Give us this day our daily bread
Actually, abortion is all three. Many identify it as a political issue and/or religious issue and ignore the human rights issue. It became a political issue because of the human rights issue. It is a religious issue for the religions that care about the well-being of others because of the human rights issue.
Being against abortion is more than just a teaching of the Catholic Church, it is a human rights issue of the highest type. These human beings are being denied their right to life. Not only that, but they are completely innocent. They have done nothing wrong. If these human beings were mere tissue, there would be little reason to oppose abortion. Indeed if that was the case, I would not stand in opposition to it.
However, abortion is the killing of a human being. Our very own Declaration of Independence properly declared the rights of all people to be “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Not only were the rights properly declared, but in the proper order. Without life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are impossible.
Some may claim that a woman’s right to choose is also a human right. I would like to know where it should ever be legal that a person’s right to choose should EVER be before the right of another person to live. These persons in the womb are just at a different stage of human development. That does not make them any less human than you or I.
And trying to lessen their humanity because of their size, stage of development, or visibility lessens how we see human dignity. Human dignity (and thus human rights) are either afforded to all or to none. There have been many attempts to lessen the human of others. Slavery and the Holocaust just to name a few that we all know.
Over 1 million people are killed in abortion every year just within the United States. This sickens me. Every person has worth, dignity, and rights. I see abortion as the human rights issue of our time and to me it is sad that others try to belittle it by calling it a political or religious issue.
God have mercy on us for having let abortion to have gone on so long, and give us the power to stop it.