Is Abortion a Solution?

“The same as your mother.” With these words, a priest of the Archdiocese of Madrid left a taxi driver who wanted to mock him about the legalization of abortion completely speechless, after the driver asked his opinion on the practice.

In a letter sent this week to the online newspaper Hispanidad.com, Father José F. Guijarro recounted what happened to him “when the first abortion law was being debated” and he had “to take a taxi in Madrid, dressed in a cassock.”

He writes that the driver took advantage of having him inside the cab, where he was not going to jump out of the window even though it was open (it was the middle of summer), and asked him in a joking tone: “Well! And what do you think about this abortion business?”

“If he had spoken to me seriously, I would of course have answered seriously. But given his mocking air, I took advantage of the fact that he didn’t know who had got into his taxi, and I answered without turning a hair: ‘The same as your mother.’”

According to the priest, the driver choked (if his mother hadn’t thought the way the priest did, he would never have got his taxi license), didn’t say another word, and when they reached their destination the priest had to ask him how much he owed, because otherwise he could have got out without paying and the driver wouldn’t even have noticed.

On February 19, 1983, the General Council of the Spanish Medical Associations met in Madrid. At that meeting a document was drawn up and presented to the press. The statement was approved by the presidents of all the Medical Associations of Spain, with 47 votes in favor and a single abstention. It gathered a series of international resolutions and studies on scientific aspects of abortion, which confirm the existence of a human life distinct from the mother’s from the first moment of conception.

Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, a specialist in the study of chromosomes, one of the world’s foremost authorities on genetics and human biology, professor of genetics at the Sorbonne in Paris and director at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, held the same view: “The human condition of the new being from conception is not a matter of opinion; it is an experimental fact.” The Nobel laureate Dr. Alfred Kastler stated: “A new life begins from the first moment of conception. The fetus is a human being, a complete being, with a unique genetic code.” In support of this idea, Dr. Botella Llusiá, professor of gynecology at the Complutense University of Madrid, told the newspaper YA: “From the very first moment, the new being has its own individual genetic code, different from the genetic codes of its parents.” That genetic code already determines whether the new person will be a man or a woman, tall or short, fair or dark, blue-eyed or dark-eyed, his illnesses, his character and so on. Dr. Luis Zamorano, professor of histology and general embryology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid, wrote in the journal of the General Council of the Spanish Medical Associations: “The fertilized egg is a living being that belongs to the species of its parents. It is therefore a complete individual of that species in the embryonic stage. It has its own biological personality. It is an individual, just as an adult of its species is. To try to justify abortion on the grounds that the embryo or fetus is not a living human being shows ignorance, hypocrisy or cynicism, if not all three.”

IS ABORTION A SOLUTION?

I have always wondered how a person whose parents gave them the right to live can defend abortion. Normally we are all against violence, but those who defend abortion have not understood what Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say: that abortion kills the peace of the world, that it is the greatest enemy of peace, because if a mother can destroy her own child, what stops me from killing you, or you from killing me? There is no obstacle left.

When she spoke to young people she told them: “You are the future of family life; you are the future of the joy of loving. Keep your purity, keep your heart and your love virgin and pure, so that on the day you marry you can give yourselves to each other, something truly beautiful: the joy of a pure love… But if you should make a mistake, I ask you not to destroy the child. Help each other to love and accept that child who has not yet been born. Do not kill him, because a mistake is not erased by a crime.”

She also spoke to those who govern: “I think the nations that destroy life by legalizing abortion are the poorest, because they are afraid of feeding one more child, and so they add one more cruel murder to this world. In Calcutta we try to fight abortion through adoption… we have never turned away a single child, and they are all happy in their new homes… Many people say they are deeply worried about the children of India or Africa, where so many die of malnutrition, hunger or whatever. But there are millions deliberately eliminated by abortion… I believe that if rich countries allow abortion, they are the poorest, and they need us to pray for them, because they have legalized killing.”

And so as not to rely only on Mother Teresa’s words, here is the conclusion of a study published a month ago in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry, considered the largest of its kind so far: women who undergo an abortion increase their risk of suicide by 155%. The meta-analysis was carried out by Dr. Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, United States, and brings together data from 22 earlier studies by various authors. It also found that women who have had an abortion are 81% more likely to suffer mental health problems. The risk of anxiety problems rises by 34%, depression by 37%, alcohol abuse by 110% and marijuana use by 220%. The study, “Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995–2009,” covers a total of 877,181 participants, of whom 163,831 had had an abortion. Its results call into question the silence of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which says nothing about the impact of abortion on women’s mental health in the face of this important scientific evidence.

As we can see, abortion, besides being an attack on the life of an innocent human being who cannot defend himself, is one more problem for women and for society. The solution to problems can never be to kill, but to see how each of us (from the role we each play in society) can help so that ALL women who find themselves in a desperate situation live their pregnancy aware that the most wonderful thing they can do is give life to a child who will ALWAYS be grateful to have been given life, whatever the circumstances of his birth.