Abortion, From A Moral Point Of View

There comes a time in the history of a nation when we have to pause and examine ourselves to see whether we are moving forward or not. Besides poverty, hunger, conflicts escalating into wars, diseases including Hiv/Aids which threaten our existence on the African continent, there is this immoral and irresponsible behavior that threatens the moral fabric of our society, and I hope this article will stimulate the consciousness of all to begin to discuss and find solutions.

When I was a boy growing up, Abortion was considered a “taboo” and frowned upon. Now it is practiced with impunity and with no sense of shame and remorse. Two unmarried people will engage in unprotected sex and, when the female gets pregnant, will go all out to seek abortion and it will be done because there are equally irresponsible medical staff, without a conscience, somewhere making a living from this abominable act. Why am I writing this article with indignation? The answer is simple. I read two articles on ghanaweb (11th and 26th Nov) which in some way had to do with Abortion. In the first article titled “COURT ORDERS ABORTION FOR GIRL, 15”, a circuit court judge in Goaso in the Brong Ahafo region ordered the abortion for this girl. Whether the lower courts in Ghana have the power to decide on such cases, I do not know, but the orders were given with the consent of the girl’s parents to enable her to continue her education. In the story, two men were jailed for defiling the girl. To those who did not read the article, the girl was already pregnant, went to the boyfriend’s house for money to abort the pregnancy and, while the boyfriend was absent, another boy had the chance to sleep with the girl. A clear case of poor parenting.

The second article was about two sisters who were remanded for murdering a young man. In the article a 19-year-old girl was said to have stormed into the house of her ex-boyfriend with her sister to fight the boyfriend in the night. During the fight the boyfriend was stabbed to death and they were arrested. The reason behind this unfortunate episode was that the girl felt the boyfriend was cheating on her after an abortion and when she confronted the boyfriend she was told their relationship was over. Hence the tragedy.

Fellow Ghanaians, do we fold our hands and allow such episodes involving the youth of our society to continue without doing anything? What are the Churches, the Archbishops and the Cardinals doing about it? Are they not supposed to shepherd the “flock of the Sheep” entrusted in their care? Why is there this moral decay in our society? Historically, abortions were sought if there was clear danger to the mother’s life, if an incestuous relationship brought about the pregnancy or if it was a case of forcible rape. But many other reasons now have become prominent in our loose society. Purely selfish reasons are used by those who do not want children or seek to avoid responsibility. Abortions are performed to avoid embarrassment for an unmarried girl. A career woman seeks an abortion simply because of inconvenience and temporary loss of work. A middle-aged couple seeks abortion because a child was not in their plans. Christians should ask, “what does GOD says about this”? If we all accept the fact that the Bible, in both spirit and letter, is against taking human life, why do we look unconcerned when abortion is practiced indiscriminately? People seeking abortions sometimes claim the embryo is just like any other tissue of the body and not yet human, but this is not true. When does human life begin? On April 30, 1965, the magazine “LIFE” published an article entitled “Drama of Life Before Birth” and it affirmed the fact that “the birth of a human life really occurs at the moment the mother’s egg is fertilized by one of the father’s sperm cells. For the first eight weeks, until his permanent skeleton of bones begins to form, the child is commonly called an embryo (a Greek word meaning “to swell”).Thereafter it is usually called a fetus (a Latin word meaning “young one”). At 6-½ weeks, the child has all the internal organs he will ever have as an adult, including a little mouth with lips and a tongue. By the time he is eighteen weeks old, the child even cries, has a complete set of vocal cords but since there’s no air in the womb it receives oxygen from the mother’s body.” God created only three basic classes of life , each of which reproduces after its own kind, plants, animals, and people. In which of these three categories should a living unborn baby be classed? Animals or plants? No, because humans are distinct from plants and animals.

My next question is to the paramount Chiefs and their Queen Mothers. What are they doing to help the young ladies in their various traditional areas to make good decisions regarding sex, unwanted pregnancy and abortion? What about the ex first ladies, the federation of women lawyers, the women in government? This is an area I have never heard anyone talking about. However, if I am wrong, I stand to be corrected. And to the men in Ghana, especially to the irresponsible ones, who go out to engage in unprotected sex with young girls, remember that your desire for sex is accompanied by a much greater responsibility. During his Father’s Day address on June 15, 2008, President Obama had this to say to a church congregation and I quote: “If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers are missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. It’s true we need more jobs, but we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception and we need to realize that what makes one a man is not the ability to have a child—it’s the courage to raise one”. Have the men in Ghana lived up to their responsibility as men or have they only abandoned the wives to raise their children for them? The moral decay we’re going through is a clear indication that the men are not doing enough.

God bless Ghana and Merry Christmas to all.

Obourba Asante Taado.