Diana Hsieh’s opinion piece published in the Post concerning Amendment 48 left me shaking my head trying to follow her logic. She purports to understand and then to educate us on the “true meaning of the biological facts of pregnancy”. In making a comparison to a human fetus, she states that “every distinct, living cell a person washes off in the shower also contains human DNA”.
 Only problem with her analogy is that a skin cell will always be a skin cell. A fertilized human egg, on the other hand, will develop into a being that laughs, cries, loves, runs, plays, thinks, feels and communicates, just to mention a few human characteristics. What she fails to distinguish is the difference between a distinct living cell and a unique living being.
I hope Ms. Hsieh never intends to teach science.
It occurred to me that she should not have any problem with a person climbing a tree and throwing eggs out of an eagle’s nest, after all, they are just fertilized eggs, right? Following her logic, the fertilized eagle’s eggs should have no more status than an eagle’s feather falling from its wing, as the feather also contains the eagle’s DNA. Isn’t it amazing that in the case of an eagle, you would be prosecuted, with Ms. Hsieh’s approval I would venture to guess. In the case of a human, according to Ms. Hsieh, you would simply be exercising your “moral” right.
She goes onto enlighten us by comparing an unborn child to a tumor, stating that it is “human tissue distinct from its host”. She forgets that if you allow a tumor to develop, it will become a full grown... tumor. If you allow a fertilized human egg or a fetus to develop it will become a full grown human being.
She states that the “differences between an embryo or fetus and that born baby are vast”. Yes, they are. So what? The differences between an infant, a toddler, a teenager, a middle aged adult and a 98 year old are also vast. All life, including human life, is in a constant state of development and change from beginning to end, but one thing that doesn’t change is the fact that a horse is a horse (of course), a tree is a tree, a tumor is a tumor and a human being is a human being, regardless of its stage of development.
Ms. Hsieh goes on to define a human being based upon its level of dependence upon its mother. While admitting that a fetus “eats what she eats and breathes what she breathes” (sounds like a life to me) she concludes that it is “not yet an individual human life; it is not a person”. Amazing. I wonder if she is aware of the level of dependence an infant has upon its mother. It can’t feed itself, it can’t change itself, in fact, if not held and touched it will die, yet Ms. Hsieh maintains that a “baby lives a life of its own”.
Not hardly.
The truth surrounding Ms. Hsieh's agenda is revealed in the last two paragraphs of her letter, as she concludes from her argument “So a woman has a right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy for any reason.” Incredibly, based upon this type of logic, the most dangerous place to live in this world is not Detroit or Iraq, but rather a woman's womb. 3,500 babies are aborted every day in this country alone, the equivalent of a Twin Towers tragedy occurring every day of every year for the last forty years. One area in which we agree is the “moral right of every woman to control her own body”. I just ask her to extend that right to the body living within the woman, which has a 50 percent chance of being a woman itself, if just given the chance. |