In Germany as in many other countries the most dangerous place one can be is in the womb, that is to say, the place which in general linguistic usage and literature used to be the epitome of security and dependability. Nowhere is an individual nowadays more defenseless, less protected, and more deprived of rights.
Increasingly happiness, affluence, and self actualization are the values which hold our society together, while more and more, with respect to other values, a consensus is missing. When everything is subject to a cost-benefit analysis, it is no surprise that this also applies to pregnancy and children. The domination of economic and materialistic concerns in our culture strikes through to the weakest in our culture.
Opponents to abortion start by simply assuming the position of the unborn individual. Everything else follows on its own. Their position is completely easy to describe – all other things are logical consequences: when human procreation takes place, a new biological, intectual and spiritual being occurs, a person with unmistakable dignity. Later on there is no break in development at which point something even close to this in meaning becomes apparent and where out of a non-person a person emerges.
The protection of human life is without a doubt the central and most important task of the state, and it serves as a basis for duties as well as rights. From this the German Supreme Court concluded in 1993 that the state can never actively pursue the ending of human life – also that of the unborn – nor can it hold that it is fit to end human life.
While compared to the history of bygone centuries things in democratic countries look very good with respect to protection of the individual during life, these same countries almost completely fail when it comes to the phase prior to birth (and increasingly also at the end of life) and in so doing deny to the weakest in society protection from other people who want to kill them. In our opinion this shakes the very foundations of the state. Furthermore, by habituation it leads to a situation where generally the protection of life becomes more and more one issue among many that by all means can be subordinated to other considerations.
If we have again come so far that the state thinks that it can vote on the right to life for entire parts of the population, then the state has lost its most important justification for existence, namely that of protecting the life of its citizens from other people. At the same time that a species protection act for plants and animals was signed, the German Bundestag decided that one may kill the human ‘species’ in the womb.
The most frequent Cause of Death worldwide
Abortion is the most frequent cause of death on the planet. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2007 there were 136 million births and 54 million deaths over against 42 million reported abortions. Of the 54 million 17.5 million died of cardiovascular disease and 11 million people died from cancer. Fewer than one-fifth of the 54 million were children. Thus almost four times as many children who are killed in the womb than die as born children.
In a report by the research institute World Watch published in Washington, it follows that annually almost as many children are aborted as people died in World War II. While in World War II 55 to 60 million people died, annually at least 50 million children are killed in the womb, whereby additionally 200,000 women also die.
In Japan and France one half of all children are killed in the womb. In Germany and the Netherlands that percentage is one quarter.
However, if one looks at the German media, one could get the impression that statistically we are dealing with is a side issue and a moral bagatelle.
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[…] Betrachtet man allerdings die deutschen Medien, könnte man den Eindruck gewinnen, als ginge es statistisch um ein Randproblem und um eine moralische Bagatelle. via Thomas Schirrmacher […]