Election Time... Decision Time

Election Issues Explained

I recently found a great link on How Stuff Works that caused me to reflect on some very important issues. I think that our election system should be an exciting and refreshing time... a time for us to reevaluate and reconfirm our values. There are some that pessimistically say that our vote doesn't count. I disagree. I think our vote counts today as much as it did when our great republic was founded. What makes it count even more is when we take time to think about the issues that are of most importance to us and our families.

This link gave me pause to reflect upon a very controversial subject, abortion. Personally, I'm opposed to the use of abortion except in rare instances (i.e. mother's life, rape, and incest) for not only religious reasons,, but intellectual ones as well.

The devaluation and/or reclassification of "human life" has lead to some of the most tragic events of human history. The Jewish Holocaust of WWII and Slavery are among the first to come to mind, however, throughout history there have been countless attempts at genocide and human exploitation.

• In each of these instances, human life has been redefined using some criteria that, upon reflection, is inconsequential to the true nature of human life.
  
• I see this as being no different in the case of an unborn baby. I've personally had too many friends whose children were born prematurely to believe that human life can be define as starting at X weeks into a pregnancy.
  
• To suggest that a "mother's rights" should outweigh the rights of unborn child, carries the same ring as "white rights" being more important than "black rights" did relative to slavery.
  
• Taken to yet another extreme, "human life" could be defined as ending at... oh, say 80 years old. That would certainly be a step to protect "younger" citizens' right to social security. Gads, lets not let that idea get to Washington D.C.!
• Even us "good guys" have become part of these events when we have loosened our standards. Permitting those with a tendency to devalue anyone who doesn't conform to their definition of a human being, contributed to the recent abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.
  

I remember talking to a woman at work that had an abortion. She told me that I didn't have the "right" to speak against abortion since I'd never experienced a situation like hers. Frankly, to use that argument would disqualify me and anyone else from having an opinion on many subjects of importance such as... what is a "human life".