresa, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, said, "I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself and if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

For centuries slavery was defended only to be ended in the bloodiest war in American history. People had finally realized that slavery was wrong. Despite laws and judicial precedents saying otherwise, slavery was wrong.

Today, abortion is the modern slavery and is abortion not the greater evil, simply because the baby cannot defend himself/herself? At least, on occasion the slave was able to run away. The baby has no place to run, for even a mother's womb is no longer a safe place to hide. I must agree with Abraham Lincoln, "No one has the right to do what is wrong!"

So, we must ask, "Is it a "choice" or is it a "responsibility?" Personally I think the choice was in having sex, after that it becomes a responsibility!! One only needs to go to G~ds word and they will find all the answers to this subject that has been hotly debated for years. First and foremost, the baby, (no matter if it's at conception or later) in the womb is a viable, living, breathing human, read what G~d says in Isaiah 44:2 and 44:24, then read what G~d says in Jeremiah 1:5. This should answer the long debated question of when a baby is viable!! And the second thing to consider is G~d said, "Thou shall not kill!!" You can read that in many passages throughout the Bible, but, the most noteworthy of them all is the TEN COMMANDMENTS, read, Deuteronomy 5:17.

Now, I must mention that the mother is not the only guilty party in this act of murder, one must consider the Judicial Courts, Congress and Senate legislation and even our Presidential Candidates, along with the Doctors, Nurses and Aids and numerous Special Interest Groups, Women's' Rights Groups and all Groups of People that stand behind or preserver to push, pass or enact these laws that destroy our unborn children. They are not guiltless in the least....and G~d, HIMSELF, has warned all, throughout HIS word that they will not go unpunished. In Proverbs 6:17 G~d calls shedding of innocent blood an act of DEADLY SIN. And any that put their hand to this task will reap the wrath of G~d.

Proverbs 1:2-7, "To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgement and equity; to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise councils; to understand a proverb and the interpretation; the words of the wise and their dark sayings. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; but FOOLS despise wisdom and instruction."

And talking about FOOLS, read, Proverbs 1:15& 16, "walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path; for their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood."

Proverbs 1:19, sums up the description of them that are a party to abortion, "So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof."

G~d says it's NOT a "choice," but a "LIFE!!!!"

[FOOD FOR THOUGHT]

Last Updated on 08-Jan-08