On Sept. 19, pro-life activists in Albuquerque, NM took to the streets to drum up support for a referendum to limit abortion. Despite the protests, however, the referendum unfortunately failed to pass, leaving abortion to persist unchecked.

A year earlier I marched alongside hundreds of Pro-life supporters in Carmel, each of us carrying balloons imprinted with the word “Life.” We passed 4,000 white flags waving in front of our church, representing the 4,000 babies who are aborted each day. As we released the balloons, we watched the lives that had been lost to abortion fade into the sky. We watched 4,000 babies, brought to life at conception, stripped of their lives by abortion.

At the moment of conception, an unborn child fulfills the four fundamental standards for biological life: metabolism, reproduction, growth and response to stimuli. Therefore, the unborn is biologically alive, and abortion is taking the life of a distinct, whole human being.

Sure, an unborn baby is less developed and dependent on the mother for life, but that doesn’t mean this child is not a person. A 3-year-old is less developed than a 13-year old. Does that mean the 3-year-old is less of a person or deserves fewer rights? A patient may be dependent on medication to stay alive, but does that mean the patient is not a whole person deserving of the basic right to life? Then why should we deny an unborn child his or her basic right to life and humanity?

Additionally, abortion is not just an issue of a woman and her body, like many Pro-choice advocates claim. The child’s life is the issue. And since an unborn baby is a life, not a woman’s property, she does not have the right to choose if the child should live or not. If women truly want control over their own bodies, they should choose abstinence, not abortion.

Also, courts consider cases that include the murder of a pregnant woman as double homicide by the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If double homicide cases account for the life of the unborn child, abortions should as well.

Aborted children are not the only victims of abortion; women also suffer from the physical and emotional trauma of abortion. For example, a woman may face infection, hemorrhaging and miscarriage following an abortion. Women of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign show their emotional torment resulting from abortion at the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. through “I regret my abortion” signs.

Although Pro-choice supporters claim women often abort in cases of rape or health issues, 92 percent of abortions are solely elective and not caused by rape or health issues, according to the Guttmacher Institute in New York. Also, in incidences of pregnancy through rape, the unborn child is not the one who should be punished. The perpetrator of rape, not the child who is not guilty of any crime, should be punished.

For these reasons, instead of choosing abortion, women should turn to adoption if they cannot support a child, and with 2.6 million American women taking steps towards adoption, according to a 2002 study by childwelfare.gov, a child put up for adoption will always be wanted.

The horror stories of adoption we hear in the news are extreme cases that do not represent the adoption process as a whole. Adoption, according to childwelfare.gov, is a safe process that regularly leaves children in good hands by requiring thorough background checks on adoptive parents. Even so, who are we to choose death for a child who has a slight possibility of leading an unhappy life? We should let the child live and decide if life is worth living on his or her own.

Abortion is not a matter of a woman’s control over her body; it is taking a child’s life. These unborn children, and often their mothers, are the victims of abortion, which deprives the unborn of their unalienable right to life.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Christine Fernando at [email protected].